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Aubrey W. Pankey (June 17, 1905May 8, 1971)Aubrey Pankey in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965 was an American-born baritone and noted singer in 1930s Germany. In 1956 he permanently emigrated to East Germany under the growing shadow of McCarthyism together with his companion Fania Fénelon. He was the first American to sing in the China in 1956.
Acclaimed tenor Roland Hayes also supported his pursuit of a career in singing. His performances were noted by The New York Times as early as 1925. He received a scholarship to study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Pankey went on to study in Boston at the Hubbard Studios and the School of Music at Boston University. He also studied voice in New York with John Alan Haughton. He worked at many jobs to support his education.
A 1933 (some sources give 1932) concert at Mozart Hall in Salzburg, Austria, was protested by Nazism. They distributed leaflets objecting to foreigners taking money out of German pockets while German musicians were starving and decrying foreigners, particularly "Negroes and Jews", for desecrating German music by singing Schubert. He was banned from singing in Germany in 1934. A tour of Italy was cancelled when he was barred from entry in 1937.
Pankey moved to Paris, France, in 1933 (some sources give 1932) where he continued his musical studies with Cesar Daniel and Charles Panzéra. He broke into French radio through an introduction by the widow of Georges Clemenceau. While in France he also worked in film as an actor. His concerts during this period were attended by notable politicians and other public figures. His performances received positive reviews in the Morgenposten of Oslo, Norway and Le Jour-Écho de Paris. He sang in English, French, German and Italian.
Pankey performed a series of three shows in 1945 to mark the opening of the United Nations Conference on International Organization. Also in 1945 Pankey performed at the Vladimir Lenin Memorial Meeting at Madison Square Garden. The 1946 annual concert by The Fraternal Mandolin Symphony Orchestra of the Bronx and Brighton International Workers Organization included Pankey. He was a sponsor of the 1949 Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace in New York. Pankey taught voice in 1944 at the Metropolitan Music School in New York. The school was formed in 1935 to promote tolerance and racial unity and had a "mixed" (racially integrated) faculty and student body. Pankey performed at Town Hall in New York in 1946 and 1947.
Some reviews from this period in the New York Post were less positive finding a lack of strength in Pankey's voice. A 1946 performance received a negative review in The New York Sun. The critic for the Sun wrote that Pankey's reputation "rests on a rather flimsy basis of performing accomplishment. The Sun critic continued, "his potentially resonant and powerful voice might have been capable of considerable range and color under the proper training. At present the sounds he produces are often guttural and without sympathetic quality except occasionally in soft passages." The New York Times noted the audience reception for this (1946) recital was enthusiastic. A 1942 performance in Baltimore received a very positive review in The Afro-American. His 1940 New York debut received a positive to mixed review in this newspaper. The Prescott Evening Courier reported in his success in New York in 1942 stating, "No baritone got better notices than he, all last winter."
Another review in The New York Times by a different critic in 1947 was mixed. The reviewer wrote that Pankey was a refined and sensitive artist but that his voice was limited with a short range and grew "faint when any degree of swiftness is required." This criticism was tempered by noting Pankey sang with such tenderness, sincerity and "warmth of compassionate feeling" that "many of his selections were touching and all of them were pleasing, even though they were not tonally flawless." Again Pankey's singing of spirituals was praised the critic also noted, "he was also at home with the European art song." The House I Live In was described as sung with "quiet conviction and delicacy of phrasing. Paul Robeson described Pankey as, "a fine sensitive singer of wide experience, an artist of whom America can be proud."
A 1947 European tour was enthusiastically received with sold-out venues and shows added. On returning from this tour Pankey noted European interest in US race relations. He addressed the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław as a guest of the Polish government during a 1948 European tour.
He took a job teaching at the German Music School of higher education in East Berlin in 1956. Pankey objected to being used as a political instrument based on his skin color, writing to the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany complaining that the national opera house had offered him a role based only on his "traits as a negro". A party leader, Alfred Kurella, responded stating it was time to "speak out publicly against the pseudo-sympathetic voices for negroes, behind which in reality racist attitudes are concealed." Kurella continued, "in the uncritical cult...with respect to spirituals, is hidden the same condescending and belittling attitude toward negroes."
In November 1955 (some sources give 1956), Pankey traveled to Beijing, China, as a guest of the Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries to perform a series of recitals. He was the first American singer to perform in China since the establishment of The People's Republic in 1949. Pankey lived in East Germany from 1954 until his death. Earl Shorris wrote in a 1971 article in The New York Times that "as his ability to earn money as a singer declined" Pankey was "rumored to have maintained his standard of living by working as an agent of the state security police."
Aubrey Pankey died in an automobile crash on the weekend of May 8–9, 1971, aged 65, in East Berlin. He had made over 200 appearances in 60 cities in 24 countries.
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