Tag Archives: Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson and Ol’ Man River

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Ol’ Man River is a song that has been performed many times, analyzed, and critiqued for its lyrical depth and cultural significance. While exploring archives of the Chicago Defender, I came across a 1936 article about the film Showboat, titled: Paul Robeson Makes Film ‘Showboat’ One of Finest1.

August 8th, 1936

The article offers a broad summary of the film, highlighting a few of the actors and key scenes. Notably, it praises Robeson’s vocal performance, describing his voice as:

“His deep vibrant voice ringing above the din of noise, the blare of music, the harmony of voices, fills the listener’s ears and hearts with gladness.”

The description of his vocal quality is vivid and reverent, capturing the power of Robeson’s performance. However, it glosses over the song’s lyrical content and deeper implications. Given that the article was published just three months after the film’s premiere, one might expect some discussion of the song’s meaning, especially in the context of race and labor. It simultaneously reminds us of its perceivedness during a different time. 

The article does briefly touch on the presence of Black characters in the film, stating:

“Pictures portraying the South are incomplete without the richness and colorful figure of the Negro. He is an integral part of the land of toil, deeply and firmly entrenched.”

Yet this framing reduces the portrayal of Black characters to a scenic element rather than addressing their narratives or the systemic struggles they represent. The lack of critique is understandable, as the article is descriptive rather than analytical, but it shows how the significance of Ol’ Man River, a song central to the film, was overshadowed.

In following performances, Robeson himself addressed this oversight by altering the lyrics of Ol’ Man River to reflect his evolving understanding of Black identity and resistance2. In 1938, for example, Robeson made changes that transformed the song’s tone:

Instead of the original: “Dere’s an ol’ man called de Mississippi, / Dat’s de ol’ man that I’d like to be…”

Robeson sang: “There’s an ol’ man called the Mississippi, / That’s the ol’ man I don’t like to be…”

Similarly, he replaced: “Ah gits weary / An’ sick of tryin’; / Ah’m tired of livin’ / An’ skeered of dyin’; / But Ol’ Man River, / He jes’ keeps rolling along!”

with: “But I keeps laffin’ / Instead of cryin’; / I must keep fightin’; / Until I’m dyin’; / And Ol’ Man River, / He’ll just keep rollin’ along!”

Through these changes, Robeson reimagined the song as a declaration of perseverance and resistance.

1 Berry, Tommy. “Paul Robeson Makes Film ‘Showboat’ One of Finest.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Aug 08, 1936. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/paul-robeson-makes-film-showboat-one-finest/docview/492501551/se-2.

2  Lennox, Sara. “Reading Transnationally: The GDR and American Black Writers.” In Art Outside the Lines: New Perspectives on GDR Art Culture, edited by Elaine Kelly and Amy Wlodarski, 111–30. Brill, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjwvkc.10.

 

Let My People Go: Moses in African American Spirituals

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The traditional lyrics and melody. Burleigh, H.T. “Go Down, Moses (Let My People Go!),” in Negro Spirituals (New York: G. Ricordi, 1917),https://library.duke.edu/dig italcollections/hasm_n0708/.

After relentless, long and hard days working in the fields, enslaved black people had little in forms of comfort. Singing spirituals was one way for enslaved people to come together, to sing about their hardships, to praise God, and to lift their spirits. Although some scholars, such as George Pullen Jackson,1 have argued that spirituals stem directly from white Protestant music, spiritual songs centered on Moses and the Israelites’ escape from Egyptian slavery, such as “Go Down, Moses”, highlight how the slave experience distinctly shaped African American spirituals.

In the numerous songs featuring the biblical character of Moses, “Go Down, Moses” is the most popular. This as well as other Moses songs directly reflects enslaved people’s longing for freedom. For many enslaved people, Moses was representative of the brave “conductors” of the Underground Railroad, such as Harriet Tubman, that guided enslaved people to freedom.2 The lyrics of “Go Down Moses” indicating that Moses, someone who did not have as much power as the Pharaoh, could defy him and demand “to let [his] people go!” was incredibly powerful for enslaved people who dreamed of defying their master. In many ways it became a way of defying their master even if they did not run away.3

Although this version of “Go Down Moses” remains the most popular, other versions also highlight connections between the African-American slaves and the Israelites. In John Davis’s version of “Go Down, Moses”, he reveals that the chariot symbolizes the Underground Railroad and the “rivers rolling” as the rivers that runaway slaves would cross though to lose their scent.4 Although the lyrics are different, the message remains the same: a dream and a reflection on the fight for freedom.

Krehbiel’s assertion that “Nowhere save on the plantations of the south could the emotional life which is essential to the development of true folksong be developed”5 rings true in “Go Down, Moses”. Although whites may have shared Christianity with enslaved blacks, they could not emote the same connection with the enslaved Israelites. The emotion present in the slow, melancholy song in the video and sheet music above reveals the deep sadness of living in slavery and a longing for freedom that only enslaved people could understand.

1 Jackson, George Pullen. “Negro-Borrowed Tunes are Traced Back to Britain: Did the Black Man Compose Religious Songs?,” in White and Negro Spirituals, Their Life Span and Kinship: Tracing 200 Years of Untrammeled Song Making and Singing Among Our Country Folk, (New York: J.J. Augustin, 1943): 264-289.

2 “Georgia islands: Biblical Songs and Spirituals,” Southern Journey 12 (1998): 14.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Krehbiel, Henry Edward. “Songs of the American Slaves,” in Afro-American Foksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music, (1914): 22.

The Beauty in “The Negro’s Songs”

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Black slave song was once a purely functional form of music that was described as “primitive” or “not inherently musical,” and the thought of it pervading American popular music once seemed impossible. However, after going through a metamorphosis of sorts, it changed into a form that appealed to the people of the United States. By undergoing this change, the songs had lost basically all semblance of their original function as a work song to an art song. Thus began the assimilation of black folk songs into American folk-songs.

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As a result of black folk music being introduced to the American public, people wanted to capture the origins and nature of this new genre. Books were written chronicling and collecting black folk songs, among them Afro-American Folksongs, A Study in Racial and National Music by Henry Edward Krehbiel and On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs by Dorothy Scarborough. Although these books were invaluable as a source for the average person to learn more about black folk songs and accounts of their encounters with the people that taught the authors the songs, they were written by white people using standard musical notation that is not able to accurately portray how the songs would have actually been performed by the people that originally sung them.

For example, take this transcription from Scarborough’s book of “I Went Up on the Mountain Top:”

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The notes, rhythms, and words are present, but we have no idea how accurate this is. We can only assume how fast it went, how to pronounce the words, and the harmonies implied, if any. What results from this collection of songs is not an authentic depiction of black folk tunes, but “…a body of beautiful music. It has been neglected, distorted, made pretty, made tawdry, and now is being presented in various approaches to its native beauty.” [3] This issue of “beauty” became even more contentious when considering how to perform these songs:

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Due to the vague nature of the transcriptions written by authors such as Krehbiel and Scarborough, the “correct” rendition was up to interpretation. However, it was agreed that that the expression of the text was far more important than the style in which a person sang. Hayes and Robeson are incomparable, but they both hearken back to the original spirituals and the idea of expression as beauty. Although the black slave song was once thought as the music of savages, it quickly became an integral part of American music and was not going away anytime soon.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgaYnKXqqL4

1. 3. 4. Seldes, Gilbert. 1926. THE NEGRO’S SONGS. The Dial; a Semi – Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information (1880-1929), 03, 247. http://search.proquest.com/docview/89694543?accountid=351.

2. Scarborough, Dorothy. On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs. Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Associates, 1925. Pg. 7. Accessed on archive.org.