Artist Profile, Paul Robeson, Voice of the People

Bass-baritone singer Paul Robeson was a man who went through many different walks of life throughout his time, only one of which was singing and performing - to many he was known as a stalwart defender of human rights, and not solely in the American Civil Rights Movement. One of Robeson’s earliest loves was actually American football, being a star player during his studies at Columbia University. While living in London later in life, he would study phonetics and the Swahili language at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and even worked as a lawyer for a brief period, ultimately leaving this line of work due to the widespread racism in the field. He would later find success in acting, a career that took off a little quicker than perhaps he’d have liked, but which ultimately led to his singing career, being featured in the London premiere of ‘Show Boat’ among other notable performances. Whilst settling into his concert career in London, one of his earliest starring roles would be in the production of Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, as well as films like ‘The Proud Valley’, which was set in the Welsh coal mining community.

Robeson’s life was fraught with political controversies, from his earliest involvement in protests with unemployed workers in England, as well as voicing his support for the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War, and he was always an outward opposer of fascism. He was naturally very active in the Civil Rights Movement - even co-founding the newspaper ‘Freedom’ with W. E. B. Du Bois - as well as highly critical of the US Government and often expressed his support for Communism, leading to him being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. This would unfortunately impact his performing career; his appearance on Eleanor Roosevelt’s television show was cancelled during this blacklisting, and he found himself unable to fly overseas to perform. Instead, he would perform ‘telephone concerts’ in England and Wales that would sell thousands of tickets despite the man himself not being present. It was also during this time that Robeson’s music and films were steadily removed from public distribution, and at the very height of the Cold War it became nigh impossible to hear him perform on the radio. A prior visit to the Soviet Union had already established him as an enemy of the state, though Robeson would deny some of Stalin’s more morally dubious actions during the purges, in the interest of not giving the American right more Red Scare ammunition.

Like many musicians of this time, it’s difficult to pin down a single recording as a ‘classic’; particularly with Robeson’s material spread across singles, musicals, and films, his influence as a vocalist is spread wider than just a singular album. Retrospective compilations like Paul Robeson: Voice of the People certainly make for an excellent replacement, though. His performance of the bass-baritone staple ‘Ol’ Man River’ is one of the very earliest recorded, and even Welsh songs like ‘Land of My Fathers’ and ‘All Through the Night’ make an appearance on this compilation, the latter of which was featured in the ‘The Proud Valley’. Robeson recorded almost three-hundred unique songs during his relatively short musical career, spanning spirituals, Americana, classical music, and European folk songs. There’s an almost endless amount that can be written about Paul Robeson’s storied career, but his unyielding advocation for the rights of Black Americans, as well as other downtrodden peoples of the world, was a constant throughout his life. He would live the last decade or so of his life privately at home in Philadelphia, much of his influential work behind him , though his legacy very much remains.