"BALLAD FOR AMERICANS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 106, 4 July 1941, Page 9

"BALLAD FOR AMERICANS"

()™: of the highlights of the NBS "Hail, America" programme on July 5 (see page 12) will be the | presentation of a small part of Ballad for Americans, a brilliant choral work sung by Paul Robeson and a choir of 500 voices, with Nat Shilkret’s | Orchestra. In New York in 1935 a young Vir--ginian poet, John Latouche, felt the need for a sermon against intolerance and persecution. In this temper he wrote ‘the original poem "Ballad for Americans" in ballad form, using a narrative history of the United States as a symbol of freedom and democracy. In New York he gained poetry awards at Columbia . University and met = Earl Robinson. Composer Robinson is still remembered in Washington State as a modern minstrel, who appeared at recitals in overalls singing his compositions, accompanied by his own guitar. Between these two men the stirring words and music became an amalgam of sturdy, lyrical, democratic, American poetry-spirit,

On November 5, 1939, Ballad for Americans had its first stirring performance over the Pursuit of Happiness CBS radio programme. Paul Robeson’s performance of the work stirred the studio audience, as well as untold thousands of listeners, into applause rarely equalled. In its November 20 issue, Time reported: "In the studio an audience of 600 stamped, shouted, bravoed -for two minutes while the show. was still on the air and for 15 minutes later. In the next half-hour 150 telephone calls managed to get through CBS’s jammed Manhattan switchboard. The Hollywood switchboard was jammed for two hours. In the next few days bales of letters demanded words, music, recordings, another time at bat for Ballad for Americans." No work in American music has ever created such spontaneous, tremendous interest. It seems to have caught in words and music the deep spirit, character and philosophy of the heterogeneous American , neonle,