Fisk University's Jubilee Singers

Photo: Fisk University's Jubilee Singers

Africans in America using music to fund public education for Africans.

"A band of negro singers, organized in 1869 by George White to aid in securing funds for the Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., a university for freedmen founded soon after the war. 

They made their first great success in the Gilmore Jubilee Concerts in Boston and were known thereafter as the "Jubilee Singers;" made several concert tours in Europe, meeting everywhere with the most enthusiastic receptions, and attracting the attention of European composers to the negro melodies. These concerts gave the first intimation to many Europeans composers that America had a folk-song of her own." 

-- Photo and Excerpt from the book The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, Irving Squire, London 1908.

Video courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

And the musical tradition continues...