Tribute to Dr. Paul T. Kwami

Today, I join with the Fisk University community and countless others throughout the international music world in mourning the loss of Dr. Paul T. Kwami, Director of the historic Fisk University Jubilee Singers. Dr. Kwami passed this week at age 70. He was a native of Ghana and himself a former Fisk Jubilee Singer whose tenure as director of the group spanned nearly thirty years.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers have sustained their legacy worldwide through live Acappella concert performances since 1870. They are known widely for having introduced Europe and the world to the origins of Black music in America in the form of Negro spirituals and work songs. Many of the songs had been considered sacred and reserved within the confines of Black spiritual and religious expression.

It was my honor as President of D-Day Media Group to present a Special Proclamation issued to the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Director Paul T. Kwami on behalf of NYC Mayor Michael E. Bloomberg and the City Council declaring March 12, 2012 “Fisk Jubilee Singers Day” in the City of New York.

Dr. W.E.B. Dubois, although not a Jubilee Singer himself, was an alumnus of Fisk and an early proponent of the Black Arts Movement that laid much groundwork for the Harlem Renaissance. Dubois, arguably among the most notable public intellectuals during much of the early to mid-20th century, published his classic book The Souls of Black Folk in 1903 during a period of heightened Jim Crowism, the un-prosecuted lynching of Black men and women, and efforts to justify pseudo-science arguments used to propagate bogus eugenicists’ theories touting white supremacy. In the book, Dubois offers early commentary on the significance of Black Art and the Singers’ unique cultural role in representing the talents and aspirations of Black people.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers established a hallowed cultural identity, distinctive, yet uniquely African and American in character. Their emergence onto the international stage of world culture and high art was anathema to the popularity of minstrelsy and Blackface as memes and stereotypes of Negro culture. Dubois’ was exposed to authentic Black culture while a student at Fisk. Later as he broadened his studies of Africans and the Diaspora at Harvard, he proffered the following:

“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”

And in the  decade prior to Dubois’ observation regarding the unique cache of Negro spirituals  and sorrow songs as uniquely African American cultural creations, so impressed was celebrated European composer/conductor Antonín Dvořák with original Negro melodies like Deep River and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot that he told the New York Herald in May 1893 that this was the foundation for “the future music of this country.”

Dr. Paul Kwami, like other artistic visionaries and intellectuals, including former Directors of the Jubilee Singers before him, understood the significance of Negro spirituals and slave songs and their value as foundational original American music. For 30 years he graciously accepted the tremendous task of directing the Singers, extending a too-often overlooked musical heritage and world vision into the 21^st Century and beyond. His was a labor of love that celebrates African American ancestral roots across all genres of modern American music.

We thank and salute you, Dr. Paul T. Kwami, for your tireless effort. May you rest in peace and rise in glory.