Paul Robeson's Career as a Musician: Implications for Music Education.

Paul Robeson (1898-1976), artist par excellence, has been proclaimed as one of the most celebrated bass baritone singers of this era. His career spanned a thirty-five year period--from 1925 through the 1960s--at which time he attained major international renown as an interpretive singer of Afro-American music and folksongs. He is credited with having played a major role in exposing the music of black American culture, and it was partly through his efforts that black music found its rightful place on the concert stage. The purpose of this study was to investigate Robeson's contributions to the field of music and to determine their importance and implications for music education. This study focuses on three main stages in Robeson's career. The first, 1921 to 1929, discusses those musical experiences which laid the foundation for the development of a singer. Historians record this stage in his career as highly significant in the development of Afro-American music due to the rendering of the first official concert consisting entirely of Negro spirituals. The second stage, 1930 to 1939, took place during the years Robeson lived abroad. It was a time of artistic, social, cultural and political development. Prior to this time his repertoire consisted of Afro-American songs only, but was exp and ed during this stage to incorporate the music of other cultures. In the third stage, 1940 to 1958, Robeson balanced the opposing models for art for art's sake against art as a tool for politics. His cultural and political experiences abroad imparted new insights into the social conditions of the Negro and other oppressed peoples. He therefore saw his artistic role as a political one which challenged the racial inconsistencies of American foreign and domestic policies--the result of which proved unfavorable for his career. Robeson's music career raises some important issues that have direct implications for a music education curriculum: the implementation of a multicultural philosophy through the use of multicultural music; the inclusion of Afro-American music as an integral and systematic part of the music curriculum in the elementary and secondary schools; pedagogical strategies for preparing the artist to function in a changing and controversial society.PhDMusic educationBiographiesBlack studiesMusicUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161385/1/8712103.pd