As a musician he had one great ambition – to explore the origin of African-American songs
Hostility to black people in Ireland would have dismayed Paul Robeson, the African-American star who thrilled concert-goers in the late 1930s with his “effortless” singing of black spirituals. During his visits to Europe Robeson encountered less racism than in the US, where he had to be hustled into the elevator in hotels so that other guests would not see him.
Robeson argued that the folk music of the world was very much alike, but Ireland probably possessed “the richest” tradition. He identified the influence of the Irish language in the spoken English he heard from Cork to Belfast – it had a “musical quality” – but he felt he could not sing Irish songs “properly” because he could not speak the native language. and “give it its place in the folk music of the world”.
Robeson refused to sing in the South, because he would not be welcomed in his own right but despised because of his skin colour. He pointed out that “if someone were to bump into me in the street, and I lifted my hand, I would be knifed there and then and no questions asked”. A qualified lawyer, civil rights in the US remained his obsession. And, he admitted, “mere music” would never end segregation – “I feel almost in despair when I return to America”.
Europe’s fascist dictators, however, remained unchecked. On the question of Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia Robeson asked, sarcastically, was not the time past for “bringing civilisation” to the “backward” races with machine-guns? And, he might have added, “civilizing” Africans with poison gas. Believing, rightly, that they would get away with it, Hitler and Mussolini next targeted Spain by providing an overwhelming military advantage to its future dictator, Franco.
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