Steal Away

Steal Away was composed by Wallace Willis sometime before 1862. Willis was a slave who became a Choctaw freedman. Alexander Reid, a minister at a Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis sing the song and transcribed the words and melody. He then sent the music to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Fish University was founded in 1865 after the Civil War to educate freed slaves, both men and women. The first classes included students from age seven to seventy. However, by 1871 the school was in financial trouble. To save the school, George L. White, the University’s treasurer, and music director pulled together a student chorus of four black men, five black women and a pianist to tour to raise funds. Audiences were enthralled and the group traveled throughout the United States and Europe singing for such celebrities as Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, Johann Strauss, and Queen Victoria. They raised enough money to save the school and build Jubilee Hall, the South’s first permanent structure for the education of black students. This spiritual expressed Christian faith but also served as code about plans to steal away to freedom via the Underground railroad. Kathleen Blackwell-Plank's arrangement for pedal or lever harp utilizes special harp techniques to explore a full range of tone colors and to highlight aspects of the lyrics. Playing near the soundboard is used to imitate the sounds of trumpets. Low bass chords suggest thunder and a gilssando using the back of the finger nail describes lightning.