The Fisk Jubilee Singers: The African-American Spiritual

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The African-American spiritual was created in a time of horrible US history. Spiritual which is derived from the words spiritual song from the King James Bible’s translation of Ephesians 5:19 which says: Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. After being brought to America and given religion they would create their own spirituals while working in the fields. The spiritual started out as a work song and then became known as the Negro Spiritual now it is called the African-American Spiritual The enslaved Africans would sing these songs to signal the run-away slaves which way to go to get to freedom. The African-American Spiritual was originally an oral tradition that describes the hardships of slavery with heavy Christian values. These songs were usually of the monophonic nature and sang in unison. Around the world the African- American Spiritual became known as the Slave Songs of the United States. The first set of African-American Spirituals to be published was in 1867. Today, the African-American Spiritual is its own genre of music and sang by many popular groups, one of which is the Fisk Jubilee Singers. …show more content…

The Fisk Jubilee Singers started off as a Fund raiser for Fisk University which is located in Nashville, Tennessee a historically black University which was founded to educate African-Americans. The early repertoire of the group consisted of only African-American Spirituals but eventually the group started to sing other songs. The Fisk Singers would travel along the route of the Underground Railroad bringing new harmonic textures to these once bland African-American Spirituals. The Fisk Jubilee singers gained world renowned fame by singing about the hardships of

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