Fisk Jubilee Song of Sonnets

Jubilee Proclamation (choral) O sing unto the Lord a new song; born from newly freed throats. Sprung loose from lungs once bound within bonded skin. Scored from dawn to dusk with coffle and lash. Every tongue unfurled as the body’s flag. Every breath conjured despite loss we’ve had. Bear witness to the birthing of our hymn from scorned depths of America’s sin. Soul-worn psalms, blessed in our blood through dark lessons of the past struggling to be heard. Behold—the bold sound we’ve found in ourselves that was hidden, cast out of the garden of freedom. It’s loud and unbeaten, then soft as a newborn’s face— each note bursting loose from human bondage.

Jubilee Blues (choral) Once burst loose from human bondage, do our songs still tow our pain like a mule? Tell me, if we done burst loose from bondage, do our songs still carry hurt like a mule? They haul thundered oceans of auction blockshomeward, pulling our lost cargo through. If this freight of psalm should hit a rock we’re gonna do just what the old folks do. If this load of song ever strike a rock we’re gonna do just what the old folks do— gone pull a whole lot harder—ain’t gone stoptill all of heaven bleeds out of blue. Every time we open our mouths to song We’ll fill the air with hallelujah’s balm.

Isaac Dickerson We fill the air with hallelujah’s balm ‘cause each of us got a story to yell out in song. Mine starts with cold, lonesome crying in the dark. Pa’d told me: They gone sellme in the morning, son. By five years old, I was an orphan. By eight, it was war. I was conscripted for the Rebs. They told me Yanks weren’t fit to live. That they fought for raping and pillaging, not freedom. That freedom was just a trap. A deck of cards stacked against blacks. Well, now I can see what they didn’t want me to be. It’s a far sight away from what they claimed would be our fate. We sing this faith from slave shack to palace.

Eliza Walker Ma’s singing would make our slave shack a palace. In the night’s darkness, her voice would outshine any moon—moaning with a wanting way that broke winter’s hold to warm us. Oh yes . . . I can still feel her woolen hum. ‘Specially when trekking ‘cross country singing Jubilee. Like how she sang when daddy’s last payment bought us free. He’d earned cash by keeping the freeze of winter stored in summer. It turns outthat Negro ice is just as cold as white’s! he would say. We went from slave house to icehouse thanks to southern heat. So, I’ve got daddy’s cool, steeled by mama’s blazing hymns. When we sing, I feel them songs getting freed up from tangled cane fields.

Ben Holmes I’d hear these songs born up from cane fields, tangled up in the work of the dirt with the hurting of the lash. Now, I was real lucky. I was a tailor’s apprentice. But then I got sold to a slave trader. Went from threading needle to squalid slave pen, grubbin’ old cow’s head and grits. But later on, someone slipped me that Proclamation of Lincoln’s. Soon after came our freedom. Next, education. And so, here we are, a few years after emancipation, raising money for schooling. Here we are, voices shining like the North Star’s rapture. Here we are, strapping voice to scripture.

Minnie Tate Here we are, strapping voices to scripture so others might hear our humanity. Now, I’ve never been a slave, but I’m sure close enough to have felt its cold ways. My mother was freed when she was a girl. Went to school with whites—chose to school me at home. When she sent me to Fisk, she never meant for me to sing in a choir on the...