News
ROAD TO FREEDOM. Thanks to the initial funding from the London Community Foundation Road to Freedom became a reality and the Foundation's continuing support of the Karen Schuessler Singers has created support from other foundations making the recording possible.
Through music and narrative Road to Freedom weaves a powerful story of longing and triumph, hope and courage for the people who traveled the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada.
In previous Road to Freedom concerts, the music and the narratives introduced the audiences to the experiences of many enslaved people. They lived in different times, came from a variety of places and were unrelated other than by their desire to be free. In this year’s "Road to Freedom" we will meet a single family - John and Arabella Weems and their nine children. The world that they knew came to an end following the death of their master and their subsequent sale to the Washington D.C. slave traders who separated and cast them to the southern winds. Thus began an epic struggle to be reunited. Theirs is an unforgettable story, played out in four countries (U.S, Great Britain, Jamaica and Canada.), against the backdrop of the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the heroic efforts of the underground railroad, and a growing abolitionist movement that included London, Ontario. The Weems family saga must be heard to be believed.
The choir first performed its Road to Freedom concert celebrating Black History Month in February 2005 in London with the assistance of funding from the London Community Foundation.
Since 2005, the choir has performed Road to Freedom in Chatham, St. Catharines and most recently at the Homecoming Celebrations at the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum on Labour Day Weekend 2007. In March 2007, the choir was honoured to perform selections from Road to Freedom before Her Excellency, Governor General Michaëlle Jean at the opening of The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples at York University.
In addition to a wide range of uplifting and powerful music from Spirituals to Broadway, sung by the choir, the incomparable Denise Pelley and a first class band, the concert this year will also include the launch of two very special projects:
Bryan Prince's book, A Shadow on the Household published by McClelland and Stewart, 2009 tells the poignant story of how John and Arabelle Weems, black slaves from the US South, escaped and, using the Underground Railroad, found freedom in Canada.
The Karen Schuessler Singers’ CD of Road to Freedom is a tribute to those who never lost hope, and those who helped keep that hope alive. In this recording Karen Schuessler, the Karen Schuessler Singers and a group of friends have come together to pay tribute to those who lived through this terrible episode of North American history, those who triumphed and those who helped. Narrations are delivered by historians Bryan and Shannon Prince. Many are the actual words of men and women who once were slaves but found the strength and courage to seek freedom—ultimately in Canada—via the elaborate organization of “conductors” and safe houses that came to be known as the Underground Railroad. Our recording project was funded by generous grants received from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Government of Ontario, the London Heritage Council and the City of London, and the Agape Foundation of London.