Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, a Centennial Celebration

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Paul Robeson Speaks is a stirring, illustrated collection of speeches, writings, interviews, and press reports by a man whose thoughts and writings contributed greatly to African culture and Black pride. Leer comentario completo

Paul Robeson's articles and essays included discussions in the 1950's about the connection between Hebrew/Jewish melodies and African American music. He connected Hasidic niggunim with plaintive negro spirituals, and tonal Bantu languages with Black accents. Search for Jew/Jewish, Hebrew, East(ern(er)), Falasha(s), etc. He even disclosed seeing his formerly enslaved father studying Hebrew, and personally feeling proud to read the first line of Genesis in Hebrew as a boy. He described mutual musical interest between Jews and Blacks.
p. 109 has his 1936 Essay "Primitives", in which he criticized Western dismissal of ancient and Eastern cultures (African and Asian) as inferior simply because they are older, or as termed more derisively, "primitive".
Search for his 1927 interview with Sulamith ish-Kishor on his sentiments about Hebrew and African music. A rabbi commented: "Many of the negro spirituals have the melody of the synagogue in them"