Jubilee Songs: As Sung by the Jubilee Singers, of Fisk University, (Nashville, Tenn.) Under the Auspices of the American Missionary Association. New York and Chicago: Biglow & Main, [1872]. 

8vo. Original wrapper and string binding. 

WITH pages 3-30 of Old Favorite Songs. [Philadelphia]: Lester Piano Co., 1948. Unbound and tucked into the pages of Jubilee Songs. 

An important collection of African American songs, "of these neither the words or the music have ever before been published, or even reduced to written form, at least, to the knowledge of the Jubilee Singers," according to the songbook's introduction. Includes more than 20 songs, including "Nobody knows the trouble I see, Lord," "Go down, Moses" and "Swing Low." 

The preface of Jubilee Songs offers insight into how these songs came to be: "They are never 'composed' after the manner of ordinary music, but spring into life, ready made, from the white heat of religious fervor during some protracted meeting in church or camp. They come from no musical cultivation whatever, but are the simple, ecstatic utterances of wholly untutored minds. From so unpromising a source we could reasonably expect only such a mass of crudities as would be unendurable to the cultivated ear. On the contrary, however, the cultivated listener confesses to a new charm, and to a power never before felt, at least in its kind." 

As noted in the book's introduction, seven of the nine members of the Jubilee Singers were once enslaved and later freed by the Emancipation Proclamation; the other two were born free but grew up in the South. Having lived and worked in the South, many of these songs were commonplace; for songs the Singers had never learned, they were taught by those who grew up with them. "These songs, therefore, can be relied upon as the genuine songs of [the African American] race, being in words and music the same as sung by their ancestors in the cabin, on the plantation, and in their religious worship" (29). 

The land for Fisk University was purchased in October 1865 to establish "a permanent institution for the education of the freedmen," with a charter for the university being secured in 1867. When the Jubilee Singers started performing in 1871, the group went on tour to secure funds for the university, singing before Ulysses S. Grant, Mark Twain and Queen Victoria. The group raised nearly $50,000 and funded the construction of Jubilee Hall, which is now a National Historic Landmark. 

[Books, Bibles, Soldiers' Bibles, Prayer Books, Ephemera, Pamphlets, Publications, Booklets, Memoirs] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation]

Some age spots and small tears.