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Paul Robeson
On My Journey
The journey of Paul Robeson, a genuine 20th-century Renaissance man who distinguished himself as a scholar, athlete, singer, actor, activist, and intellectual, is rooted in the foundations of the American experience. His father escaped slavery at the start of the Civil War, and his mother traced her ancestry to African Americans who had purchased their freedom before the Revolutionary War.
Robeson and his people embody the mythos of the self-made man; their story is the stuff from which the American Dream is made. Robeson's journey, however, with its innovative, pioneering spirit, with its self-reliant determination, with its against-all-odds triumphs, met with trials and tribulations that challenged the validity and integrity of America's foundational principles. It led him into battle with the anticommunist, McCarthy-era witch-hunt, the Red Scare of the 1950s. He was spied upon, harassed, attacked, blacklisted, and denied the right to travel abroad. Yet, like his forebears who sang of both a spiritual and physical journey to the Promised Land, he refused to submit.
A song that had been forged in slavery and that he sang throughout his career declares this impulse to journey on, despite the odds and without regret: "On my journey now, Mount Zion / Well I wouldn't take nothing, Mount Zion / For my journey now, Mount Zion." During the 1950s, one of the ways that Robeson showed his commitment to his art and his beliefs was through a series of independent recording sessions, which are the source for the material on this compact disc. On My Journey: Paul Robeson's Independent Recordings provides powerful testimony that he would continue down the road he had chosen and "wouldn't take nothing" for his journey.
On My Journey: Paul Robeson's Independent Recordings is available for purchase from Smithsonian Folkways recordings. Thank you!
Sample tracks
Select a track to hear a sample from the compilation.
on_my_journey.mp3
This spiritual was central to Robeson's repertoire, and its lyrics-of a traveler to the Promised Land, characterized by determination and no regrets-are emblematic of Robeson's life journey. It was among the eight songs that he recorded with Lawrence Brown for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1925.
my_lord_deliver.mp3
Robeson recorded this spiritual numerous times during his career. The lyrics illustrate the coded, double meanings of the spirituals; they articulate the impulse toward freedom that enslaved African Americans clearly understood and cleverly masked from white listeners. The Old Testament figures had been delivered, and the implication is that the enslaved spiritual singer will be liberated too. This recording was Robeson Jr.'s first session as a producer and sound engineer.
hassidic_chant.mp3
Sung in Hebrew and English, the Hassidic Chant: Kaddish seems to have entered Robeson's repertoire in the late 1930s. According to Jonathan Karp's Performing Black-Jewish Symbiosis: The 'Hassidic Chant' of Paul Robeson, the composition "is a version of the Kaddish (Memorial Prayer) attributed to the Hasidic rebbe (master), Levi Yitzhak Berditchev (1740-1810)." Robeson learned the piece from the arrangement by the Russian Jewish folklorist Joel Engel (1867-1927) (Karp 2003:53). Robeson clearly saw the piece as evidence of the affinity between the music of two oppressed ethnicities.
hammer_song.mp3
Worksongs, as well as spirituals, were a part of Robeson and Brown's original commitment to the concert presentation of African-American folk music. The concept of bringing Robeson together with these authentic practitioners of the folk-blues idiom was a brilliant stroke and clearly answers the oft-repeated comment from William "Count" Basie, that, "It certainly is an honor to be working with Mr. Robeson, but the man certainly can't sing the blues."
no_more_auction.mp3
One of the most militant spirituals, "No More Auction Block for Me" is a traditional African-American antecedent of the activist songs to which Robeson was drawn. The lyrics are an indictment of the Middle Passage and firsthand testimony against the brutality of slavery. Alternately known as "Many Thousand Gone (or Go)," it may be a source for the 20th-century protest song, "We Shall Overcome."
Paul Robeson - On My Journey
Every Tone a Testimony
An African American Aural History
This double CD draws upon the collection at the Smithsonian Folkways archive to create a history of African American life and culture in sound — an aural history.