- Jubilee quartet
Jubilee quartets were popular
African-American religious musical groups in the first half of the twentieth century. The name derives from the Fisk Jubilee Quartet, a group of male singers organized by students atFisk University in 1871 to singNegro spirituals , which had typically been sung by mixed choirs before then. Students at other historically black schools, such as Hampton Institute,Tuskegee Institute andWilberforce University , followed suit.The early jubilee quartets featured close harmonies, formal arrangements and a "flatfooted" style of singing that emphasized restrained musical expression and technique derived from Western musical traditions. Early quartets reinforced their respectable image by adopting uniforms that a university
glee club might wear and discouraging improvisation.In time, however, the popularity of the jubilee style spread from the universities to black churches, where quartets, singing before audiences with a tradition of enthusiastic response, began to absorb much of the energy and freedom of
Gospel music coming out of Holiness churches. Groups such asthe Golden Gate Quartet --originally named the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet--infused their performances ofspirituals with the rhythmic beat ofblues andjazz and gradually began including gospel standards written byThomas A. Dorsey and others in their repertoire. The Gates and other jubilee quartets gained nationwide popularity through radio broadcasts, records and touring in the 1930s and 1940s.Other groups, such as
the Dixie Hummingbirds , that had begun singing in the conventional jubilee style went further, creating the more improvisational and fervent style of quartet singing known as "hard Gospel." That new style largely eclipsed jubilee singing by the 1950s.External links
* [http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/folklife_cd3.cfm "Shall We Gather at the River", a collection of black gospel music, including jubilee quartets; made available for public by the State Archives of Florida]
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