Harry Belafonte, the dashing singer, actor and activist who became an indispensable supporter of the civil rights movement, has died.
Article on CNN can be found here.
Article on CNN can be found here.
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Harry Belafonte dies at 96
- Thread starter Kahikina
- Start date
Sadly, this does not surprise me. A few years ago I started listing all the performers who I'd love to see live (kind of a bucket list, although I hate that term) and Belafonte was near the top. I checked and learned he'd retired from live performance more than a decade before and had practically vanished from public life. Given his former inclination as a very public activist and performer, plus his advanced age, I feared he wouldn't be with us much longer.
Most assume he got his start with calypso but he was first and foremost a folk singer--calypso was only ever a side quest for him. Although by the 1950s calypso had spread throughout the Caribbean, it was primarily a Trinidad musical form, and calypsonians had a hierarchical title structure attached to their stage names--Lord Invader, Lord Flea, etc. I always respected the fact that Belafonte was never comfortable with U.S. media dubbing him the "King of Calypso." Even though he was raised partly in Jamaica he considered himself something of an outsider to Trinidadian culture and didn't want to claim and define something that wasn't his. That degree of humility in the face of his massive chart success is impressive, to say the least.
On a less serious note, I've always wondered what Belafonte thought of Stan Freberg's hilarious Banana Boat send-up:
Most assume he got his start with calypso but he was first and foremost a folk singer--calypso was only ever a side quest for him. Although by the 1950s calypso had spread throughout the Caribbean, it was primarily a Trinidad musical form, and calypsonians had a hierarchical title structure attached to their stage names--Lord Invader, Lord Flea, etc. I always respected the fact that Belafonte was never comfortable with U.S. media dubbing him the "King of Calypso." Even though he was raised partly in Jamaica he considered himself something of an outsider to Trinidadian culture and didn't want to claim and define something that wasn't his. That degree of humility in the face of his massive chart success is impressive, to say the least.
On a less serious note, I've always wondered what Belafonte thought of Stan Freberg's hilarious Banana Boat send-up: