Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 733, January 12, 1878Various
History
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 733, January 12, 1878
Various
Periodicals
The vicissitudes of travelling at home and abroad during several years
led to changes in the company of singers. When members were obliged to
retire, others equally qualified took their place. At different times
twenty-four persons in all have belonged to the company. All of them
have been slaves or of slave parentage. Excepting a few mulattoes,
all have been of a pure negro type; and their respective histories
offer some interesting facts concerning the condition of people of
colour in the slave states up till the period of general emancipation.
It is gratifying to know that the extraordinary change of life from
privation and contumely to comfort and public respect has not uplifted
the feelings, or materially altered the habits of the members of
the corps. In their moral and religious obligations they have ever
been irreproachable. We are told that none of them uses tobacco; and
their English friends, whose hospitalities have been so abundant, are
equally surprised, if not gratified, to find that they are inveterate
abstainers from alcoholic liquors. Considering the temptations and
buffetings of their early life, there is not a little to admire in the
conduct as well as in the accomplishments of the several individuals
composing the party. The energetic yet modest way they have acquitted
themselves in the routine of the very peculiar duties imposed on them,
is probably not often met with in parties of higher pretensions.
We have now in brief told the story of the Jubilee Singers, and
it is more than ordinarily remarkable. A handful of freed negro
slaves undertaking by voluntary efforts to collect funds wherewith
to establish and support a University, having for its object the
higher education of the coloured population in the United States.
The enterprise has had no parallel. These negroes do not beg, nor do
they trouble people for subscriptions. They only try to raise funds
by the exercise of their talents in an honest line of industry, by
communicating pleasure to countless audiences. Amidst the frauds
and commercial rascalities of pompous pretenders that are becoming
a scandal to the age, the unselfish and noble endeavours of these
humble melodists stand out in marked contrast, as something to applaud
and to redeem human nature. The marvel of the enterprise has been
its universal success. High and low are equally pleased. Professing
no particular knowledge in music, but yielding to none in an ardent
admiration of the simpler class of national ballads and songs, we have
listened to the melodies of the Jubilee Singers with heartfelt delight.
Whether with or without instrumental accompaniment, the melodies might
be described as supplying a new relish. It has been remarked that the
greater number of the pieces are in the same scale as that in which
Scottish music is written, with the fourth and seventh tones omitted.
This would only indicate the untutored nature of their origin, and
the wonder is greater at the effects produced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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