American Experience; Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory; Interview with Katherine Preston, Music Historian

this idea of a troop in the early eighties seventies his group of singers who are coming to town in an attempt to create a concert for fundraising purposes they have their they're basically trying to create a new style a performance a distinct from the showbiz style performance not as african american performers as black performers who have come to say in on town cincinnati for example in ohio as the singers did i am then the normal reaction of an audience of potential audiences and slowly raises would be to the seventies a minstrel performers in fact there are stories about people going to the cost the cost of the three singers of the cotton blossom sings another solar jubilee concrete and saying one of the metal part because in fact that's what people expected so the fasteners by trying to create and to carve out a new niche in the whole show business pantheon are their task is doubly difficult and they are

associated with the show business people because their adherence and because they're there working working in that whole need it but these people are trying to distance themselves from that whole idea of show biz for a variety of reasons one of them is because they're trying to do to create a concert ties a churchgoing audience attracting kind of of an idea and also because they're trying to distance themselves from the image of show business people which has with all the implications of i ten or a sea of immorality of fear being the devil's work and so for years in which are on this is that the scenes with reporters so when you were missing your friends are probably take issue with that that i'm singing

is a physical endeavor it's a rogue make you have to work hard your breathing deeply you're producing the sound the the instrument that a singer uses is our life is mrs i'm saying is there is a physical activity it's hard work people don't think about that you think i sing in the shower big deal by professionals interviews projecting into both remember a time pre application projecting to the back of the hall is producing the sound through the use of his or her body not yet the singer's instrument is right here she's playing is his or her body and to breathe deeply and to push out that sound passed the vocal cords and so forth is a very

taxing physical endeavor people don't think about that often very delicate because if you get the slightest cooled and you start coughing and that affects the way your voice sounds so you want to be careful and didn't have nurse your voice you also don't want to strain things because then you go get sicker and if the singer is has a call of a kind you really can't same size wise a they beat and beat the kennedy sickly as opposed to say a pianist or a violinist who can be snuffling but still perform perfectly well but the tensions that you also have the courage to perform that make money of course of course and the album in addition the whole physicality of singing is is the pressure of performing before live audiences you're standing with your colleagues this was the first to her head nine singers right so you're standing on a stage all these pressures on you as

an african american college student to prove to the people in the audience one that these songs are beautiful that means the singers introduced to american public the right right so in addition to all the physicality of singing you have to be the whole issue of that the pressure performance now first of all your as the as a singer and fasteners the first two were was nine centers you are on stage in front of an audience not just in the very nature of a live performance is very taxing you're listening very carefully to you or your colleagues remembering the words in memory which a director has said he will for years watching the conductor youre concentrating and youre concentrating for the entire length of the concert this is very very taxing physically as well as mentally on top of that you're in front of an audience so the live performances all these years the stage fright they have to do it on top of all of that is this whole issue of what the singers are trying to do they're trying to prove a point they're not only

raising money for the university but there they're dealing with possible hostility on the part of their audiences they're dealing with the whole that whole units are trying to project as ais educated up the riots sophisticated singers who are trained educator trainer musically and trained in terms of intellectual they're trying to prove a point is all of that attention is focused on these young people these college age students see you have not only the physicality of singing and the bigotry at the problems of dealing with was working on stage that you have on top of all that the whole issue of the pressure that these kids are under to prove a point the point is that african americans akbar encyclical people that they are people who can gain from a college education many people didn't believe that in the northern states in the southern states what we just trained them to to farm their farms correctly

or maybe to be trained blacksmith's or or you know i saw something in a menial task but the idea of of educating african americans on the universe you know is something that is foreign to many americans this time and this part of the point that you're trying to make big east at the fist singers attorney may support for public education for african americans and the viability of this as as an endeavor but the report oh my yeah so the complicated because sad because the images are different or i'm on a rock group it deals with the adulation of its of its audience is in your there's

rhodesian groupies unsung so forth whereas with the jubilee singers especially their first tours know me they were so they didn't think they were trying to create something a waiter or a rock concert today ra grew to date they are they're fitting into a well defined niche however the problems of dealing with with with traveling end and the idea that perhaps that traveling is glamorous when in fact you can imagine eating a restaurant day after day after day and being in different bed every night he gets very old very fast and although modern rock group on a tour the world sort of whatever group they they have the modern conveniences they good good hotel and good food and so forth in fact it still the strain of being on the road of being constantly traveling of changing times and so forth so that the

analogy and the analogy is that way that that a lot that that's the closest thing i can come to into the kind of two of these guys are doing with something like that that that iraq agreed it would make me a close look at it the closest analogy because of modern analogy to what the fed's singers were doing were traveling performers are doing in the late nineties if it was mr rocker that we have done all the pressures of living in hotels eating food in restaurants meeting schedules of in the case of iraq we missing flight's missing connections as opposed to missing missing train connections in his eighteen seventies but the pressures are all there but that bit of the constant being army moved in and that the chance you can we just sit down and take a deep breath and sleep because you're constantly moving year and for city every day as a close analogy i can make i was ok

ok just how busy ok to the modern singer the modern performing the idea of performing day after day after day in a different city is completely different to the to a modern performer who may be an issue where the idea performing day after day in different cities the way someone would do normally in the eighteen seventies seems compelling and copperheads for an operatic company in the late nineteenth century in their own identity for them eighteen for retaking fifties through the latter part of the nineteenth century when when a company like that would go on the road would normally perform at least five nights sometimes six sometimes seven performances a week monday through saturday a saturday matinee december

foreman says and they don't roll on sunday goes in the next edition of the conference at large see two rc cincinnati to st louis in st louis helped chicago to minneapolis and so forth they missed a week in that city do the seven performances be on the road on sunday the performances on sunday on the next monday they open a new city nasa dealing with smaller towns it often be arm and say a small town st louis endured two to denver and to shy and the makeup sentences going on and they would do three performances here to there any dispersant with with traveling so this idea of night after night after night in an on the road doing performances regularly was not unusual in the nineteen century i've looked at schedules of maples and opera company in the eighteenth at this is the major competitor with the mud pots and never thought about the company and in new york when they had a season in new york originally performed four or five nights of the week and then

they go on the road and up the ante to six time sometimes seven maple season the metropolitan were the premier opera companies at the time they were the they were the well funded he said he's an advisor think that they were they were the big east and the guys on the block if you look at all the other little picayune opera company you cease kind of stick fly by night startup get you together go on a road trip to span and so forth they would often do that at least seven performers are sometimes ate a man and when sam and they announce on saturdays was not unusual another example i can make is that of edwin booth arguably the most most ahmed american born actor of the nineteenth century i looked at his his route book for the eighteen at seventy eight season and over the course of eight months he performed over two hundred and fifty times in for seventy different cities are forty of those

cities or one night stands he covers of like twenty one thousand miles during that time he's constantly on the road so there's this singer is on their encounter tour of the uk are performing night after night after night sometimes six sometimes seven nights a week although absolutely grueling insanely grueling by modern standards was not all that unusual in the nineteenth century the book was very difficult these diseases are separate these are these are these are young people they serve these are college age students and for most of them this is the first time they've been more than tenor tenor so maximum ten miles away from home so all the all the difficulties are traveling are hard for them but all the novelty and that wasn't that was a positive side but i think homesickness must have been a very important issue it was

difficult for them to stay in touch with their families they could telegraph i suppose but that's very expensive these were these were not rich people unite and middle class people so in order for them to be in touch with their families and you know seventeen eighteen nineteen year old person's away from home for the first time ever in a life that the homesickness must've been acute and they could take a right to their families but was very difficult for the families to nikkei with them it was possible if george white the manager was safe they were doing a concert in cincinnati in an era when to these little towns in between events or to make their way to cleveland if that george knew about where they will be staying clean or what hall they were going to be performing in the parents could write to the two that haul leave a letter in care of that often for the young person to pick up that is pretty much catch as catch can see is very difficult communication issues very difficult for you to

just a description yes the master shirley is to show the starter in the eighteen for these black men with black on their faces with cork and they're generally do the five performers and nintendo and kind of bones and a tambourine that there would be there would be songs there would be scarcity of the burlesque says of popular culture ballistics of opera bullock's burlesque some shakespeare basically stand up comedy so is essentially a variety show that included a lot of racial jokes a lot of a lot of music a lot of songs on stephen foster's songs in fact no some of them in any case a written for the minstrel stage very well known song dixie was written as a walk around for the minstrel show was written before the civil war by a northern ohio mandate named dan emmett in a case that the

show itself o would be poet would consist of a troupe of performers who travel from town to town they when they would put on a whole the evening's entertainment against basically a variety show by the time you get to be eighteen sixties and seventies you have the black minstrel slash or the first half of the african american performers by this time the whole show had expanded it was bigger they were more performers the burlesque were more complex they were canadian dispersed uncle tom's cabin something like that which was not blessed but there's a very positive african american style dramatic work but in the case of the mr show continued to be extremely popular form of entertainment well into the twentieth century and you'd have a white performer is blacking up with cork black performers blacking up with cork as astonishing as ma sound and although this was an extremely degrading kind of very racist idea

it was a way for blacks to become part of show business and micheletti one other thing i should mention is this whole idea of burlesque is intended to american popular culture and especially their apartment popular culture and we think of mr show us today as being this horribly racist i am show i aimed primarily at african americans in fact that one has to look at the mr show in the context of american humor if you look at the places say harrigan and hard to think of the eighties seventies eighteen eighties everybody is pro west germans are at the dutch harbor less the irish are burlesque and met her in as an irishman and every kind of other is a burlesque in american humor of the nineteenth century so although by today's standards the show mr show for extremely racist they were part of a pop art of out of old style of american humor and that was making fun of everything

going to fit into this year in the nineteenth century that the invasion wasn't ok unlike american twentieth century american theaters years in the nineteenth century were partitioned in terms of the location and started over again american leaders of the nineteenth century were very different in terms of how they are set up their american theaters today today you can buy a sea based on our end the proximity orchestras most expensive and the boxes are you more expensive and so forth in the nineteenth century theaters were generally set up arm by then they were partitioned to two grace dent before about the eighteen fifties the bottom part of the end of the record today the orchestra was known as the pit river back was she that was then she's in the pit in the end the middling

classes than the working classes would go there are no women women wouldn't be caught dead there because i would compromise reputation the wealthy and women would generally be in the boxes around for a theater then maybe a third tier and then maybe encountering african americans could go into the gallery apprentices working class people of those types of people would go into the gallery now this is an interesting aspect of american musical theater in american theater because what you have is us to show that all different classes of american society are witnessing at the same time that they've painted for amounts of money to get to their assigned places and oftentimes the years especially before the war the civil war would have separate entrances to those very different places an example i commit today is pure elaine theater in london where if you go and you buy a ticket to the gallery you go in a separate entrance up the

stairs to the gallery you cannot get down to the orchestra will issue go out of the building to go back in again that was typical so that the classes were witnesses the different groups of people in the different economic a social classes were witnessing the same thing they didn't have to mingle with each other which is very important how much does the mobile phone users to most performances are segregated are i believe all before and then you just have to get through it churches yes there were african american churches there were white children i don't i mean i'm not i'm not i'm not familiar with victoria says if you fall ill on the road and again going back to the issue of singers and having to nurse your arm your voice and also the

issue of all the pressures of eating maybe under cooked food or leftover food of of sleeping in unfamiliar on comfortable beds of travelling all the all i mean it is very easy to fall ill if you if you got sick and you need a physician you were at the mercy of local doctors if you're an african american it's very possible you go you're your manager george why would go to the local doctor and he'd say no i'm sorry i can't treat i can't treat a coloured person and so they then he would have to go to find someone else perhaps somebody in the black community if there is a black man in that town a midwife perhaps or someone who's a healer of some kind it was pretty it was very difficult for four event caucasians who are on the road to find to find someone to be would be treated treaty well if you're ill and also if you're sick and you want to lay down and now have a week to recuperate here on the road you can do that you

just to getting it up and down the train and so i mean that exacerbates any kind of minor illness which may become major illnesses that were sent back to the issue of singers being set and not all the conditions inherent with itinerant performances exacerbates that whole idea of getting ill getting worse getting asleep getting honestly have used it to start eating bad food and so on so forth so it's hard to find doctors is hard if you happen to use it is hard to recover this is the no but again reminiscing tom tom fletcher reminiscing about that or you can topple him tom fletcher again african american performer who perform with the various mr troops in the

late nineties and he wrote his memoirs and talks about some of the problems dealing of being an african american opera former itinerant in the south in the in the period after the civil war he mentions the fact that that his troops would be on trains in a day would get up in the morning and they get their coffee and invariably as soon as they all had their coffee though the engineer the locomotive word back up i guess and they were sitting in a station who back up just enough to have the coffee spill on their lives in his ad has happened frequently enough that they finally got savvy and a bot oilcloth and made a punch for themselves at him and get their coffee in winnipeg a proposal in the inevitable backing up spilling prices occurred they would be protected again to show some of that some of those i would've caught minor harassment but the harassment that was that was part of these people's lives constantly he also mentioned in this is this is he he refers to the city is happening in at ninety seven he mentions that in small print tv primetime around seven pounds i suspect they

were traveling black performers are are considered i'm using entertainment there was very clear that the townsfolk wanted these performers to know their place and the assumption was that the few are black families that maybe had been slaves in in the decade before they knew their place they didn't have to be told but he said there were always signs you know where we're at stations saying nigger read and write and he said sometimes a bee on the boys' science crisis crashed on it you can read ron anyways again making sure that these people his attorney musicians knew that they were really welcome they become a naked they could perform but don't get any ideas about settling down here it is

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