NEW YORK — “Let Freedom Sing,” celebrating the great bass-baritone, actor, and activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976), was a program conceived and performed by baritone James C. Martin and pianist Lynn Raley. The Sept. 27 concert, combining music sung by Robeson with new songs, was a keynote event in the 2026 edition of The Village Trip, a 10-day festival of 40 concerts, workshops, lectures, and walking tours celebrating the creative vitality of a neighborhood with a vibrant and influential history.
While Robeson himself never lived in Greenwich Village, preferring to make Harlem his New York home, his life and career embodied the energy and values of the erstwhile Bohemia. The concert, held in St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, the second-oldest church building in Manhattan (1799), was itself something of a throwback, recalling the less buttoned-up atmosphere of alternative performances in informal venues. But the program offered a highly professional experience that would be welcome in any concert hall.
Do the glory days of Greenwich Village need explanation? Long before becoming one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, the Village was home to artists, activists, and free thinkers who cared more about mission than money. Cultural phenomena that sprang up in the funky stretches of this lower Manhattan neighborhood included Beat poetry, the mid-century folk scene, LGBTQ liberation, feminism, and various flavors of political radicalism. But by the turn of this century, gentrification pushed out those not part of the economic 1%. In 2018, The Village Trip was founded as a festival to celebrate the creativity, activism, and community of the freewheeling neighborhood that thrived before real-estate prices soared and the streets filled with NYU students and Sex and the City tourists.
The first part of the program organized music and spoken word in a sequence that mingled biography with song. Robeson, the impossibly talented son of a former slave who became a preacher, overcame racial prejudice early in life to excel as Rutgers’ first-ever Black student. Class valedictorian, a football star, and a fine singer, he left a promising law career because of racism that often barred him from the courtroom.
His scientist wife, who was able to support the pair, encouraged him to explore his performing talents. Discovery by Eugene O’Neill led to Robeson’s stage career: a tour of the playwright’s The Emperor Jones brought him to London, which became his home and international touring base until war broke out. Back in the U.S., his activism and admiration for Soviet communism inspired him and got him into trouble, but his steadfast defense of his values (as well as shifting political winds) allowed him to continue performing and speaking out against prejudice and injustice.
Martin and Raley tag-teamed the narration, sketching in only some of the highlights and accomplishments of this extraordinary man. They assembled a sequence of 17 songs from Robeson’s repertoire plus two texts: Othello’s final monologue and Robeson’s 1956 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
As a slide show with historical photos and dates played behind the musicians, Martin sang early slave work songs, spirituals, light recital fare, and other songs that had made up Robeson’s touring programs. Martin has a smooth and expressive voice, with a wide range of colors, excellent diction, and a good sense of dramatic timing. An inevitable highlight was “Ol’ Man River,” which landed even though Martin had to transpose it up by up four steps.
After intermission came “Project 2026: Let America Be America Again,” comprising settings of the 1935 poem “Let America Be America” by Robeson’s friend and fellow activist Langston Hughes. Martin conceived the project only six months ago in response to the controversy surrounding the Kennedy Center. Working with composer David Amram and festival founder Raley, the team enlisted a diverse roster of American composers ranging from recent grad Jonathan Mitchell (“America Again”) to long-established artists like Anthony Davis (“The Fee?”), Augusta Read Thomas (“The Dream the Dreamers Dreamed”), and Amram himself (“Let America Be America Again” and “Finale”), who, at 95, has been the musical gray eminence of the festival since its inception.
Accompanying slides provided composer head shots and the entire Langston text, song by song, a plea for justice not only for Black people but for all downtrodden and disadvantaged people. While the musical styles varied, most songs allowed the voice to slowly declaim the text, fully comprehensible, over an expressive piano. Only Thomas’ verse was chanted a cappella: “Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong dream of love.” Amram’s “Finale” added rhythm, and a note of hope.
After the end of the cycle, Martin sang the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It felt like the sun breaking through the clouds. The audience then sang along with Martin in the spiritual “Jacob’s Ladder,” an act of soulful solidarity that invoked the spirit of the old Village.
Had he been born in this century, Paul Robeson would have been a star in whichever arena he chose. “Let Freedom Sing” offered an inspiring portrait of this protean figure and a very satisfying afternoon.
