Year of Jubilee

It was music that made Fisk University what it is, a leading U.S. Negro institution. Last week Fisk let music ring, and swell the breeze, in celebration of its 75th anniversary.

Fisk's beginning, soon after the Civil War, was in a Federal hospital barracks in Nashville, Tenn. Thither, at the invitation of General Clinton Fisk, trooped Negroes of all ages, to get their schooling. They didn't get much until the school's treasurer, George White (white), formed a chorus, named it the Jubilee Singers, took them on a barnstorming tour of the North. Mr. White sent back $40,000 to buy a campus. The Singers went abroad, sang before Queen Victoria, who requested Steal Away to Jesus. That tour netted $200,000, which bought Jubilee Hall, other Fisk buildings.

The Jubilee Singers, now 100% male, have never sung hotcha, keep their spirituals pure and dignified. But last week in Fisk Memorial Chapel, to the dismay of diehards, Negroes stomped, slapped their thighs, plunk-a-plunked banjos and guitars, sang blues and "sinful songs." Fisk's music director, white, German-descended, Harvard-trained Harold Schmidt, 31, had resolved that "Fisk's celebration should sound of whatever is Negro. The five-day program included such commercially successful performers as guitar-playing Joshua White, work-song singer, and the gospel-swinging Golden Gate Quartet. To show what his university choir could do with serious, non-Negro music, Harold Schmidt put on Swiss Arthur Honegger's choral work, King David. Fisk jubileers and their guests greeted the festival with everything from foot-tapping to wild applause.

Because spirituals "were written for solemn occasions and not for the edification of jitterbugs," the Pennsylvania Legislature last fortnight condemned the swinging of spirituals, requested radio stations not to broadcast religious music except on Sundays and holidays.

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