1. No More Auction Block

Available for over a year

The life and struggle of Paul Robeson through song. Robeson's epic journey traversed multiple musical forms beginning with the Negro Spirituals. At the height of the Harlem Renaissance, in 1925, Robeson and his accompanist Lawrence Brown turned them into art music. For white audiences these performances came as a revelation. For some black writers and artists there was ambivalence, anxiety that the spirituals described an abject existence they sought to reforge. Shana Redmond, scholar and professor of black music, culture and politics at UCLA explores the ways in which Robeson's performances of No More Auction Block map his own struggles "The spirituals are not simply a musical form for Robeson; they are his story. The son of a once enslaved man who seized his freedom, Robeson lived in a home where the songs of his people and the gospel of his father’s church commingled, developing a rich, melodious demand for freedom." Producer: Mark Burman