Artist:
Tayo Aluko

Description:

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Paul Robeson, a former shipyard worker, with Moore Shipyard Workers, Oakland, California, September, 1942. Photo: National Archives and Records Administration. Click for pop-up.

Tayo Aluko, an architect based in Liverpool England, brought Call Mr. Robeson, his one-man show on the life of Paul Robeson, the great actor, singer, and union activist, to conferences of Labor Notes and the Great Labor Arts Exchange, in the spring of 2008.

Aluko, from Nigeria originally, has appeared as guest soloist with a number of orchestras, music societies, choirs and brass bands in the UK, Germany, Ireland, and Nigeria, and performed lead roles in various operas and stage musicals.

He has also written of Robeson's life, focussing on an acclaimed impromptu free street concert he gave for 10,000 in Liverpool in May, 1949, and comparing it with a similar one later the same year before 20,000 in Peekskill, NY, which was attacked by a right-wing mob resulting in 140 injuries as people left.

Cover of sheet music, 1862.

Although usually thought of as a spiritual, the earliest recorded use of Go Down Moses was as a rallying anthem for the Contrabands at Fort Monroe sometime before July of 1862. "Contraband" was a term commonly used in the US during the American Civil War to describe a new status for certain escaped slaves or those who came into the possession of Union forces.

Early on it was thought the song was composed by contrabands. Sheet music was soon after published, titled Oh! Let My People Go: The Song of the Contrabands and arranged by Horace Waters. L.C. Lockwood, chaplain of the Contrabands, stated in the sheet music the song was from Virginia, dating from about 1853.

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Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land,
Tell old Pharoah
To let my people go.

Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land,
Tell old Pharoah
To let my people go.

When Israel was in Egypt's land
Let my people go.
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go.

Tayo Aluko in Call Mr Robeson. Photo: Stuart Hollis.

Thus spoke the lord, bold Moses said
Let my people go.
If not I'll smite your first-born dead.
Let my people go.

Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt's land,
Tell old Pharoah
To let my people go.

Oh, let my people go.

Personnel: Tayo Aluko, vocals; John Peace, piano; Simon Fletcher, recording; J Rosamond Johnson, arranger.

Call Mr. Robeson: A play with songs written and performed by Tayo Aluko. Olusola Oyeleye, director; Phil Newman, designer.

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for a quote as to purchasing and shipping the CD fom Liverpool.

Sources for liner notes:
      Aluko bio
      Go Down Moses
      Contrabands

Music Archives

July 2008
Tayo Aluko

Go Down Moses

Traditional
Photo: NARA