Spirituals – Chorales
and Touring Groups
Bibliography and
Credits
Fisk Jubilee Singers: Songbooks and Sheet Music
The Story of the Jubilee
Singers With Their Songs, by J.B.T. Marsh, Hougton,
Mifflin and Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1880.
Georgia Sea Island Singers: Songbooks and Sheet Music
Slave Songs of the
Georgia Sea Islands, by Lydia
Parrish, Folklore Associates, Inc., Hatboro, Pennsylvania, 1942. This book is also the best history of how the
Georgia Sea Island Singers came to be recognized and studied, and is a fascinating
account of the musical and spiritual journey of the author as well.
SNCC Freedom Singers: Songbooks and Sheet Music
Sing For
Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs, Compiled and edited by Guy and Candie
Carawan, A Sing Out Publication, Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, 1990. This book was
originally published as two volumes entitled: We Shall Overcome: Songs of
the Southern Freedom Movement, Oak Publications,1963,
and Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Songs of the Freedom Movement, Oak
Publications, 1968.
Film
"Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and
Glory," produced by Llewellyn Smith for PBS, tells the story of a
group of former slaves who formed a singing group that brought Negro Spirituals
to the world, and raised money for Fisk University in the process. Eventually, they would perform for presidents
and queens, tour the United States and Europe, and establish songs like
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "This Little Light of Mine.”
Books and Articles
Slave Spirituals and the
Jubilee Singers, by Michael L.
Cooper, Clarion Books, New York, New York, 2001.
If You Don’t Go, Don’t
Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition, by Bernice Johnson Reagon,
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2001. Two of the four essays are insightful and
wide-ranging ethnomusicological histories of many of
the Chorales mentioned: “Spirituals: An African American Communal Voice” (pp.
68-99) and “Freedom Songs: My African American Singing and Fighting Mothers”
(pp. 100-142).
Web Sites
Fisk Jubilee Singers - A
brief history maintained at Tennessee State University. See http://www.tnstate.edu/library/digital/FISK.HTM.