This week began a year-long celebration of a significant milestone that deserves more attention. Oct, 6, 2021 marked the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, from right here in Music City.
Most people assume it was country music that gave Nashville its nickname, Music City. True, the country music industry has continued to grow and the city is known the world over as being the epicenter of that genre.
But you have to go back to the year 1871, when George L. White, music professor at the five-year-old Fisk School in Nashville, started a 9-member choral ensemble. The fledgling school, founded just six months after the end of the Civil War by three former slaves, was in serious need of funding, and the idea arose to send this group of singers on tour, singing the spirituals from their very recent slave past. After touring for some time, the group was physically and emotionally spent. Mr. White, in an effort to revive their spirits, called them the Jubilee Singers.
What was at first an object of curiosity and some derision eventually became an ovation-fetching sensation, sending them to the White House to perform for President Ulysses S. Grant, then in 1873 on their first European tour. It was then they performed for Queen Victoria, who was so impressed she is said to have done two things:
commissioned a floor-to-ceiling portrait of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, which now hangs in Fisk University's Jubilee Hall, the first permanent building on campus
remarked that such a talented group must be from "the city of music"
And Music City was born.
So if you happen to visit my fair city, plan a visit to the historic home of what US News and World Report has ranked number 9 in the top Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the country. And if you're lucky, you might just catch a performance of the current iteration of this noble group who captured the ear -- and the heart -- of the Queen of England.