Long before Nashville became the mecca of country music, it was home to a genre of black music that still echoes across America today. The storied Jubilee Singers of Fisk University traveled the country, carrying the inimitable and soulful sounds of African Americans, newly freed from the horrors of slavery. The Jubliee Singers were the ambassadors of Negro spirituals and “sorrow songs’, from ‘Balm in Gilead’ to that ‘Great Gittin’ Up Morning’. This was perhaps the original black American classic music.
Fisk’s Jubilee Singers became a model for black colleges across the country. For decades, HBCU choirs toured the nation, sharing and preserving the great tradition sounds of black music at the highest levels of performance art. These tours were often a harbinger of spring, appearing at supportive churches in the North and Midwest, spreading sounds of history and pride during college spring breaks. And they of course served as recruiting tools for southern black colleges.
The parade of black college choirs coming through Cleveland and other northern cities has steadily slowed in recent years. Changing tastes, community disconnect with its cultural history (forgetting how we got over), economics, the pandemic — all have played a role in decreasing visibility and performance of HBCU choirs and traditional spirituals in cities like Cleveland.
On Tuesday, October 22 at 7p, the W. Crimm Singers will present a program of sacred music that embraces several genres of black choral music that stem from the deep traditions of the black church and black cultural history. Their program will not only feature the work of such pioneering musicians as John Work, Charles Albert Tinley, and Undine Smith Moore, but will also acknowledge several stalwarts of Cleveland's rich musical history, with tributes to the late A. Grace Lee Mims, composer Leslie Adams, who died earlier this year, and Wings Over Jordan. There will also be a tribute to William B. Woods, a standout musical director for decades at both Antioch Baptist Church and the Cleveland School of the Arts.
The W. Crimm Singers trace their origins to the summer of 2018, a group of friends who just so happen to be vocalists of various backgrounds and experiences came together in north Nashville at the request of veteran music educator and opera singer, William G. Crimm for a “Wakanda”-themed Freedom School presentation. They had so much fun that they vowed to get together more often.
The W. Crimm Singers are a professional ensemble-in-residence of the Big Blue Opera Initiatives at Tennessee State University. They wholly embrace the music of the black experience throughout the diaspora and every genre connected to it. A versatile ensemble, major emphasis is placed on the Negro Spiritual, African American operatic and concert repertoire, hymnody, and anthems. The W. Crimm Singers boasts a roster of over 70 artists with opera and theater performers, grade school and collegiate educators, scholars, activists, civil servants, recording artists, session singers, and more counted among its ranks. Moreover, this aggregation is committed to providing professional opportunities to young artists of color from local colleges and universities.
In their time together, the W. Crimm Singers have recorded and performed with Louis York (American Griots, 2019), Stars Go Dim, Intersection Contemporary Music Ensemble, Hannibal Lokumbe, Rodrick Dixon, and Jelly Roll. In 2019, The group debuted in the Colour of Music Festival performing R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee under the baton of Dr. David Morrow and in 2020, presented Songs from the Heart of a Woman: The Vocal Music of Florence Price for the virtual International Florence Price Festival. Later that year, they were featured in Black Youth Project’s Virtual Juneteenth Celebration.
Members of the W. Crimm Singers were featured soloists in Handel’s Messiah with Early Music City at the Music City Messiah Festival in December 2021, marking the first all-black vocal cast performance of the work in Nashville in over 25 years. They have been staples of the Harry T. Burleigh Spirituals Festival since 2018 and recently, performed for the 56th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The W. Crimm Singers are also featured on Sir the Baptist and Tennessee State University Band’s Grammy Award winning album, The Urban Hymnal (2022).
There is no charge to attend the program but there will be a free will offering.
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