Written by Fisk University Jubilee Singers
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Variable

This is a great listen back to the historic Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1924-1940; most of the songs are transcriptions from Nashville's WSM Radio Studio (original home to the Grand Ole Opry). These historic spirituals were once only sung in "hush harbors" by Negro slaves. Five years after Fisk University's founding in 1866 (as an educational institution for freed slaves after the Civil War), the University was heavily in debt. Missionary and university treasurer George Leonard White overheard one of the students singing to herself as she worked. Inquiring about the music, he was told "It's one of our 'secret songs'". White got the idea to organize a group of the students into a singing band to help raise funds to rescue the school. Named the 'Jubilee Singers' in memory of the Jewish year of Jubilee, the Fisk Jubilee Singers first toured in 1871-1872, presenting to the world the unique and hereto unknown genre of the Negro spiritual. Their efforts did indeed result in the fiscal salvation of their institution; and what were once 'secret songs' have become standards in Sunday School songbooks and Gospel hymnals. A personal note--I taught Sunday School songs and lessons in my church for 30 years; my grandmother taught the same songs in her Child Evangelism Good News Clubs for many years. Where would we be without "This Little Light of Mine"? The Gospel message in these songs is simple enough for the littlest child to understand, yet powerful enough to cut to the heart of the most evil sinner and save him by God's grace. Ironically, we would never have heard these songs, they would never have been conceived; except for the wicked and evil institution of slavery, from which all those enslaved longed to be phyically free; and by their introduction to the Gospel through Christian masters and missionaries, who showed them the way to salvation from sin and true spiritual freedom through Jesus Christ. It is as Joseph told his brothers, who had hated him to death, and sold him into slavery: "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to save much people."