NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 June 1930, Page 3

NEWS AND NOTES.

NEW POWDER

Chalk from Peachey Head is. one of the chief ingredients in a new powder used in dealing with internal ulcdrs at St. Thomas’ Hospital. London. This one establishment uses two tons, of the chalk each year.

THE VOLGA BOATMAN

To the great Chaliapin in his singing of the Volga boatmen’s song may he likened the interpretations of that other great bass-baritone Paul Robeson’s reading of “negro spirituals.” Roth spring from that consummate on denstanding which can only come from an artist voicing in song the traditions of his own race.

Chaliapin was of peasant origin and horn on the banks of the. Volga itself—at the Tatar city of Kasan. His mighty physique may very well have been employed in pulling along a Volga barge. It is certain he earned his living at one time as a casual railway porter, a fact which, like a great as well as a big man, he makes no atom pt to conceal. So. almost inevitably, with Robeson . The traditions of those -plaintive, "’mplo, jubilant, songs of the had old days of American slavery, with his compatriots’ simple faith in a delivery which did indeed come, are visualised bv him, approaching a century after, as no other living public interpreter can do so.