Paul Robeson For Beginners by Paul Von Blum Elizabeth Von Notias Ramsess

Author:Paul Von Blum, Elizabeth Von Notias, Ramsess [Paul Von Blum, Elizabeth Von Notias, Ramsess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781934389812
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: For Beginners
Published: 2013-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Larry Brown

A full account of Paul Robeson's life and career as a singer could justify an entire book.

And some highlights of his concert and recording work are vital to an understanding of his interrelated artistic roles in drama, film and music. Eslanda Robeson, his tireless manager, saw that he could have a successfully parallel career as a concert artist and that black spirituals, as Robeson could majestically interpret them, would be one of the central foundations for his success.

Although he had performed in a formal concert in Boston in 1924, as well as in a few private settings, Robeson's first major concert appearance was in New York on April 19, 1925, which set the tone for many of his subsequent concerts and recordings. An overflow audience (with many more turned away) heard him sing Negro spirituals exclusively, with accompanist Larry Brown, including “Go Down, Moses,” “Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Balm in Gilead,” “Bye ‘n’ Bye,” and several others that became hallmarks of his musical performances until his retirement from artistic and public life. Robeson sang sixteen songs in that concert and an additional sixteen encores, leaving him exhausted but exhilarated with this new dimension to his emerging artistic outlet. This concert catalyzed his reputation as a concert singer, which would endure for the remainder of his life. It also cemented his powerful link to his own African American heritage, an identity that pervaded all features of his subsequent artistic and political activities.

Robeson was among the first major African American concert performers, including Roland Hayes and Marian Anderson, to elevate and popularize spirituals, an achievement of huge musical, historical and political significance. First brought to wide public attention by the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Nashville, Tennessee, in tours in Europe and America in the 1870s, spirituals were powerful expressions of religious faith that also expressed heartfelt messages by an oppressed people.. Some spirituals expressed resistance to slavery and oppression and sometimes served as coded messages to slaves seeking to escape their bondage. Decades later, owing partly to Robeson's influence, these songs were vital to the musical dimension of the modern civil rights movement from the mid 1950s through the early 1970s.

Robeson was not entirely self-taught as a vocalist. In 1926, he studied with vocal coaches Teresa Armitage and Frantz Proschowsky and learned how to preserve his voice in light of the frequency of his performances. He also learned to develop his range and his repertoire as a singer, while continuing to devote some concerts entirely to black spirituals and folk songs. Between drama and film obligations, he and Brown performed numerous concerts throughout Europe and the United States.

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