One of America’s longest standing traditions has been the white consumption of black music. One of the ways in which this tradition began was the adaptation of slave songs, otherwise known as spirituals, into popular culture. While there were many artists, both black and white, who translated spirituals into music more accommodating for white audiences, it was the Fisk Jubilee singers who helped popularize this music. As one of the first non-minstrel black musical group, the Fisk Jubilee singers carried the burden of coming face to face with white audiences and attempting to subvert the pre-held notions of blackness that the white audience came to view the performance with. The ways in which they did so fits in with themes and ideas present
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This however, is a gross simplification of what was an attempt by black Americans to solve the answer to the “race problem” that had so long plagued the United States. Respectability politics came to mean many different things. As Kevin Gaines summarized, the values seen respectability politics were “...an emphasis on self-help, racial solidarity, temperance, thrift, chastity, social purity, patriarchal authority, and the accumulation of wealth” (2). These values show that respectability politics was one of the ways in which the black community could prove that they were fully capable of interacting with whiteness while still maintaining their blackness. This came to be one of the main goals of the Jubilee singers. In their performances, they “strove for a refined musical style and presence, just as [Fisk University’s] music program was structured to show that black people could participate in a white world - in the first case by singing ‘white’ music” (Graber, 31). By not only existing, but thriving, within this white world, the Jubilee singers were successfully engaging with the white community, and reshaping their lives in a way that defied typical white views of African Americans. By introducing attitudes and behaviors seen in respectability politics into their performance, the singers were in a way able to gain some control over their self image. They began to change their repertoire to center around spirituals, but these spirituals were different than the original versions. They had been rearranged and composed to be more suitable to a white audience. The singers also began to take on a more formal, Victorian appearance. As they became more popular and more successful, they began to dress in more formal clothings and jewelery. This allowed them to present a new image of the black American to their audience members; one who belonged to
This however, is a gross simplification of what was an attempt by black Americans to solve the answer to the “race problem” that had so long plagued the United States. Respectability politics came to mean many different things. As Kevin Gaines summarized, the values seen respectability politics were “...an emphasis on self-help, racial solidarity, temperance, thrift, chastity, social purity, patriarchal authority, and the accumulation of wealth” (2). These values show that respectability politics was one of the ways in which the black community could prove that they were fully capable of interacting with whiteness while still maintaining their blackness. This came to be one of the main goals of the Jubilee singers. In their performances, they “strove for a refined musical style and presence, just as [Fisk University’s] music program was structured to show that black people could participate in a white world - in the first case by singing ‘white’ music” (Graber, 31). By not only existing, but thriving, within this white world, the Jubilee singers were successfully engaging with the white community, and reshaping their lives in a way that defied typical white views of African Americans. By introducing attitudes and behaviors seen in respectability politics into their performance, the singers were in a way able to gain some control over their self image. They began to change their repertoire to center around spirituals, but these spirituals were different than the original versions. They had been rearranged and composed to be more suitable to a white audience. The singers also began to take on a more formal, Victorian appearance. As they became more popular and more successful, they began to dress in more formal clothings and jewelery. This allowed them to present a new image of the black American to their audience members; one who belonged to