2023-04-25 17:49:02
“Island in the Sun” and the “Banana Boat Song”: The great American entertainer Harry Belafonte died at the age of 96.
Harry Belafonte (1927–2023)Everett Collection/imago
In the world of dancing, singing and performing, Harry Belafonte was a shining star who seemed to transcend any boundaries. First of all, there were the borders between countries and continents. He was born in Harlem, New York in 1927, the son of a Martinique sailor father and a Jamaican laborer mother. Not exactly origin characteristics that suggest a great rise and show career.
The way out of the New York ghetto was via the single mother and her Jamaican homeland, where she returned to her family with Harry and his two older brothers. One of many stopovers.
Only four years later, in 1939, the mother tried again to gain a foothold in New York. She made it possible for her youngest to attend George Washington High School, but the orientation phase for later life fell through. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, young Harry joined the Navy to defend democracy and the fatherland against German Nazism.
Throughout his life, Harry Belafonte radiated sovereignty and lightness
It almost seems as if the changes between worlds and milieus had a stabilizing effect on the young Harry Belafonte. Throughout his life he radiated a sovereignty and lightness, a charisma that began to have an effect even before he had moved or the audience had even heard a sound from him. There was no lack of the right teachers and companions. After the war he took part in an acting workshop led by the German theater genius Erwin Piscator, while Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis and Walter Matthau were studying next door.
RIP the legendary Harry Belafonte, 96
Will forever associate him with this pic.twitter.com/35kVyJPW99
— TrivWorks (@TrivWorks) April 25, 2023
From elevator driver to show star, Harry Belafonte’s short biography reads like a fairy tale about social climbers in a country that knows no discrimination based on racial segregation. Of course it was very different. At the end of his long and successful life, he drew a surprisingly forgiving, but at the same time sobering balance sheet in his autobiography: he could not complain about his own life. “Yet the problems facing most black Americans seem just as dire and ingrained as they were half a century ago.”
Harry Belafonte addresses a crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington during a youth march for integration in 1958.Charles Gorry/AP
In the 1950s, the American entertainment industry enjoyed a polyglot cosmopolitanism, in which Harry Belafonte succeeded as a calypso singer thanks to his multiple talents. He quickly got his own TV show. Harry Belafonte was curious enough to look beyond his own career ambitions. He looked for talent and offered them opportunities to appear on his show. Five years her junior, South African singer Miriam Makeba launched an international career on the Belafonte show, and the “sleazy phenomenon,” as Joan Baez called young Bob Dylan, got his first gigs as a harmonica player on Harry Belafonte’s recordings.
Belafonte was involved in the American civil rights movement
Success did not blind him. Due to his versatility, his career path may appear a little vague in retrospect. If he hadn’t always known where he was going, he knew very well where he came from. As a committed artist, he marched alongside Martin Luther King and James Baldwin in the American civil rights movement, and he also knew how to use the possibilities of his industry to overcome racial segregation. An appearance with the British singer Petula Clark on the NBC television network had a catalysing effect, alternating between scandal and proof that a black and a white man can represent a common musical message.
Harry Belafonte’s career was heavily shaped by being a non-white American artist, yet he did not see his blackness as a calling or a programmatic goal. Along with Julie Andrews he sang the song “Mr. Bojangles,” a song by country singer Jerry Jeff Walker, about a struggling dancer who finds fulfillment in his art alone. In the song, Bojangles is white, but it’s actually the nickname of black dance star Bill Robinson, who, despite his stellar career, also suffered from racial segregation in the ’40s and ’50s. In the current discussion of cultural appropriation, Sammy Davis Jr. and Harry Belafonte have been credited with turning Bojangles back into a black dancer through their versions of the song.
Despite numerous albums of his own, which made songs like “Island in the Sun” and the “Banana Boat Song” evergreens, he always sought cooperation with others. The most impactful was the USA for Africa initiative, co-sponsored with Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, which resulted in the single “We Are The World” sung by an all-star band. Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96. Alongside its legend, its charm will live on, as will its beauty, which impresses at all ages.
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