Paul Robeson
To his already enormous repertoire, Jamaica's opera star Sir Willard White recently added a set of songs paying tribute to another renowned singer, Paul Robeson.
Titled Robeson Re-explored, the tribute is, according to White, "a labour of love". He was speaking about a week ago on BBC radio. Bass voice rumbling through the speakers, he said he hesitated to do the project - his second on Robeson - because he didn't want to appear to be "a stereotypical black man singing spirituals".
Nevertheless, a search of the Internet shows he is heavily booked to perform the show throughout the United Kingdom (UK) in coming months. The show builds on White's first much-acclaimed Robeson programme, 'An Evening with Willard White - a tribute to Paul Robeson', which was performed at festivals throughout the UK, in the United States (US) and in Reykjavik, Iceland, and was shown on BBC television and issued on CD.
various traditions
Again singing with the Neal Thornton Band, White takes on the Robeson character to perform songs from various traditions including spirituals, British folk and early jazz. Steal Away, It Ain't Necessarily So and Ol'Man River are among the spirituals.
White, who was born October 10, 1946, said he discovered his talent for singing from he was eight years old but others discovered it while he was attending Excelsior High School, he told The Sunday Gleaner in an interview in 2004. While at Excelsior, he started taking voice lessons at the Jamaica School of Music, after which he got a scholarship to the famed Julliard School, New York.
The interview took place three months before he was knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace. The honour, he said, with characteristic modesty, was one he had neither been looking for nor expecting.
In fact, he continued, deep voice rumbling with laughter, when his agent telephoned him with the news he was to be knighted, he exclaimed, "Rubbish! Rubbish! Go away!"
But then, he added: "I also thought it was an honour. I have colleagues who have got honours and I feel pleased for them, never thinking I would be getting one myself. I never worked for it. It wasn't part of my dream but I think it's a beautiful way of approaching it, not to be longing for it and being able to choose whether I would accept it or not."
He told The Sunday Gleaner he was energised by singing, which means he should be constantly bursting with energy.
Consider that since making his debut with the New York City Opera, Sir Willard has sung regularly at the following venues: the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, English National Opera, San Francisco, the Opera Houses of Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Geneva, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Madrid and Paris, and at the Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals.
He sings regularly with the world's major conductors and orchestras including the London Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Hallé, Royal Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, La Scala, Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Cleveland Orchestras.
Robeson
Paul Robeson, a famous African-American athlete, singer, actor and civil rights advocate, rose to prominence in a time when segregation was legal in the United States and the lynching of black people by racist mobs was common, especially in the South.
Born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, he was the youngest of five children.
Their father was a runaway slave who went on to graduate from Lincoln University. The family had to deal with hardship and to discover the importance of perseverance.
In 1915, Paul Robeson won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers University where, despite violence and racism from teammates, he played baseball, football and basketball and took part in track events. He was twice named to the All-American football team and graduated as Valedictorian. Nineteen years after his death, Robeson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
At Columbia Law School (1919-1923), he met and married Eslanda Cordoza Goode, who was to become the first black woman to head a pathology laboratory. He took a job with a law firm but left when a white secretary refused to take his dictation. He moved on to use his artistic talents in theatre and music to promote African and African-American history and culture.
In London, Robeson earned fame for his lead role in Othello, winning the Donaldson Award for Best Acting Performance (1944). He performed in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones and All God's Chillun Got Wings.
eight-year battle
In 1950, the US government revoked Robeson's passport. This led to an eight-year battle to get it back. During that time, Robeson, who sang in 25 languages, studied Chinese, met with Albert Einstein to discuss the prospects for world peace, published his autobiography, Here I Stand, and sang at Carnegie Hall.
Robeson continued, during the 1940s, to perform and speak out against racism and rallied for peace at strike rallies, conferences and labour festivals worldwide. He retired from public life in 1963 and died at 77 on January 23, 1976, in Philadelphia.
Sir Willard's 2008/9 season takes him to venues in Canada, the USA, the UK, elsewhere in Europe and the Far East.