Voice of the people
For the remarkable US bass-baritone Paul Robeson, art and politics were vitally important and utterly inseparable, says Andrew Green
Saturday 5 October, 1957. 6.30pm. A transatlantic telephone connection links the legendary American bassbaritone Paul Robeson to an adoring audience of 5,000 South Wales miners gathered in Porthcawl’s Grand Pavilion. ‘My warmest greetings to the people of my beloved Wales,’ they hear Robeson declaim. he speaks of their common striving ‘for a world where we can all live abundant, peaceful and dignified lives’. Down the line, the great man sings one of his trademark spirituals, Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel? In return, the Treorchy Male Voice Choir thunders out Y Delyn Aur (‘The Golden harp’).
There you have it in a nutshell. Robeson mixing music and a long-standing identification with one of the many social groups around the world he saw suffering at the hands of politicians and political systems. Just as he himself had always suffered as an African-american in a segregated society and was currently at the mercy of a US government that had confiscated his passport because of his Soviet Union connections.
US politics professor Peter Dreier describes Paul Robeson as ‘the most talented man of the 20th century’. An impossible claim to prove, but you can understand the temptation to make it. A man of remarkable physique, Robeson was exceptional at three sports – in particular, as an American football legend: ‘The Magnificent Robeson’. he excelled academically and could have been a high-flying lawyer in a society less riven with racial prejudice. he was a film and theatre actor with a magical presence. Eloquent oratory made him an inspiring political activist. Oh, and Robeson possessed one of the most bewitching singing voices in history. ‘Listen to a single note and you know it’s Paul Robeson,’ says one of his latter-day champions, Welsh singer and broadcaster Beverley humphreys.
Those rich, rounded tones are among my earliest musical memories. Robeson’s Lazy Bones regularly revolved on the family’s record-player in the 1950s. What trials he had been through in that very decade, vilified by the US authorities (and swathes of the white US population) for refusing to condemn Communism.
As far as Robeson was concerned, music and politics couldn’t be separated. Nor can they be when writing about him. his core repertoire was as beguiling a political statement as could be imagined, deeply rooted in African-american spirituals and folk song – in large part, music of the oppressed, which nonetheless had a wide appeal. Song titles carry the message: Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, There is a Balm in Gilead, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.
Such songs lifted horizons for Africanamericans. ‘I grew up in the era of the Jim
Crow [racial segregation] laws,’ recalls the distinguished Us-born soprano Barbara hendricks. ‘Robeson songs taught me about my own history and made me aware that the black community had this great global icon as a hero. he was an incredible giant of an inspiration. I regret not having heard him sing in the flesh, of course, but particularly because I would have experienced that famous Robeson presence. his songs were delivered with great power, not in the sense of the loudness of the voice, but the force of expression and emotion.’
In the Jamaica of his youth, bass-baritone
Sir Willard White’s ambitions were helped
on their way by his first hearing of a Robeson recording. ‘A friend invited me to listen to this wonderful voice singing Trees by Joyce Kilmer. It made me think that if this level of distinction was possible for Paul Robeson, someone of my race, then maybe I also could get somewhere.’
Robeson was born in 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey. ★is father William, a pastor, had escaped from slavery in South Carolina during the Civil War upheavals. ★is mother died tragically in a fire when Robeson was just five. Like many a child from an underprivileged background, he benefited from a parent’s awareness that the best route to self-advancement was a good education. This culminated in a scholarship to the prestigious Rutgers College in New Jersey: Robeson was only the third black student in the institution’s history. ★e learned to stand up for himself in the face of racist attitudes from staff and students, including in the sporting arena.
By the time he’d been through law school, Robeson was displaying real potential as an actor and singer. A performing career beckoned. The acting skills first fixed him in the public mind, on both sides of the Atlantic. ★is long relationship with the UK began in the 1920s with the stage-plays Voodoo and The Emperor Jones. ★e was also making strides as a singer, a steady stream of recordings, starting in 1925 with Steal Away and Were You There?, stirring demand.
It was now a matter of juggling offers of highprofile work in the USA and Europe as both recitalist and stage/film actor (including singing roles such as his celebrated Joe in Show Boat, complete with trademark Ol’ Man River). The strategics and logistics were handled by his everresourceful
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There were huge audiences for Robeson’s ‘natural style’, enhanced by his captivating way of talking to the public
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wife/manager, Essie. Ever-patient, too, given Robeson’s numerous affairs, not least with the young actress Peggy Ashcroft.
Robeson sought vocal coaching at various times, but essentially his was a natural sound which rolled out with apparent ease. Classical songs were relatively rare at his concerts – the odd bit of Mozart, Beethoven, Musorgsky, maybe – and it remains a tantalising thought that Robeson might have excelled in that repertoire.
A chance discovery in the attic revealed a long-forgotten interview I once conducted with Robeson’s (now deceased) son, Paul Robeson Jr. In this he vigorously countered the argument that his father wasted his voice singing folkbased material: ‘To him, music was a continuum. All music is really derived from folk tradition … he chose the folk end of the spectrum.’
An operatic career was in any case unthinkable, said Robeson Jr. ‘No blacks were permitted to sing opera in the USA until the late 1950s. The same segregation applied, less rigidly, in Europe. ★e consciously avoided training his voice to sing in the operatic style. The richness of his voice, his ability to do magical things with it, depended on singing in a natural style as an extension of his speaking voice.’
There were huge audiences for that inimitable ‘natural style’, enhanced by his captivating way of talking to the public from the platform. Robeson’s UK recital tours took him to all manner of (packed) venues. A Royal Albert
★all debut in 1930 demonstrated his pulling power. ‘Only Kreisler, Chaliapin and the Berlin Philharmonic have attracted greater audiences this season,’ reported one critic.
During their long stays in the UK, Robeson and his wife relished their status as ordinary citizens in essentially non-segregated (if far from prejudice-free) British society. however, his chance 1929 meeting with a group of Welsh miners singing on a London street heightened Robeson’s awareness of other manifestations of social injustice. hearing of the miners’ continuing plight following the failed 1926 General Strike called in their name, Robeson instantly became their champion for life. he donated cash and concert takings to their cause. ‘he recognised the miners were kindred spirits,’ says Beverley humphreys, mastermind of a travelling Robeson exhibition currently on tour. ‘Words can be easy, saying that he’d help them. But he did. And the bond grew over many years.’
Little wonder that in the 1930s Robeson actively supported the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, travelling out to the front line and singing to wounded soldiers. By which time he’d also sung in the brave new world of the Soviet Union. The dark side of that decade – Stalin’s breathtakingly brutal purges – would have been hidden from Robeson, but what deeply impressed him was the apparent lack of racial prejudice in everyday life. his willingness to engage with Communism thereafter spelt trouble with the US authorities once the Cold War obliterated appreciation of the Soviet army’s Second World War heroics. There was even rioting at a Robeson appearance. Major concert venues were denied him. The withdrawal of his passport severed him from his worldwide audiences. But there was no climbing down.
Paul Robeson Jr was emphatic that his father ‘never embraced any “ism” other than humanism’. Robeson Sr’s view of Communism was shaped, said his son, by Western attitudes to peoples oppressed by ‘racism, fascism and colonialism’. The portrayal of the USSR as the evil empire by US governments didn’t ring true with Robeson. e found an echo among millions of African-american people who said, he’s right… we’ve got nothing against the Russians”. Dad voiced what every third-world leader – non-communist – voiced: “We don’t think it’s an evil empire … as a matter of fact it’s good [the Russians] are out there, because that will curb Western imperialism”.’
Robeson’s passport was restored in 1958. he picked up the threads of his international career, albeit monitored by the US authorities and also by MI6 when Robeson returned to the UK for concerts – plus a reprise of his legendary Othello with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Fittingly, his final UK appearance, in 1960, was a Royal Festival hall concert organised by the Movement for Colonial Freedom.
Mary Butler, 98 this year, heard Robeson sing twice on his final UK visits. ‘It didn’t matter what people’s politics were, they just loved that marvellous, deep, mellow, unusual voice! An amazing man.’ The triumph of Robeson’s return was tempered by his battle with depression and a string of physical ailments. he spent the last 13 years of his life in seclusion but aware of the burgeoning US civil rights movement. his death in January 1976 was headline news around the world, as were reports of his funeral in a harlem church, attended by 5,000.
Thankfully, the Robeson legend is flourishing on these shores. There’s that exhibition, and last year’s Cardiff premiere of the Robeson-inspired Hwn yw fy Mrawd (‘This is my Brother’) by Robat Arwyn. Robeson has figured in a Key Stage 3 learning activity for Welsh schools. We await further news of Oscar-winning director Steve Mcqueen’s plans to film the Robeson story.
None of that would have turned the head of the modest Paul Robeson, says hendricks: ‘Nothing was ever about him, about PR and publicity. It was about the cause. What he sang reflected that. he’s as relevant a figure as ever. Perhaps after Martin Luther King’s death and the Black Panther movement he seemed old-fashioned. But he’d be the man for the times we’re living through now, because he always stood up for the truth. And the truth is eternal.’