PAUL ROBESON
“An Eriskay Love Lilt” HIS MASTER’S VOICE, 1938
When I was a kid, my parents had a gramophone. Sometimes when they were getting really drunk, we’d put on some old stuff, and I remember Paul Robeson singing “An Eriskay Love Lilt”. Something about the peaceful enjoyment of sadness has stuck with me. It’s a Scottish tune but it’s pentatonic – I use a lot of pentatonic shit on my tunes and people have said it sounds Ethiopian, but it’s just pentatonic scales. Paul Robeson was persecuted under McCarthyism, and that’s what killed him really. He was an astonishing talent
