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Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Grant Olwage, "Paul Robeson's Voices" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Description: Paul Robeson's Voices (Oxford UP, 2023) is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage examines Robeson's voice as it exists in two broad and intersecting domains: as sound object and sounding gesture, specifically how it was fashioned in the contexts of singing practices, in recital, concert, and recorded performance, and as subject of identification. Olwage asks: how does the voice encapsulate modes of subjectivity, of being?Combining deep archival research with musicological theory, this book is a study of voice as central to Robeson's sense of self and hi...