American Experience; Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory; Interview with Horace Clarence Boyer, Musicologist

while the jubilee singers and eight and seventy one used some piano they also signed up a pole and there was kind of interesting for a group because i want to know that the banjo was a very important instrument now i say that because the minstrels we're still popular around this time and we had quartets are all four men singing and the home in the missions but they were accompanied by a banjo bahrain's or something which would give them some accompaniment and all of a sudden you know we have these people who were singing absolutely most of their material unaccompanied and it started now to be sure there are unaccompanied pieces and all of the great master works for a full section of the program to be an archipelago the black singing was quite a tradition was quite a trend setter and of course then that became a tradition so that today when we have groups saying they grow asparagus we expect to

hear them without accompaniment for the sheer beauty of the voice and that's generally what we get the power of the people