By John Davidson
Collegian Reporter

The Princely Players treated a capacity crowd at the Sage Center to a stirring performance of traditional spirituals, gospel hymns, work songs and songs of freedom on Saturday night.

The eight-member group from Nashville presented their program, “On the Road to Glory,” which tells of a physical and spiritual journey from Africa up to the present day through soulful renditions of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” “Go In De Wilderness,” “Oh Freedom,” “Old Time Religion,” and other traditional songs. The show also featured theatrical monologues interspersed between songs, period writings from Frances Watkins Harper, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and others.

The group describes their program as “a journey through the centuries-old struggle for freedom by Africans in America, culminating in the civil rights movement and continuing even today. [The journey] stands as a shining example of the power and dignity of the human spirit to the people of the world.”

Although the program chronicles the often-politicized African experience in America, the group says that its mission is spiritual and musical, not political and social.

“There is no hidden agenda, this is about the music, the drama, and the reality of a time once forgotten,” said 27- year member Jacqueline Elston. “You cannot feel the reality of these things, of a slave auction for instance, by reading about them in a textbook.

The drama of the music transports people’s spirit back in time, it puts them there, and they feel the emotion and the drama of it. I have seen people in the audience weep. I have seen children, wide-eyed, come up and say that they felt as though they were there, their spirit transported back in time.”

The group was formed 37 years ago at Cameron High School in Nashville, Tenn., by a music teacher named H. German Wilson, who in the latter decades of the 19th century had been a singer at Fisc Jubilee University. During that time the school ran into financial troubles, and a singing tour was organized to raise money. Traveling from state to state, the choir sang organized, formal choral music, gowned and directed.

“They were not well received,” Elston said. “It was like they were just dressed-up black people, monkey see monkey do, imitating white music, and in many cases audiences were offended. In one particular instance they were so dejected that they got together amongst themselves, and they just started singing what was in their hearts, harmonies that they had heard their parents from Africa sing.

“When the choral director heard it, he could not believe the sounds he was hearing, and he said, ‘Nowhere in America has this sound been heard. We’re going to try this.’ That was the beginning of the Fisc Jubilee singers.

“They started singing sounds and harmonies, the tears from Africa. And the American population couldn’t get enough of it. It wasn’t a monkey see monkey do, not dressed up to imitate white society, it was a collection of beautiful young black people bringing to the New World a new sound, and they saved that university,” Elston said.

Wilson went on to become a high school music teacher, and in the summer of 1967 directed a school production called “Drama in the Streets,” out of which the first incarnation of the Princely Players was formed. James Albert Brown, Roderick Kelley, Gloria Ransom, and Odessa Settles were original members of that group, and after the first show’s success, they created a new show entitled “The Black,” which they played at a local coffee house three times a week.

Eventually they took the show on tour, playing at universities, high schools and churches all over the country in the late 60s and early 70s, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

“It was a way for us to channel a lot of the anger and frustration through the arts and turn it into something positive,” Odessa Settles said.

The Princely Players now tour annually, singing and conducting workshops at colleges, universities and high schools nationwide. Through workshops and performances, they seek to help young people connect with their own musical and cultural roots, and enable trained choir singers to feel the music inside and sing from the heart.

On Saturday afternoon the group conducted its workshop, entitled “Spiritual Gifts for the Soul,” with the Hillsdale choir and chamber choir.

“I thought it was fantastic,” said sophomore music major Hannah Dixon. “They told us how they got started, who they are and how the music is part of who they are. Then they had us sing without music and without the conductor so as to make the music more a part of ourselves as opposed to something external that we’re doing. We sang a few traditional gospel songs we’ve been working on and I was shocked at how well we did.”

“At one point, we had them all face one another and sing without a conductor,” Elston said. “We told them to just sing from the heart, to feel the music within and let it come up from inside. They sang beautifully, and they were surprised that they could do it. It was very exciting for us.”

Over the course of their 37 years together as a group, the Princely Players have recorded music for the Smithsonian Institute, been featured on TNN and the BBC, collaborated with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, and recorded much of the music for Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentary on the Civil War.

The group attributes its success and staying power to the fundamental importance of traditional gospel and spiritual music to American culture. The recent revival of interest in traditional forms of American music has provided the Princely Players an opportunity to expose the public to the origins of popular forms of music such as rock and roll, R&B and hip-hop.

“People are searching for their roots,” Elston said. “The spiritual is the basis for so much of our music in America today. You can’t separate it, it’s integrated into the whole existence of the country. We firmly believe in the message God has empowered us to share from coast to coast.”