He was famous for a song, the “Banana Boat Song,” which was a hit everywhere in 1956, but a number one hit in one country: Germany. With this, Harry Belafonte explained a genre, calypso. And at the same time he explained the world.
He was born Harold George Bellananfanti Jr. on March 1, 1927 in Harlem, the son of a sailor from Martinique and a laborer from Jamaica. At the age of eight he moved to Jamaica with his mother and two older brothers, but was in the American Navy during World War II. After the war he became enthusiastic about music and theater. He saw the black freedom fighter Paul Robeson in a play – then took part in the “Dramatic Workshop” of the New School For Social Research, which was led by the German theater maker Erwin Piscator. Piscator was a legend, and in his class at the time were Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis and Walter Matthau. American post-war cinema.
Belafonte’s sympathies were divided: in 1950 he got a recording contract, rejected commercial songs and pursued his passion for the folk songs of the West Indies and jazz. The Village Vanguard club – where Barbra Streisand later had her first performances – in Manhattan hired him. As an actor, he landed a role in the 1955 film “Carmen Jones,” Otto Preminger’s version of George Bizet’s “Carmen.” In 1957 he released “Island In The Sun,” another calypso hit. But Belafonte did not pursue acting or music consistently.
He became the ambassador for human rights.
Back in the 1950s, he supported a scholarship for Africans who could study in the USA – one scholarship recipient was the Kenyan Barack Obama Sr., the father of the future president. With Martin Luther King, Belafonte organized the March on Washington in 1963, with Charlton Heston in the front row. He conferred with John F. Kennedy. Harry Belafonte was world famous, and he used the stage to fight for his causes. He was friends with Joachim Fuchsberger, whom he met on his television show. And he was a friendly, an interested, a reliable man. The moderator Peter Urban remembers in his autobiography that Belafonte wanted to continue a conversation in the 80s the next day.
The later project “USA For Africa” was an initiative of Belafonte, who approached Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones with the plan of a benefit song. They were convinced: “We Are The World” came about in 1985. Bob Dylan sang along – Belafonte had encouraged him as a young singer in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s.
Belafonte only rarely appeared in films. He starred with Sidney Poitier in his 1971 film “Buck And The Preacher,” and in 1974 he starred alongside Poitier and Bill Cosby in “Uptown Saturday Night.” He always thought Poitier was better than himself. And he didn’t accept any more roles. Ironically, the erratic director Robert Altman brought him back for “The Player” in 1992 and then made “Pret-A-Porter” (1994) and “Kanas City” (1996) with him. Spike Lee hired him for “BlacKkKlansman” in 2018 – Harry Belafonte’s last appearance in a film.
What Belafonte loved most of all was the anthology of black music since the 17th century that he compiled starting in 1954: The Long Road To Freedom, released on five CDs in 2002. It could have been 50 or 500 CDs.
But Harry Belafonte was a man of measure and centre, an artist of kindness and reason. The man everyone loved died at the age of 96 in Manhattan, the place of the global citizen.