A Jubilee of Afro-American Choral Music

In the winter of 1870, a group of 11 black singers from the newly established Fisk University in Nashville traveled to the Court of St. James to perform Negro spirituals. The Fisk Jubilee Singers won the acceptance of Queen Victoria and her court for their stirring a cappella performance and helped spread awareness of the Afro-American tradition worldwide.

The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers will carry on the tradition of jubilee singing, as the music is called, with a concert Saturday at Cal State Northridge. On Sunday, the singers join the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

The ensemble will present a program of early spirituals, gospel, choreographed African folk songs, a medley of Duke Ellington songs, and music from George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess� and other shows. But “we always conclude with Negro spirituals,� McNeil said.

People often don’t realize the richness of the black choral heritage, McNeil said. The music ranges from slave songs to music that reflects a more urban experience and includes the newer forms of blues and jazz.

“We give our audience a glimpse of the black choral sound. It is an attempt to show what African-American music is like.�

McNeil, former head of the music education department at UC Davis, said he recently retired after 21 years with the university to devote himself full time to the choir.

The Los Angeles native founded the choir in 1964, and the ensemble began touring worldwide in 1968. The group, a traveling ensemble of 13 and a resident company of 26, includes Los Angeles opera and master chorale singers and professional soloists hired by a variety of churches, McNeil said.

The ensemble has had seven tours of the United States, 14 sold-out tours of Europe and performances in the Middle and Far East, Africa and South America. The group also has been selected three times to represent the U.S. State Department and the Cultural Exchange Program of the United States Information Service.

The highlight of one of the trips was a sentimental journey to the West African countries of Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zaire, McNeil said. The Negro spiritual has clear links with African musical traditions. Both exhibit a strong rhythm and the vocal call-and-response tradition, said McNeil, who has co-authored a book tracing the origins and development of black music from the time the first African slaves arrived in the New World until the 1920s.

The ensemble has broadened its repertoire to include not only the spirituals but more contemporary work songs, jazz and gospel, Afro-Caribbean calypso, African vocal forms and compositions by distinguished black composers and arrangers, he said.

The music has evoked tremendous response around the world, McNeil said. In Berlin, the audience rushed the stage to shake the singers’ hands. In Paris, a capacity crowd broke into loud, rhythmic clapping and stamping in a four-centuries-old church that has also been filled with the music of Mozart and Berlioz. And in Yugoslavia, the performance was moved outdoors when the concert was oversold and irate ticket-holders threatened to break down the doors.

People react emotionally to the music because “our music goes to the living soul of things,� McNeil said. “It’s music that runs the emotional gamut from sorrow to joy. Humanity can identify with it. It’s so much of what we all experience.�

The group’s performance heralds the beginning of Black History Month at CSUN and also ushers in the Spring 1992 Guest Artist Series, said Jan Bryant, spokeswoman for the CSUN School of the Arts. The four-part series that runs through April includes Emmy Award nominee Harold Gould in his one-man dramatic performance as Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; conductor Patricia Handy in concert with the CSUN Symphony Orchestra; and the comedy theater of Latins Anonymous.

The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers perform at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Campus Theatre at Cal State Northridge. Prepaid general admission $13, $8 for students and senior citizens. Tickets at the door are $2 more. Season tickets also available. Call (818) 885-3093. The ensemble performs at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. Tickets are $7 to $40. Call (213) 972-7211.