Black and British: A Forgotten History

by David Olusoga

By far the most important of the black American musical troupes to tour Britain in our period were the legendary Fisk Jubilee Singers, who arrived in 1873. They came from Nashville, Tennessee, and were directly responsible for introducing British audiences to the world of Negro spirituals. Their impact upon British music tastes is too significant to be dealt with here, but more than any other troupe they changed British tastes, introducing into the national song book standards like ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I See’ and ‘Deep River’; songs that became part of the lives of millions of Victorian churchgoers. The Fisk Jubilee Singers performed for Queen Victoria and symbolically they gave a concert at London’s Exeter Hall, the historic headquarters of the British abolitionist movement. Two further tours followed, in 1875 and in 1884, during which their popularity remained undimmed. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, thanks to their ever-changing line-up, survived into the twentieth century and gramophone recordings of their singing exist. From these discs emerges music that is powerfully sombre and radically original when set aside the plodding music-hall routines and dated minstrel clichés that were popular throughout the era.