Tag: Carnegie Hall

The great Black activist and artist Paul Robeson in 1958, in Carnegie Hall, sang the gospel song, “Balm in Gilead”: “♪There is a balm in Gilead, ♪To make the wounded whooole♪ ….” These words in song sprang back from over half a century, when the news emerged of a big pharmaceutical, Gilead Sciences, Inc., buying the drug Sofosbuvir – and then tripling its preferred price – to treat hundreds of thousands of people suffering from Hepatitis C.

Paul Robeson is one of the early thespians, singers and human rights freedom fighters from the United States whose ideas paved the way for people like Medgar Evers, Harry Belafonte, Malcolm X and others. Tayo Aluko, a Black British playwright and actor, will bring his play, “Call Mr. Robeson: A Life With Songs,” to the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse on Sunday, Aug. 11, at 8 p.m. in Berkeley. Check out this exclusive Q&A wit’ the playwright.

I had to publish more of this interview with the legendary Gil Scott Heron because a whole lot of readers personally got at me and told me that it was too short. They told me that they wanted to hear more of what he had to say. If y’all want to read interview installments 3 and 4, y’all are goin’ to have to vote and put your bid in, because I literally had to transcribe this interview that was done for radio by hand. Otherwise you can wait until the Oct. 19, when it will premiere on Greg Bridges’ show, Transitions on Traditions, which airs on 94.1FM in Northern Cali (kpfa.org) at 9 p.m. Enough on that.