White in the footsteps of giant of his time

6:00am Thursday 19th April 2007

Tomorrow night at St George's Hall Sir Willard White pays tribute to the late great black American singer Paul Robeson.

The programme includes negro spirituals, Russian songs, classic early jazz songs, British folk songs and classics by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern.

Jamaican-born Sir Willard, who made his debut with New York City Opera, will be accompanied by five versatile musicians led by Neal Thornton on piano, who has arranged all the songs. Beverley Humphreys narrates the story of Robeson's life.

Robeson was a larger-than-life man who embraced civil rights and campaigned on behalf of oppressed working people. He was popular in Communist Russia which led to the accusation that he was a Communist Party agent.

Robeson visited Bradford three times between 1939 and 1960, singing at Eastbrook Hall and St George's Hall, and eventually settled in London.

Sir Willard first performed the tribute at St George's in 2004; but when we spoke earlier this week he was less interested in swapping anecdotes than in putting his finger of some elemental truths of human experience.

We were speaking the day after the massacre of 32 students and teachers in Virginia.

"It's the human condition. Similar things happened when Paul Robeson was living. It is the atrocities in life that help form societies to protect us. Nothing is for nothing," he said, his bass baritone resounding like an orchestra of cellos.

"In our lives it's because of a desire to relieve suffering and to improve the lot of our lives that we create things to assist us and in so doing there are negative offshoots. "Life comes with this duality of positive and negative. I exist in it and I benefit from it. I make the analogy with electricity. The negative and positive aspects of electricity are kept separate from each other until they are brought together to create light, power and directed energy.

"We have these negative and positive energies; we do not have pvc insulation, but we do have choice. We can choose to acknowledge the negative but do service to the positive. I acknowledge both and my choice is for the positive," he said.

This sounds like a very inner directed man, and indeed one of the key experiences of his life occurred in this fashion at the age of 13. His childhood was spent between his father, a Kingston docks cargo supervisor, and his mother, who owned a small country farm.

"I had ample opportunity to complain. I didn't know where to turn. I was sick of the knot in my stomach. I was tired of crying with no one to put an arm round me and talk to me. But I had seen people round me who didn't seem to have that kind of problem.

"I didn't want to spend the rest of my life like that: it's just too heavy. There had to be another way, but I didn't know what it was. A voice came to me and said, Sing'. I said, Are you crazy, I feel like s..t!' The voice said to me again, Sing'.

"I cannot say that my gift comes from such and such a place. All I know is that it comes from inside me. I have found in my little world that if there is anything I need to fix I have to fix it within me. The only place I have power in is now; and it is always now."

So does he give himself a good talking to from time to time?

"You have to ask, What do I want from my life?' Life doesn't do anything: we do it. The only time we get a kick in the arse is when we decide to ignore what is blatant. If we take responsibility for our choices there is no kick because you see what you're doing.

"Life is a force. You can either mess it up or make something wonderful in it. Life is an opportunity. Things never happen the same way twice," her added.

The 60-year-old singer could have been talking about his two marriages and the seven children from them; but if this was the thought in his mind he did not choose to disclose it nakedly to a stranger.

"I have been in the place of doubt and blame," he said instead. I wouldn't say I am absolutely free of it; but if I start to blame myself for anything it doesn't last for very long. We always choose what we feel good with - even if it means to go and get drunk."

Throughout his eventful life Paul Robeson was faced with choices. The decisions he made displeased the US authorities sufficiently to take away his passport for eight years; but he held fast to his beliefs and principles. That is why Paul Robeson was popular with ordinary people and remains so to this day.

An Evening with Willard White starts at 7.30pm on Friday, April 20. The box office number is (01274) 432000.

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