A monumental voice
From the Blog PkColumnist.com: A monumental voice - FIFTY years ago this week, what eventually became one of the most readily recognisable concert venues in the world hosted its first performance, so to speak. The Sydney Opera House was in the early stages of its construction back then; it would be more than a decade before it was officially inaugurated. Paul Robeson, one of the world`s most prominent concert artists in his prime, was visiting Australia and New Zealand on what turned out to be his final tour as an entertainer. Under the auspices of the Building Workers Union of Australia, Robeson visited the construction site and sang to the construction workers during their lunch break. Ol` Man River Joe Hill Alfred Rankin, who was working on the site on Nov 9, 1960, recalls this "giant of a man" enthralling the workers with his a cappella renditions of two of his signature songs, and , in his distinctive bass voice. The Undiscovered Robeson "After he finished singing, the men climbed down from the scaffolding, gathered around him, and presented him with a hard hat bearing his name," Paul Robeson Jr writes in his biography of his father, . "One of the men took off a work glove and asked Paul to sign it. The idea caught on, and the men lined up. Paul stayed until he had signed a glove for each one of them." Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia In a chapter on Robeson`s visit in the book , Ann Curthoys, a professor of history at the Australian National University, quotes the performer as saying on the day after his visit to the Opera House site: "I could see, you know, we had some differences here and there. But we hummed some songs together, and they all came up afterwards and just wanted to shake my hand and they had me sign gloves. These were tough guys and it was a very moving experience."Former New South Wales minister John Aquilina, whose father was working as a carpenter at the site on the day, recalls: "Dad told us that all the workers — carpenters, concreters and labourers — sang along and that the huge, burly men on the working site were reduced to tears by his presence and his inspiration." It wasn`t an unusual gesture for Robeson. Even in his heyday until the mid-1940s, when he was one of the highest paid entertainers in the world, formal concerts were interspersed with impromptu performances in factories and at community centres across Europe as well as in his homeland. For nearly a decade from the late 1940s, however, he was effectively deprived of the opportunity of earning a living. Pressure from the Truman administration and right-wing extremists meant that the concert halls of America were closed to him, and the US State Department`s refusal to renew his passport meant he was unable to accept invitations for engagements in Europe and elsewhere. Robeson never stopped singing, but was able to do so only at African American churches and other relatively small venues. At the time, Robeson was arguably one of the world`s best known African Americans. The son of an escaped slave turned preacher, Robeson had won a scholarship to Rutgers College, where he had endured all manner of taunts and physical intimidation to excel both academically and as a formidable presence on the football field: alone among his Rutgers contemporaries, he was selected twice for the All-American side. Alongside his athletic prowess, he was beginning to find his voice as a bass-baritone. When a degree in law from Columbia University failed to help him make much headway in the legal profession, he decided to opt for the world of entertainment, and made his mark on the stage and screen as a singer and actor. Show Boat Othello An extended sojourn in London offered relief from the racism in his homeland and established his reputation as an entertainer, not least through leading roles in the musical and in opposite Peggy Ashcroft`s Desdemona. (He reprised the role in a record Broadway run for a Shakespearean play in 1943, and again at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959.) Ballad for Americans He returned to the US as a star in 1939, and endeared himself to his compatriots with a cantata titled . He had, in the interim, been thoroughly politicised, not least through encounters in London with leaders of liberation movements such as Kenya`s Jomo Kenyatta, Ghana`s Kwame Nkrumah and India`s Jawaharlal Nehru (to the consternation of the State Department, his friendship with Nehru endured through the latter`s prime ministership, although a planned visit to India never materialised). He had sung for republicans in Spain and visited the Soviet Union at the invitation of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Robeson`s refusal to reconsider his political affiliations once the Second World War gave way to the Cold War made him persona non grata in his homeland: his infatuation with the Soviet Union did not perceptibly pale in the face of horrific revelations about Stalinist excesses, partly because he looked upon Jim Crow as the pre-eminent foe. It is therefore hardly surprising that exposure in Australia to Aboriginal woes stirred his passion. On the day after his appearance at the Opera House site, at the initiative of Aboriginal activist and Robeson fan Faith Bandler, he watched a documentary about Aborigines on the Warburton Ranges during which his sorrow turned to anger, and he vowed to return to Australia in the near future to fight for their rights. He made similar promises to the Maori in New Zealand. But the years of persecution had taken their toll physically and psychologically: Robeson`s health broke down in 1961, and on returning to the US in 1963, he lived the remainder of his life as a virtual recluse. He died in 1976, long after many of his once radical aspirations for African Americans had been co-opted into the civil rights mainstream. His political views remained unchanged. Biographer Martin Duberman cites Aboriginal activist Lloyd L. Davies`s poignant recollection of Robeson`s arrival in Perth on the last leg of his Australian tour, when he made a beeline for "a group of local Aborigines shyly hanging back". "When he reached them, `he literally gathered the nearest half dozen in his great arms` … Davies heard one of the little girls say, almost in wonder, `Mum, he likes us`." n She would have been less surprised had she been aware of the Robeson statement that serves as his epitaph: "The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative." . Read Full Post
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