from Wikipedia:
Quote:
Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was a multi-lingual American actor, athlete, Basso cantante concert singer, writer, civil rights activist, fellow traveler, Spingarn Medal winner, and Stalin Peace Prize laureate.
...he came to be conversant with 20 languages, fluent or near fluent in 12. His standard repertoire after the 1920s included songs in many languages (e.g., Chinese, Russian, Yiddish, German, etc.). |
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from the black collegian
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| Paul Robeson, pronounced as two syllables, spoke and wrote more than 20 languages, including several African languages, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic. He was one of the first Blacks to play and star in professional football. He was the third Black graduate of Columbia Law School. He was the first Black lawyer to enter one of New York's most prestigious law firms. He was one of America's greatest concert and interpretive artists. He was the first concert artist, along with Roland Hayes, and later Marian Anderson, to raise Black spirituals to their rightful place of respect, in the best concert halls of the world. He was an accomplished musicologist. He was the actor who gave the most memorable performance and profound interpretation of Shakespeare's Othello in modern times. He was an inspiration to the American labor movement. He was the son of a slave who escaped to freedom at 15. He knew W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Claude McKay, Carl Van Vechten, Lena Horne, W.C. Handy, Mirian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Cab Calloway, Leadbelly, Joe Louis, Carl Sandburg, Willa Cather, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. And they knew him as well. |
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Here's an interesting essay from the Journal of Pan African Studies regarding Paul Robeson:
Paul Robeson's Linguistic Breakthrough by Abdul Karim Bangura
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