ROBESON ‘WAS

WALES may not be the Land of his Fathers but America’s greatest black singer is our much-loved adopted son. Persecuted by the government in his own country, he found refuge and comradeship alongside our miners.

And 80 years after he first arrived, Paul Robeson is remembered again through the medium of film.

His classic film The Proud Valley, shot in the Rhondda in 1939, is playing to descendants of those generous men and women who opened their hearts to him. It’s part of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Black Star season. We joined their voyage of nostalgia in the miners’ welfare hall in Ystradgynlais.

Here you feel the warmth of remembrance of the big man with the big smile and the big heart – and the biggest voice this land of singing ever heard.

A hundred people braved icy temperatures to hear music from Cwmtawe Male Choir, words from historian Dr Hywel Francis and to watch The Proud Valley with its defiant theme “They can’t stop us singing!” It was a message that had some in tears.

Former miners Ben Tudor-Lewis, 77, Lyn Thomas, 87, and Mike Evans, 72, all choir members, praised the film for its message of hope in adversity. “It brought back memories,” said Ben. “I worked at Next Week colliery – they called it that because the manager told men looking for work ‘come back next week’.”

Mike added: “Robeson was so popular because he identified with our struggle. He was one of us.”

The message is being passed on to a new generation. Tomos Williams-Mason, 14, was one of a fair number of young people there.

He said: “It’s so different to today but at the same time it’s so familiar. It’s important for people growing up to know that even if things are really hard you carry on and it’s worth it at the end.”

Dr Francis, a former Labour MP and son of Dai, a legendary coalfield leader of the 1970s, said: “Paul Robeson understood us. His example and his support for the miners in their struggle touched our hearts.”

The story began thousands of miles away in Princeton, New Jersey, where Robeson was born in April 1898, the youngest child of a runaway slave.

An outstanding scholar and sportsman, he faced vicious discrimination on the field and in the classroom. He qualified as a lawyer in New York but as a black man he couldn’t represent clients in court.

When a white secretary refused to take dictation from him, he quit to sing, saying: “On the stage only the sky could hold me back.”

He was a smash hit, playing to sold-out audiences with a voice described by one critic as “the best musical instrument wrought in our time”.

Robeson was a regular performer over here and actress Whoopi Goldberg later recalled: “One day during the grim winter of 1929, when unemployment and desperate poverty stalked, he heard the rich sound of a Welsh miners’ choir.

“They had walked all the way to London to petition the government for help. Without hesitation Paul joined the singing miners.

“When they reached a large downtown building he mounted its front steps and sang to his new friends Ol’ Man River, popular ballads and spirituals.”

That experience marked the start of a lifelong friendship. He paid for the miners’ train journey home, with a wagon-load of food and clothing for their relief fund, and followed up with a visit to the Rhondda to sing for the mining communities and talk to the people.

He returned again and again, singing for Welsh support of the anti-fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War.

After World War II his radical views led to the US State Department cancelling his pass- port at the height of the Cold War. Undaunted, in 1957 he sang to the Welsh Miners’ Eisteddfod in Porthcawl down a transatlantic phone line.

Robeson said later: “I cannot say how deeply I was moved. For here was an audience that had adopted me as kin and though they were unseen by me I never felt closer to them.”

When his passport was restored in 1958 Robeson made a celebratory return, saying: “You have shaped my life – I have learned from you.”

Despite ill health, he sang on, changing the words of his favourite song to: “But I keeps laughing instead of crying; I must keep fighting until I’m dying; And Ol’ Man River, He just keeps rolling along!”

The rolling stopped with his death in 1976 but his memory is fresh in the film The Proud Valley, based on the real story of a black American migrant.

The male choir of fictional Blaendy colliery hear Robeson sing in the street. He’s signed up to work at the pit, lodging with the choir conductor, a miner who dies in a fire underground.

Robeson sings Deep River as a requiem. The mine is closed by the Depression and to the strains of Keep On Singing the unemployed march to London. But their hopes of work are dashed until war means coal is as important as munitions.

Blaendy can be reopened if the men can break through a section still on fire. They make it but the seam collapses. The only way out is a suicide mission to blast through the debris. They draw lots. A promising young collier gets the hand without a bit of coal. At the last moment Robeson knocks him out and sacrifices his life to save his mates.

The film carries a powerful message comradeship, hope and determination.

Heather Stewart, BFI creative director, said: “It’s truly extraordinary and very inspiring that the son of former slave born in the US during a period of segregation and open racism should have become a major star of British film in the 1930s.” of