Jocelyn Ford Keel (aka JoFoKe) joined the Montview Choir and other interested musicians/listeners on Thursday evening, February 11 via Zoom for the choir’s weekly “hang.”  (That means we get together by Zoom and pursue whatever Adam Waite, our choir director, has lined up for us or we just chat and catch up with each other.  “Hangs” are fun no matter what form they take.) JoKoFe was the amazing soprano soloist in the choir’s performance of Duke Ellington’s “Second Sacred Concert” in the spring of 2019. How appropriate that she was our guest on Lincoln’s birthday!

JoFoKe was joined by Dr. Vicki Burricher, director of the Boulder Chorale, for an evening of entertaining talk about Black history and Black music.  We learned that JoFoKe is the fourth generation of professional musicians on both sides of her family.  And several of the women in the family attended Fisk University in Nashville. But JoFoKe started out here in Denver in the early days of the Denver School of the Arts and then went to Fisk and joined the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Fisk began in 1865 as the Fisk Free School for The Colored and was housed in barracks built for the soldiers in the Civil War.  The Jubilee Singers toured early on to raise money for the school but their repertoire of classical music did not go over.  One night after being booed off the stage the choir began singing “Steal Away” as they left the building.  The audience demanded that they return to the stage and they had found their calling:  bringing spirituals to audiences all over the world.  Two of their biggest fans were Queen Elizabeth and Mark Twain.

But we can’t end there – JoFoKe will return to finish the story of how spirituals were written and fill us in on the history of this exceptional music.  Watch TWAM for the next date.

– Submitted by Carol Tierney