I have been planning to write about
Ol’ Man River, as
part of this intermittent series,
since late March, when there was a
nightly series on Radio 3, lasting a week, wherein people took turns to expound
on the life of Paul Robeson through the prism of one particular song. It fell
to his granddaughter Susan Robeson to talk about the song with which he is most
associated,
Ol’ Man River. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gw72
I have not written about it until now, for a couple of
linked reasons. Around that time, I heard from my friend Stephen that Basil
Moss, the man with whom I associate the song as strongly as with Robeson, was
ill, probably with coronavirus. Later in April, an idea hatched within the
WhatsApp group of the Friends of the Meetings of the Christian Union of St
Paul’s School, of which I am a former member, to hold a virtual “sing-song”. I
thought this a great idea, though not without my fears and reservations, many
of them linked to what I felt about, and what Susan Robeson said about, Ol’
Man River.
It’s the 1st of June, Bas has recovered from his
illness, and he participated last night in the Virtual Sing-Song, which was a
triumph and, at times, an emotional tour de force beyond which it was
conceivable to hope.
I have had a lot of thoughts about the song and the
sing-song and all manner of other things since last night. I’m going to try and
put them all down. It won’t be short. Sometimes, in keeping with the day job,
when I write about a topic, I cannot resists drawing in every conceivable
connection, every detail which embellishes the tale, however self-indulgent. Apologies in advance for when I stray from the straight and narrow path.
So here goes …
I’ll start with the song itself, and with Robeson. I’ve
known Ol’ Man River most of my life. I think we were taught it in our
singing lessons within the music block of Colet Court, the prep school of St
Paul’s. It’s a memorable song, and very hard to sing, so that would make sense.
I was dimly aware of Paul Robeson through my early
childhood, that he was a black singer with a deep voice who sang this song.
Rather like Alfred the Great and cakes, Rosa Parks and buses, Gary Pratt and run-outs (hoho), he is a person of considerable range reduced
in popular consciousness to one story, to one thing. If that.
I became fascinated by him, finding out that there was far,
far more to him than one song, early on in my time at university. My guess is
that it was 1998, when I was 19 or 20, as that would be the 100th
anniversary of his birth, and the BBC showed a couple of excellent
documentaries about his life and work.
I was already, through the usual pathways, somewhat aware of
and interested in the history of civil rights – I’d read some Martin Luther
King, read biographies of Muhammad Ali, had a passing knowledge of
post-colonial Africa developed through my gap year in Kenya, a lifelong love of West Indies cricket, was a Dylan fan
etc. I was stunned by where Robeson fitted into this narrative – by how famous,
and how global, he’d been, how multitalented he was, how he’d then been
persecuted, shut down and destroyed.
I was, no doubt, also interested in Robeson because of how
much I loved Ol’ Man River, the Basil Moss version.
Basil was one of the leaders, along with the likes of John Beastall, Gordon Couch and Andrew Puddifoot. He was in his mid-50s then, he's in his
mid-80s now.
100s, no, 1000s of boys who passed through St Paul’s School
will have stories about how these men guided and encouraged them, cast light on
the sometimes dark and gloomy path of adolescence, of their trying to help us develop
the best version of ourselves. I'll focus on Basil now, because of Ol' Man River, but I could just as well write about Tub Beastall or Gordon.
Anyway, here is a brief story about Bas, to which he is almost
incidental. It’s such a small story, but, I think, so indicative of how he, and
the House Parties, were a power of great good. It is a memory that has stayed with me for almost 30 years.
It was the second or third day of my first House Party. I
had enjoyed it very much so far. I had turned up, 13 years old, the summer
before I was going to enter the big school. I had no idea what to expect. I
didn’t know many people. People were kind, seemed genuinely interested in me
and pleased I was there (little did they know …)
I was walking, in the morning, past the cricket nets at
Clayesmore School, to play the daily cricket/rounders-like game of Podex (I
seem to recall I’d already made a GRRREAT impression on the first day by
throwing a hissy fit because I didn’t think I was out …). I was wearing some
horrendously garish Bermuda shorts. I was already mired in the pit of
self-consciousness and worrying about popularity that bedevils nearly every
teenhood. I heard a couple of older boys behind me laughing “look at those
shorts!”
I still remember that instant of dread, and of sadness, “Oh
well, it was good while it lasted, I guess they all try to be nice for a couple
of days and then normal behaviour resumes …”. I cast a furtive look round, only
to see it was not me the boys were laughing at – it was Bas, laughing along
himself, in an even more ludicrous pair of shorts …
That’s it. Not much of a story. But if I were to describe
the genius of Bas, and Tub, Puddy and the rest, it was that they happily made
themselves the targets of all that cruelty, all those barbs and piss-takes and
sharp jokes, that teenage boys have, that they need to have to get by; the
elders made themselves the targets, and defused the cruelty. You could say
whatever you liked to them, and if you were saying it to them, you probably
weren’t viciously punching down, just harmlessly punching up.
It wasn’t perfect … as years went by, even on House Parties,
there could be meanness and unpleasantness. I also sometimes wonder if
developing a world where you all communicate, become friends and comrades, via
irony and “banter”, while being all good in itself, perhaps doesn’t prepare you
for other worlds, where straight talk is valued above all, and where words
which are not intended to be cruel are nevertheless received as cruel.
But that is another issue, really … certainly not much to do
with Ol’ Man River (or perhaps it is, as I’ll get to).
Back to the song … the song’s the thing.
Bas was, amongst other things, a professional actor,
musician, singer. He’d play the piano every night at sing-song. The songs were a
long-developed selection from children’s song, British and Irish folk songs,
music hall, the American songbook, hymns, spirituals, protest songs. Usually
someone (either a very good, or actively, gleefully bad, singer) would sing a
solo, and then a boy would hold up the words, and we’d all sing along.
Not everyone loved sing-song. For the more introspective,
less bantery, hail-fellow, types, it was a bit much. I came to love most of it.
I had a few problems. Even as a teenager, I couldn’t be doing with Jerusalem,
which was sung on the last night. I was not an English patriot, and one of the
things I loved so much about CU is that it generally kept itself distant from
the establishment idea of the church. It was warm, open and ecumenical. I
couldn’t see why we were singing a patriot song, however nuanced the words of Jerusalem
actually are. It wasn’t sung with nuance. It felt intrusive to me, like
when I heard the National Anthem playing at the end of the recording of Dylan’s
1966 Manchester Trade Hall concert,
And I couldn’t be doing with Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
A rugby song, An English rugby song. I don’t even recall how aware I was at the
time of how and why it had been co-opted by English rugby fans in the 80s, a
black spiritual sung by jolly white fans when England started to have a few
black players.
Recently it emerged that the song was first sung by rugby
fans at the 1987 Middlesex Sevens
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-51646140
(which, funnily enough, I’m pretty certain I attended with my Irish father) in
celebration of Martin Offiah.
It had long been thought, however, that it was first sung by
England fans in 1988 when the black winger Chris Oti scored a hat-trick of
tries against Ireland. Here’s a thing, and I’m sorry to drop this in now, but
this is very much a part of the tale – another association I have with Chris
Oti was talking to another Old Pauline grandee (who, I should stress, had
nothing to do with the Christian Union) at a dinner in the mid-90s, him
describing being at a rugby match, seeing someone who he thought was Chris Oti,
and describing him as a “mouthy little n___”.
I remember the words, of course, but more than that, I
remember how he told me, drawing me in, looking around furtively, giving a
half-smile and then saying it in a half-whisper, making me his conspirator, as
if to say… “I know you’re not meant to say it these days, but we’re all men
here” … that kind of thing.
That’s how English racism works, isn’t it? Just … just …
below the surface … at fancy dinners, in taxis, in country pubs, in driving
lessons, from people doing your garden, on drunken nights … those moments when
people judge they can let their guard down and say something, you know, a bit
racist. People who’d be outraged if you said they were racist. Which I
didn’t/don’t tend to … because I’m a bit weak, because I hope a raised eyebrow is enough to stop them in their tracks without causing a scene.
It probably seems like off-topic now, like I’m miles away
from that Ol’ Man River. But I don’t think I am.
Back to Basil, Basil singing Ol’ Man River. The most
wonderful sight. Apart from playing the piano, Bas would indulge us, each House
Party, with two show tunes, Mack the Knife and Ol’ Man
River. They were the highlight of
sing-song. The performance, the quiet start, the build-up, the vein-popping,
note-stretching finale. We would erupt, every time, like it was the first and
best song we’d ever heard.
Ol’ Man River was written by the great Jerome Kern
(music) and Oscar Hammerstein (lyrics), two white men, for the 1927 Broadway
musical Show Boat. They wrote it with Paul Robeson in mind, though he
didn’t play the part of Joe until the London premiere in 1928, then the 1932
Broadway musical, then, famously, the 1936 film version.
It is not a spiritual, it is a show tune. It has been sung
down the years by many people, black and white, including Bing Crosby, Frank
Sinatra and, bizarrely, The Beach Boys. I think its provenance makes it fair
enough, a universal song, but you still have to be careful.
It is sung from the point of view of a poor black man in the
American south. In its original version, it contains lyrics that Robeson
himself became uncomfortable singing (I would listen to Susan Robeson’s
15-minute lecture to find out more about this, if you have the time).
As I said, I was worrying about this virtual sing-song. I
was worrying about what people, these days, call the optics. About us as a
group of mainly white men from a public school at this time of terrible,
oppressive racism. I was worrying not just about Ol’ Man River but one
or two other songs, and the general vibe. I worried that what might have begun
as a recollection of an innocent, beautiful sense of community and the joy of
singing, down several decades, might - right now, in 2020, in the awful world we
are living in right, right now, as it is more incumbent on white people, white
men, posh white men than ever, to know who they are, know what it is ok and not
ok for them to say and do if they don’t want to be on the wrong side of
history - look naïve at best, tone deaf and offensive at worst.
I am glad I worried, because I think the joy of how it
actually happened moved me all the more as a consequence.
The idea of the sing-song belonged to Sam Peters, and he
co-ordinated it. I’ve known Sam since September 1986, our first week at Colet
Court, me wearing the blue “getting-to-know-you” badge of 1B, him wearing the
red badge of 1C, his badge, I still recall, saying Samuel Peters. I remember
the whole year group having a running race in the first PE lesson, me near the
front and desperately looking around to see who my rivals were, seeing who
might stop me being the best at sport, seeing tall, orange-haired Sam was one
of them.
Sam was the leader of most of the sports teams, to my
occasional chagrin. It wasn’t much of a rivalry per se, pretty much a
no-contest. I do recall, though, funnily enough, after our 10 years of school
together, after he’d been captain of cricket and me secretary, and we were
captains of Podex teams on the 1996 Summer House Party, both getting to the
final, me playing a joyless, humourless, attritional captain's role throughout the tournament, and
with a pronounced determination to get one over on him and his now legendary "Found on Uranus" team ....
Having restricted them in the field and pottering along
nicely with the bat, almost like we were oblivious England in the mid-90s, I ran myself out for 15, and we fell a few runs short… oh you cruel gods, deserting me in my hour of need … not that I harbour and dwell on the
details at all …
Anyway: Sam put the sing-song together. I’d express my
occasional concern to Stephen about the potential for misjudgement, and he’d
say “It’ll be ok. Trust Sam”, which I by and large did (though not without
lingering worries). I have admired the work Sam has done as a
sports journalist, pioneering concerns regarding concussive injuries in contact
sports. It brought to my mind a repeated CU ethos of “whatever area you go
into, do good in it”.
The sing-song was, largely, pre-recorded performances – Wonderful
World, Hallelujah, House of the Rising Sun etc.
Sam appeared on the screen to introduce the next track. He
talked about the legend of Bas and Ol’ Man River and said there was only
one other person among us who could do justice to Bas’s performance, and that
was his great friend Rory.
In the time since the sing-song was first announced, Rory’s
sister Karina has died from coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/12/rory-kinnearsister-protect-vulnerable-coronavirus-rory-kinnear
He wrote this widely-shared, searing, moving tribute for the Guardian, and has
also, lately, appeared on Radio 4 to read from it. It will, I’m sure, be seen as
one of the great testaments of this time, of the value and the joy of life, the
need for a more caring and compassion country to emerge from this morass. The
sing-song had, fittingly, been announced as raising funds for Roy Kinnear
House.
Rory introduced his own performance, paid a wonderful
tribute to Basil, the words of which I’m quite sure we all felt resonate deeply within
ourselves, and then made wry reference
to Bas singing such a song for 100-odd white boys - defusing any worries I, or anyone
else had about tone and any lack of self-awareness. Of course, of course,
they’d get it right. CU always got it right.
He sang it beautifully. I would post a video but I do not
think it is my place to.
Then … as if that wasn’t enough … we cut to Bas, in the
present day, thanking Rory and then, wonderfully, a video of himself singing
it, on a House Party, from 2008. There was not a dry eye in my shed, and I
doubt there were many watching the 140 or so laptops on that zoom call.
This is the memory of the House Party I will keep. The
profound good in it. The refuge from the world. I can confuse my memory
sometimes by marking it down as a naïve, oblivious good, the good that rich
kids on holiday can afford to be. It was a huge part of my life from 1991 to
1998, but those were different times, less troubled times, also less aware/woke times. What is “good” looks different these days. It is more urgent, more
necessary, it has a greater enemy.
But I am wrong if I ever think the House Parties and the CU
drifted casually over the top of the world. We learnt so much there. It’s there
we were encouraged to go out and make a difference in the world, there we were
encourage to see all people as equal, there we had serious talks about gay
rights, women priests, inequality, faith in action. I cast my eyes over the
100-odd faces I saw again last night, most though not all familiar to me, and
wondered at the work those boys have done, the number of teachers, doctors, of
charity workers, of priests, of creative people, of good people, people who have lived it well.
It is so important that pockets of good exist in settings
that are not entirely good. For me, the CU was not just my refuge, it was the
place where I was able to try and figure out, on my own terms, how to be good.
Public schools are not, generally, good places. Even if just in the sense that
they’re places of inequality, ambition, unchecked privilege, cruelty and
excessive striving. Even if it’s just that, which it’s not.
Over the past few years, terrible stories have emerged of
abuse from both private schools I attended, St Benedict’s, Ealing, and St
Paul’s, of longstanding abuse, systemic and non-systemic, which goes to the very
heart of the corruption of power and killing of innocence. That has combined
with stories in the wider media about TV stars, musicians, politicians etc to
make it very hard to take any part of our childhood memories on trust.
But I trust the CU. I trust it now, I trust my memories of
it. It emerged untainted, as anyone connected with it would know it would, from
the widespread investigation into abuse at St Paul’s. That is important.
I thought about my own path to a good life, and the bumps in
it. I left school with the best intentions, I volunteered, I donated, I aimed
to embark on a career as a teacher. I was terrible at it. It is a revelation
when you realise that, despite theoretical good intentions, you are simply not
suited to the vocational “good” life and you will do more harm than good if you
pursue it.
In those years of my early 20s, though no longer a believer,
I’d still sometimes go to church at St Michael’s, Barnes, just for the routine
and the chat, really …
I’d thought I stopped going in about 2003, but I remembered
this morning being at Basil’s to watch the final morning of the first test of
the 2005 Ashes (England tumbling to a defeat which would, of course, be a
glorious red herring). This is just after my PGCE in primary teaching ended in defeat and disenchantment, feeling as
far from an idea of a clue of what to do and where to be as I’ve ever been.
It
strikes me that, at that point, I made the journey from Clapham to Barnes on a
Sunday morning to find comfort in the familiar. It strikes me that that was
also the Sunday after the 21/7 failed tube bombings, which were themselves just
two weeks after the 7/7 bombs. London was a shaken city then, I knew where I
wanted to be, where I’d find some sense and solace.
It strikes me too that, in the lost period of months that
followed, I took comfort and kept a sense of self-worth with the weekly pub
quiz at the Fox in Putney with various CU alumni, which, of course, would lead
(thou) me on, by purest chance, to a job and to where I am now. Mysterious
ways, eh?
Sing-song influenced my taste in music. For sure. The rage of protest, the storytelling of folk and the grandeur of the spirituals. I think the meaning and context of
a lot of the songs was lost on most of us – We Shall Not be Moved, We Shall
Overcome, Blowin’ in the Wind, All My Trials, even Ol’ Man River.
Songs which burn with meaning to this day, right now. I
think about Robeson, who was not, in general, a songwriter. I think about him,
uncomfortable with some of the lyrics to Ol’ Man River, changing them
for his concert performances, removing the n-word, changing the finale to one
of perseverance not weariness. And this … he changed the lyric “You gets a
little drunk and you lands in jail” to “you show a little grit and you lands in
jail”. Have a think about that. The well-meaning white songwriters,
characterising how and why a poor black man might land himself in jail, and
Robeson, the black singer, saying “no, this is how a black man lands in jail in
America. You show a little grit”. Fucking hell.
Robeson’s not famous, not really. I know he’s not. I have struggled with
the irony over the last 15 years that, in my job as a question writer, I have
been unable to write one mass-appeal question about the man who is one of my
greatest heroes, who I consider the most talented, interesting man of the 20th
century.
I tried to include him in one of our regular picture rounds
but was talked out of it by my colleagues saying “we’ve no idea who he is,
people will have no idea who he is”. That’s fame, a funny kind of fruit tree.
Where’s the equivalent in the modern age? It’s this –
imagine if Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, right now, started supporting Antifa [if
Antifa-rage is anti-Farage, it’s alright with me, eh, amirite?] and the CIA and
the FBI conspired to remove all his films from the cinema, to stop him
appearing on talk shows, stopped him, dare I say it … cooking, and, if then, in
25 years, no one had a damn clue who Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, apart from maybe
for singing ‘You’re Welcome” in ‘Moana’.
There’s a sense in which, for leftist Robeson
fans like myself, there’s a myth which has built up which actually undermines
itself. I once bought a vast, 900-page biography of him which I gave up on
halfway through, not so much because of its density but because I still carried
round with me the idea that my heroes should be supermen and saints, and was
disappointed to discover that Robeson was not, after all, the greatest ever
sportsman, greatest academic, greatest politician, greatest husband, greatest
actor, greatest singer … just a fair chunk of most of those things, more than
anyone has a right to be, but not entirely.
There’s a notion, which certainly has truth in it, that he’s not remembered because he was expunged
from history, and that a sinister plot still exists, that he’s still, with his
Communist links, more of a persona non grata in American history than MLK,
Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali.
That idea gained some credence in my head a few years ago,
when I read that Steve McQueen’s next project after ’12 Years a Slave’ was
going to be a biopic of Robeson starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (an alumnus of the
same Dulwich College as the abominable Farage, incidentally) – but the project, as a feature film has not come to fruition … maybe, I wondered blithely, ‘cos of the CIA? … Probably
not.
Perhaps the project, as a feature film,was just too daunting.
Instead, McQueen made the excellent ‘Widows’ as his next movie, and has made a
video project and given a series of talks on Robeson. In one such talk, where
he shares the stage with Cornel West (who’s had a lot of prominence for this powerful
interview with Anderson Cooper this week
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/05/29/cornel_west_america_is_a_failed_social_experiment_neoliberal_wing_of_democratic_party_must_be_fought.html)
McQueen, an old boy of Drayton Manor where I learnt to play violin badly on a Saturday morning, incongruously, deliciously, on a New York stage, refers to his childhood home as “Ealing,
Queen of the Suburbs” (take that, Barnes!).
So, the Hollywood treatment eludes Robeson. He remains a
minority figure. There was a Manic Street Preachers song about him in 2001,
‘Let Robeson Sing’, which was pretty, but more than a bit clunky lyrically. I’ve enjoyed
the fact that, in concert, they have sung it with one of my latter day heroes,
Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zew24i9O47I
Connections, connections, here are some more. Robeson was
the first black man to play Othello in London in the 20th century in
1930. Kinnear was acclaimed for his Iago, opposite Adrian Lester, in 2013. More tangentially, I note, remembering Bas
singing ‘Mack the Knife’ that Rory played Macheath in a 2016 production of ‘The
Threepenny Opera’. I am unable to confirm if John Beastall’s ‘Teddy Bears
Picnic’ coincides with, or inspired, any of his stage appearances.
Robeson’s ‘Othello’ was, I believe, politely, but not
overwhelmingly received (more renowned now for the affair he had with his
Desdemona, Dame Peggy Ashcroft). Though it is convenient to suppose his fame
hasn’t lasted because of some great anti-socialist plot, the reasons may be
more prosaic.
Perhaps they are twofold: 1.
maybe not all of his art has lasted that well, perhaps he was ill-served
by most of the films he starred in, and perhaps the recordings of his songs are
a little grainy for modern tastes 2. perhaps, in terms of the fame that came
the way of the likes of Ali, MLK and Malcolm X, Robeson, who foreshadowed them
as global black icon, just missed the (show)boat, or rather the boat missed
him. He was famously visited in Harlem in the 1960s by leaders of the civil
rights moment and asked to get involved in a muted, neutered form, which
he furiously refused to do.
It is well known that Robeson was in ill health, physical
and mental, for the latter part of his life – it is probable that if he’d been
prominent in the struggle in the 60s, his fame would have lasted to a far
greater extent.
Who knows …
There was certainly a large extent to which it was his
uncomfortable affiliation with Soviet Russia in the 1940s and 1950s that
destroyed him, not just with the authorities, but in the hearts of ordinary
Americans. Who can imagine an America that is so anti-Russia, eh? Here’s a
limerick …
The Trumpeteers, under close scrutiny
make wild accusations of mutiny.
They call into question
the very suggestion
it all smelled a little bit Putin-y.
Ba-dum….
So, we’re left with Ol’ Man River, after all that.
Paul Robeson and Ol’ Man River. Basil Moss and Ol’ Man River. Rory
Kinnear and Ol’ Man River. The song’s the thing. Kern/Hammerstein (1927)
and then a life of its own.
The river in question is the Mississippi, and it’s also the
River Jordan. Rivers are wonderful things in songs. Reliably wonderful. I made
this river playlist. It doesn’t get much better.
River – Joni Mitchell
River Man – Nick Drake
Ol’ Man River – Paul Robeson
River Deep, Mountain High – Ike & Tina Turner
Moon River – Audrey Hepburn
The River – Bruce Springsteen
River – Dennis Wilson
Find the River – REM
Many Rivers to Cross – Jimmy Cliff
River of Dreams – Billy of Joel
Down to the River to Pray – Alison Krauss
Cry Me a River – Julie London
Cry Me a River – Justin Timberlake
Caught by the River – Doves
I Follow Rivers – Lykke Li
Tales of the Riverbank – The Jam
Red River Shore – Bob Dylan
Let the River Run – Carly Simon
Down a Different River – Super Furry Animals
At the River – Groove Armada
We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River – Richmond
Fontaine
Deep River – Paul Robeson
Drank Live a River – Whiskeytown
Take Me to the River – Al Green
It reminds me, after all that, what we were singing about.
Why we sang the songs we sang. That it was about spirit. At the core of the
noise we made and the songs we chose to sing, there was spirit. For some, it
was, and remains, a holy spirit, for others, it’s the human spirit.
I can imagine that both types of spirit are being sorely
tested right now.
I can feel myself winding down. I’ve written most of that in
one go, and I’ve lost the route of the river a little.
I wondered last night if any thought was given to singing a
hymn. The singing at sing-song was one thing, the singing in the chapel was
something else - the wall of noise, best exemplified by Dear Lord and Father
of Mankind (hard to imagine a wall of noise over Zoom, though, isn’t it?)
Still, if there’s one musical setting that would ever stand
a chance of bringing my faith back, it’s that.
“O Sabbath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love!”
That hymn has it all, the grace, the calm, the stillness,
the roar.
How impossible it is to process the world we’re in right
now, that eery calm that descended for a couple of months, almost like, in the
comfort of our own home, we could imagine it was a voluntary time-out, a
welcome period of reflection, now broken by outrage and fury.
Knowing how to live a good life feels harder than ever. We
feel powerless and disgusted, we feel guilty for not being furious enough early
enough, we feel scared in the short and the long term, we feel cut off from our
loved ones, cut off from the innocence of our youthful dreams…
It's the same world, though, the same world.
I’m going to finish by mentioning another lyrical
change Robeson made to Ol’ Man River. The original Hammerstein lyric was
“There’s an old man called the Mississippi, that’s the old man that I’d like
to be, what does he care if the world’s got troubles, what does he care if the
land ain’t free”
Robeson changed it to “There’s an old man called the
Mississippi, that’s the old man I DON’T like to be …”
Originally, the river’s timeless indifference to the
transience of human affairs is seen as a positive. With Robeson’s shift, the
river’s character, its self-possession, becomes cruel indifference.
At a time like this, perhaps we can draw our own conclusions
and our own resolutions from that.
