Description

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Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they lay the foundation for a black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century. A companion website contains jubilee troupe personnel, recordings, and profiles of 85 jubilee groups. Please go to: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/graham/spirituals/

About the Author

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Sandra Jean Graham is an associate professor of music at Babson College.

Praise For…

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A Choice Outstanding Title, 2018
Music in American Culture Award, American Musicological Society, 2019

"Unpacks issues of power and cultural authenticity in the white-controlled jubilee industry and within blackface minstrelsy performances, including Uncle Tom and plantation shows . . . Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry will be crucial to anyone studying American music, especially those focused on the post-Civil War period through 1900, and of course anyone who studies African American music history."--Blackgrooves.org

"[A] one-of-a-kind title . . . Many volumes address spirituals themselves, but few detail the actual exponents of this important African American tradition in such a refreshingly disarming way."--Library Journal

"Graham proves an industry was built on and inspired by the specific cultural context and contributions of Black people. . . . Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry is compulsory reading for all who wish to expand their knowledge on Black contributions to music, art, and entertainment." --Transposition

"A detailed, cogent, and fascinating history of the popularization of Negro spirituals [that is] thoroughly documented and covers a truly vast range of information. One of the especially distinctive features of Graham's approach is its careful consideration of musical elements and how they figure in defining objects under study."--Thomas L. Riis, author of Frank Loesser
 

"Music historians will find Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry fascinating because instead of rehashing the already well-researched lyric import of the spirituals, Graham looks at the art form as the spark that ignited an entertainment industry." --ARSC Journal
 

"A detailed and valuable genealogy of the spiritual."—The Journal of Southern History

"Graham skillfully illuminates the racial dynamics of the era, handling with particular grace the equivocal effect of the spirituals’ popularity on artistically ambitious black performers: although performers took advantage of burgeoning professional opportunities, their careers were circumscribed by the expectations of white audiences. A pleasure to read, the book weaves meticulous research into an engaging narrative that vividly enriches understanding of postbellum American music and theater.”—Choice 

"This book is recommended to anyone with an interest in American folk and popular music, and it should provoke many followers-up studies that explore its themes in even greater depth as well as their extensions into the twentieth century." --Journal of Folklore Research

"A pleasure to read, the book weaves meticulous research into an engaging narrative that vividly enriches understanding of postbellum American music and theater. Highly recommended." --Choice

"Sandra Graham breaks new ground in her nuanced examination of the white-controlled spiritual or jubilee industry, and of claims for musical and cultural authenticity by black college and independent jubilee groups, as well as white and black performers of blackface minstrelsy, American folk music, and European classical traditions."--Portia K. Maultsby, coeditor of Issues in African American Music and African American Music: An Introduction, second edition