The Fisk Jubilee Singers’ amazing story, from slavery to stardom

By Bill Newcott, National Geographic

They introduced Black spirituals to the world—and saved their university from financial ruin.

A hush fell over Ryman Auditorium, Nashville’s “Mother Church of Country Music.” On the same stage where Hank Williams wailed “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and Patsy Cline wondered if she might be crazy, nine young African American singers entered from the wings, their voices blending in a mesmerizing, almost whispering rendition of the timeless slave song “Steal Away.”

“The trumpet sounds within my soul,” they sang, and you could almost hear that horn, muted and mournful. “I ain’t got long to stay here.”

On that night last fall, the Fisk Jubilee Singers—founded 151 years ago to raise money for the South’s oldest historically Black university—took hold of 2,000 hearts and, almost instantaneously, squeezed them to the point of tears.

Among the tearful was Paul Kwami, the group’s musical director for 28 years. A former Fisk University student himself, he came to Nashville after a childhood in Ghana.

“It happens sometimes,” he told me several months after that concert. “I’m crying, the singers are crying, we’re all crying.”

Now, everyone is crying again: Kwami, a legend in the preservation and performance of African American spiritual music, died unexpectedly September 10, less than a month before the group’s 151st anniversary.

Keep reading about the legacy of this musical group.

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