2023-04-25 19:22:21
AOn the banana boat in the activism stream. That was the gentle changer Harry Belafonte. Very early and very lastingly he recognized that he – unlike the “last generation” in this country – could fight for his goals of change in a more sustainable and popular way by sailing on the soft wave of entertainment than through aggressive political activism.
Born on March 1, 1927 as Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in the New York borough of Harlem, the son of a sailor from Martinique and a Jamaican laborer, he has always seen himself as an upstanding American. And knew early on how to touch racist wounds in social discourse. But on the peaceful, but all the more determined way.
With his honeyed voice and the soft beat of Caribbean sun-drenched calypso, Harry Belafonte has sung his way into the hearts of millions of his compatriots in a sophisticatedly flattering way. But when he then raised his bright tenor against segregation and discrimination against his black fellow human beings, when he made it clear to the white middle class that the USA is still not a gently rocking “Island in the Sun”, but still a community of states of injustice, then he has probably achieved more than many a fighter on a confrontational course.
Harry Belafonte has made many compromises in his long life. intentional. Somehow, of course, he always knew that waiting would pay off. And he was mostly right about that. Also because he had an unerring sense of how far one can allow oneself to be bent in the sometimes merciless entertainment industry. He knew that there is no ideal world, not even that of music, so he adapted and slowly but steadily looked for opportunities for change.
Beyond his artistic merits as a person rooted in the present and an ambassador, he did not become a political divider in a nation that was still torn apart, but a well-respected authority for the possibility of peaceful coexistence, whose voice was also listened to by opposing camps. Because he became an invaluable mark of supreme credibility.
Utopias for everyone: Harry Belafonte
Quelle: Getty Images
Harry Belafonte went a long and difficult way to achieve this, but it was also rewarding early on. He grew up in the black ghetto, returned to Jamaica in 1935 with his mother and his two older brothers for four years. During World War II he served in the US Navy. An experience that benefited his cinematic breakthrough in 1954 as Corporal Joe in Rodgers & Hart’s South American remake of Carmen Jones, the world-famous Bizet opera directed by Otto Preminger. In this groundbreaking contemporary masterpiece of cultural transfer and one of the first mainstream cinematic milestones with a non-white cast, he triumphed as a man, while Dorothy Dandridge, as Carmen, became another female victim of her success.
Many other films, in the end gladly with Robert Altman, followed. Because early on, after going to the theater where he met the black activist Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte wanted to go on stage. Luck and a good nose led him to Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research and to fellow students Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando and Walter Matthau.
The Caribbean is everywhere
In 1950, Belafonte landed a record deal with Capitol Records, but because he didn’t want to sing the typed songs he was assigned, the collaboration quickly ended. As the voice of the West Indies, Belafonte delighted audiences in nightclubs and in front of the radio microphone with his stylistic diversity and his entertainer qualities, which earned him an engagement in the legendary jazz club Village Vanguard.
In 1956 his album “Calypso” with the signature song from “Banana Boat” wrote pop and dance history. Other hits like “Matilda”, “Angelina” or “Haiti Cherie” followed. But the “King of Calypso” not only quickly distanced himself aesthetically with “Jamaica Farewell”, he also enjoyed singing the songs of the Rat Pack, musicals and swing, gospel, pop and songs from the repertoire of the singing civil rights activists.
By the mid-1950s, Belafonte was established as a film star as well as a musician; soon he had his own television show. But even then he broke out of the Caribbean clichés early on, which of course were all too easy to follow. He didn’t become a female Carmen Miranda, his banana boat was always just a metaphor. He led many more well on the long, broad, traditional path of universal American folk songs, because they are fed by many migratory roots.
As a dedicated “world musician”, he used the rapid TV fame as a presenter and door opener for artists as diverse as Miriam Makeba, Bob Dylan, Caterina Valente and Nana Mouskouri. YouTube is full of adorable TV moments from that era. He actively sang anti-segregation when dueting with Petula Clark on NBC. Sometimes protest was that simple. He also sent his daughters to the Windsor Mountain School in Massachusetts, run by the German émigré couple Max and Gertrud Bondy, one of the few mixed-race schools of that era. Alongside his friends Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, he campaigned against apartheid and the Vietnam War.
To old age: Harry Belafonte is happy about a Berlinale prize for the film “Sing Your Song” in Berlin
What: AFP
With more than 150 million records sold, an Emmy in 1960, a Tony Award and many Grammys, Harry Belafonte’s long and happy career can be compared to that of Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley. But unlike these, he became an icon of political conscience. In the early 1980s, he recorded the million-selling single “We Are the World” with Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones for the “USA for Africa” charity initiative “ – and again he was rediscovered by a younger generation.
The Wise Old Man’s late concerts, with their beautiful songs and gentle message, became a cross-generational experience. In 2002, Belafonte released his pet project, The Long Road to Freedom, a five-disc black music anthology that traces the “long road to freedom” of those Americans “who once came as prisoners from Africa.” He also loved rap culture as one of the most important forms of musical expression in the 21st century.
Harry Belafonte passed away peacefully in his New York apartment on April 25. He lived to be 96 years old.
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