I'm Kernan Oscar Hammerstein song oh my river is nearly a century old it took its ballon Broadway in 127 stopping the show but the man it been written full rubs and wasn't met before. When he finally did read his deep voice around it in London singing and song became inseparable. And the song began to change the changes parallel his political growth and understanding it kept changing all the way from the banks of the Mississippi to the frontline of the Spanish Civil War to the Brahmaputra any. Old Man River has had a long and fantastic journey whatever cultural conflicts it leaves in our feet is far surpassed by the majesty and the universality of the song itself. For it just keeps rolling the story of old man coming up on the b.b.c. World Service. Neil Nunez with the b.b.c. News delays at a number of polling stations have model presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo voters are choosing a successor to President Joseph Kabila who has been in power for 17 years from Kinshasa Louise do us reports the electoral commission has had 2 years to organize these elections but come voting day they were unprepared had a number of polling stations around the country opened late leaving people waiting in line for hours some on able to vote decided to go home others remained hopeful even if they no results could be rigged the front runners are Emmanuelle Rama Zani should Dari a close ally of President Kabila and to opposition candidates Martin you and Felix just a k.d. The main opposition alarms in Bangladesh has described Sunday's general election as fast ago and has demanded a fresh vote the man who saved the Alliance leaders said they were rejecting the results because of reports of widespread vote rigging by the governing Awami League correspondent has more details of b.b.c. Been goalie so this reporter who was covering the election in the Chittagong area saw a ballot boxes that had already been filled even before the polls opened from some other party know we've had reports that you know ballot papers was stamped sort of before people came out to cast their vote so those are sort of the allegations that we're hearing and they're coming from different parts of Bangladesh initials trends indicate that the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina his party is leading by a wide margin Sudan's embattled President Omar Bashir has told police not to use excessive force against anti-government demonstrators President Bashir who is facing the grave this challenge of his 30 year rule acknowledged that Sudan had economic problems Richard Hamilton reports. Public anger in Sudan has been growing over price rises including a doubling in the cost of bread and other measures such as limits on bank withdrawals Sudan's inflation rate around 70 percent is amongst the highest in the world the protests have escalated into broader calls for an end to President Bashir as 29 year rule activists accuse him of mismanaging the economy and human rights abuses 3 quarters of Sudan's oil wealth was lost after the South seceded and 2011 the leader of gentian eos says 30 Russian children are being flown to Moscow from Iraq where they have been kept in prison because of their parents alleged terrorist links this year a 100 were brought home Moscow hopes to repond to read more than 2000 women and children who were taken to Iraq and Syria by their husbands and fathers who fought among Islamic state militants world news from the b.b.c. Israel's foreign ministry has protested to Jordan over an incident in which a spokeswoman for the Jordanian government was told to grab stepping on the Israeli flag Jumana. The Jordanian minister of state for information was seen placing her foot on an Israeli banner painted on the floor of the headquarters of Jordan's professional unions in Amman the image of the flag was painted several years ago as an anti israel approaches. The outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly says he has nothing but compassion for illegal migrants trying to cross into the United States from Mexico Mr Kelly said many of the illegal immigrants were the victims of human traffickers from Washington then Johnson with just 3 more days as chief of staff John Kelly's been reflecting on his time in the White House and what's happened since he announced he was leaving he deposed pulling troops from Syria and Afghanistan both and now underway he said although the president still talks about a wall along the Mexican border the reality is that security will be tightened by new technology more patrol agents and fencing in places what Donald Trump calls steel slants to be honest it's not a wall John Kelly said hundreds of students at a university in the Iranian capital Tehran have been holding protests after a deadly bus crash last week 10 people were killed in the crash last Tuesday when about severe off a steep road in the University's campus the students say the age of the buses and poor maintenance were to blame religious and political groups in Iraq have condemned of the declaration by a leading Sunni Muslim cleric that it's forbidden for Muslims to celebrate Christmas the Sunni moved the shake up. Also told Muslims that they shouldn't even offer Christmas greetings to Christians he was responding to the Iraqi government's decision to make Christmas Day a public holiday for the 1st time b.b.c. News. This is the b.b.c. World Service and thanks for the Mississippi. Which it just keeps wrote the story of the Old Man River I have never separated my work as an artist from my work as a human being to meet my art is always a weapon it's got to be good or. I'm sitting head of the Mississippi Delta. Strong brown girl behind me lapping at my feet and this river is the source of one of the greatest songs ever. To be. Gone. Or your. To. Meet with. War. Do eat. Eat. Eat donuts. But. She it down to see. The. Old that if that. They knew her to do no. 6. 0 oh. That's so nice to know in 2 years old. And Oscar Hammerstein the 2nd show about opened on Broadway in December 927 a groundbreaking American musical packed into the songs lyrics and music a complex currents of race and racism and conflict of what exactly should be song and who should sing it a story that crossed continents told Decker of Washington University St Louis has written deeply Shoebite and old memories from this song more than any other I can think of because it's such a famous song and it's so pleasurable to hear a member of forces. To ask these questions about race and the American experience of segregation the American South was a long long way from a north London upbringing in the 1960 s. My nearest river was a filthy Thames but all my communist uncles adored Paul Robeson dignity power and a magnificent untrained voice booming for me John frame the thoughts of the man river the people superstar as comfortable performing in a cinema and how he was at the elbow there was always a ropes and record in the collection but of a many sources that flowed through the song I knew nothing the 1st is the best selling 126 novel by the further She's barely read these days but was a bestseller a child of one Gary in Jewish immigrants she had proven herself in the match I won't of journalism before writing novels and stories full of family struggle for the American dream by racial animosity she just won the Pulitzer Prize when she turned to showboat. It isn't just. Of American life it was a chance remark that had sparked Ferber's imagination and center searching for the vanished world of riverboat play. In North Carolina she found the last surviving shot about the James at them floating Palace Theater a hulking botches company of 10 perform their melodramas musical numbers to remote river communities a world away from her new life she returned with a story written about State Journal resetting a sprawling story along the Mississippi adapted here for radio in 139 companies. Hundreds of miles. Ringing flowing from. Grambling overbright Creek wrong. On. The sandy soil sometimes the river with a great broad rolling down to the sea and sometimes a. Narrow stream little more than the crossing blossom one service South is one of those mythical places where slavery is barely a moment but ideas of race authenticity and performance fillets plot as the cost of white and black characters in June from the 870 s. To contemporary jazz age Chicago Lawrence medicine historian of the American musical basically it tells the story of the show boat and this family shouldered by Captain Andy and his boat the Cotton Blossom and all the various personalities in generations that existed on that boat one of the main parts of the narrative is a major figure on the showboat Julie who is we call the Dr and she is 18th negro blood as it was called back then and that meant that she could marry a white man and eventually she gets tossed off the boat and Edna Ferber was Jewish she was a woman so from the get go in the 1920 she's marginalized from the mainstream or you yes in the series you got mixed colors. I suspect in this book maybe the. 2. That meet the man who is telling Jerome Kern reads this and he knows immediately it's a musical because at this point your own current has outpaced his peers this is 1026 he's written every dopey little boy girl musical you could. Possibly won and his ambition needs to be challenged and what showboat has which is 100000000 musicals have afterward in Cabaret is most obvious example it has a venue for performance so already one 3rd of your songs are written at the starting gate but what it had more was this intertextuality this intergenerational story and current immediately followed up Oscar Hammerstein and said pick this thing up and practically by the time you put the receiver down Hammerstein said yes of course because Hammerstein is in the same predicament he had been working for 8 years or so and every dopey idiotic operetta on the Broadway stage and it was time for them to do something else and so it was just this perfect storm really of creative ambition and attacks that set their imagination on fire. The 920 s. Is a complicated point of black culture white fascination respect and age watch a promising jazz spirituals in the Blues had already come to define this new American century and the New York the home were nice and was in full swing that new movement black intellectuals and artists arguing for the age of the Negro calling for pride in the shade African heritage and demanding recognition of humanity and talent as American and yet he's still in 1000 race on stereotypes and puppy performance in blackface showboat So it's a journey through the power of black music and its presence in American life what she does is provide a commercially viable model for a show that foregrounds questions of race blackness and wellness that puts white performers playing white characters and black performers playing black characters into the same story sometimes into the same song right that's the beauty of can't help loving that man from show it puts black and white performers playing black and white characters into the same musical structure it's a problematic place to be but showboat provides a model for doing that and for making the musical into something that. In France questions of race. One of showboats most gorgeous songs just can't help loving that man stage is a key moment from Thurber's novel The performer Julie has been passing as white but her song is a musical tell only someone truly black could know such Julie is of mixed blood and married to a white man she must leave the show because of the one drop rule eugenic but legal definition of blackness outlawing racial intermarriage in 19271 drop was low in 10 American States the madness of American apartheid is one thing but show that started life with perhaps the most problematic lines of any major Broadway musical . These are the very 1st words somebody's black stevedores sweating in straining by the riverside they were issued from the get go how misting had deliberately written them to spell out the racial universe at the south the white audience but some members of the black chorus these were he resented words often like as a form of sudden rebellion so they're on the New York stage they've been hired to sing The n word for an audience full of almost all whites and they exercise an agency and chose not to sing those words right black newspapers wanted to talk about that this moment of resistance in the midst of getting a paycheck The n word meant subsequent productions of Showboat and all my research in its life as a silo so frequently those lines were incorporated into it 1st 1st protest of resentment gradually forced to change and to duckies then colored folk officially sanctioned by Hammerstein how showboating America thinks about race has been a complex journey only in a slow zig filled glitzy epic musical comedy no one had ever written a multi-generational epic. Story for the American musical before they had to sculpt the story and fold in all the subplots and keep the audience involved as different characters come and go as they age 3040 years in the course of the show was never done before Congress by himself said I don't know how to tie all these things together and he said it struck me that a key character doesn't appear on stage and that's the river and he thought the river would tie things together destiny and transition and rites of passage and so it's made for a songwriter so who's going to sing about the river so he picked a relatively minor character in the novel named Joe who is a black stevedore who works on the continent Perhaps if I had this son I think he said in the mouth of a rugged untutored philosopher perhaps or some protest implied but basically this is a Shakespearean idea where you have people who are not kings but average people talking about life and existence and it was such a daring idea that it had to work but of course it's still written by a pair of white songwriters who in being urban Jewish boys certainly they would have understood the racial dimensions of American life in a powerful way Paul Robeson setting understood the racial dimension of life in America. 'd 'd then $29.00 Roshan was already a phenomenal star athlete scholar or a lawyer and the lead in to Eugene O'Neill's place he was as I said then an exemplar of his race one of the talented 10th from childhood he had understood the corrosive power of racism hereis speaking on radio in 158 it began. When I was a little boy in Princeton New Jersey technically this is the shaping of my views negro boy born in Princeton New Jersey in a college town where the students mainly came from the Deep South and my father was a minister and I was shaped against that background No I was born on the edge of groups and my fault is a rule because he was asleep of the Scottish roups ins who still control Robeson County in North Carolina my own family a slave. In New York he was holding what he was spellbound was before Memphis a Negro spirituals accompanied by a ranger and collaborator Lawrence Brown current and Hammerstein were looking for celebrity of course which ropes and was already amassing. He had really exploded onto the New York scene through the Greenwich Village Liberal Arts and Letters community as this phenomenal singer after in 1025 having delivered a concert of Negro spirituals from the concert stage having blown everyone's mind with the quality the beauty the lusciousness of the songs that concert in 25 really set him on the path of being a formidable performer the spirituals and a formidable singer and so having that knowledge in mind Kern returns to his workshop and attempts his own pseudo spiritual with ropes and in mind U.C.L.A.'s schelm a regiment of the legend goes Jerome Kern excited he rushed up town drapes and home with hand written so much and listening to him perform it before speeding down town with the star in time to sing it all over again cost him still they could play. And a whole lot more reps for the shot the 1st draft featured him not only as Joe but turning up in Act 2 was Joe some all grown up and none of them poor ripes right here right now before we know he knew great spirituals in new company by Lawrence Brehm it never quite happened at the piano I told Dick took me through d.n.a. And Oban written all manner is the most standard of popular song forms it's an a a b. a Popular song that's just our work our way through it. The 1st thing they need to do is to convince Edna Ferber in 102627 there was never for a 2nd anyone who ever thought the American Musical would last or that anyone would ever write something that future generations would enjoy and she needed some convincing and luckily for her and for them what convinced her was a song Old Man River and she said when I heard it they summoned up everything I was subconsciously reaching for in the book I cried she said I realized at that moment that this might be the 1st song from a musical that would be transcendent. So in there we get the title of the song obviously Oh Man River right at the beginning which is crucial for a pop song he has another hook. Roland that's our 1st a phrase what current does that's interesting is he expands the range one of the things that they knew they had with ropes and voice as an instrument was that they could write a popular song that was more challenging to sing. Is the higher notes. But it signals that something special is happening musically so then we get the b. Section. Break and. So that little bit right there is a Glee reminiscent. It's something most people in the audience would have known from the Spiritual going home. For a. Made up fake spiritual taken from the New World Symphony by accident divorce shock and then turned into sheet music current knew the song Everybody knew the song the connection there between the bridge of Old Man River and this tune that folks would have known there's a story that Mrs Hammerstein was at a party and a woman comes up to her and says Oh man it's so nice to meet you boy I just loved your own Kerns Old Man River and Mrs Hammerstein says your own current road. My husband wrote Old Man River. We are caught in this laboring cycle. Same thing over and over again trapped bridge. Hammerstein gives some of the most amazing words right so you get. What strain this is the 1st moment in the song where who were singing to was suggested in the context of the Broadway show it's a it's a black man singing to a white audience but on the bridge lyric it's suddenly a black man singing to other black men who like him are working. When strain Madi all he can and racked with pain I mean if this song is about suffering in the bridge it becomes about physical suffering about labor and then in the 2nd half of the bridge another character enters the song. Those lines are in quotes so here we have a white voice entering the song so it's a song for a black man to sing within which the black man singing takes on the voice of a white man those 2 lines it's interesting that in the whole performance history of all men river black performers love to do things with those lines to make them ironic to make them harsh to suggest that the way you sing I'm. It's a way to give the overseer character oh Man River is extraordinary from a lyrical point of view because Joe Doesn't saying hey that river that great big river it just keeps rolling along it's personified and Old Man River What does it mean that's a biblical idea it's like old man Moses you know it's this eternal verity of something that's personalized it's a song in which a character sings about what clearly has happened to his life talking barges and lifting Bales then there's a controversial line to get a little. Which a lot of black singers have wanted to change that my favorite changes want to read the Franklin did in 1904 at the White House singing for President Clinton she's saying