The Grammy award-winning Fisk Jubilee Singers will perform at CU Boulder’s Macky Auditorium on Sunday. The group is famous for preserving the Negro spiritual and is celebrating its 150th anniversary.
The acappella choir formed just after the Civil War at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. As a Historically Black College or University, and the only university at the time to offer a liberal arts education to “young men and women irrespective of color,” emancipated slaves flocked to Fisk.
KGNU’s Michele Simpson talked with the Fisk Jubilee Singers current director, Dr. Paul Kwami who says the Fisk University treasurer, George White, created The Fisk Jubilee Singers with the idea that the group could travel around and raise some extra money for the school.
Listen:
Music by Jubilee Singers from Library of Congress Archive
Mixed and produced by Alexis Kenyon