Singer Harry Belafonte used his platform to help break down racial barriers

“Get them to sing your song and they will want to know who you are, and if they’ve made that first step, we can find a solution to hate.”

This is the mantra that Harry Belafonte lived by, according to his Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame introduction; a summary of an artist who used his platform in entertainment to help break down racial barriers in the world of culture and beyond.

As a singer and performer, Belafonte was a pioneer who helped popularise Caribbean music in the 1950s. Best known for his trademark song Banana Boat (Day-O), he was the first solo artist, of any genre, to sell a million copies of an album in a year.

As an activist, he was a civil rights campaigner who worked with Martin Luther King Jr on his “I Have A Dream” speech, the culmination of the march on Washington in 1963, and organised the USA For Africa single We Are The World, featuring artists including Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and Bruce Springsteen, in 1985.

He was also the founder of Sankofa, a US social justice charity which focuses on issues of injustice that disproportionately affect the “disenfranchised, the oppressed, the underserved”.

The Grammy, Emmy and Tony winning star died aged 96 of congestive heart failure at his New York home on Tuesday, with his wife by his side, according to a spokesperson.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame with an “early influence” award in November 2022, Belafonte was the oldest living star to receive the honour – he is likely the only recipient of both this status and the Martin Luther King Jr nonviolent peace prize.

Born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr in Harlem in New York City in 1927, to parents from the Caribbean, he moved back to his mother’s native Jamaica as a child as she believed it was a safer place for her son to grow up.

Kingston was “an environment that sang”, and it was there that he was exposed to the calypso music that would become part of his sound. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Belafonte’s mother brought him back to Harlem but he struggled with dyslexia and left high school early.

He ended up enlisting in the US navy, serving for just under two years as a munitions loader before returning to New York, working in packaging in the city’s fashion district, and as a caretaker’s assistant.

How he entered the entertainment world

It was by chance that the world of entertainment opened up; given a ticket to a production at Harlem’s American Negro Theatre (ANT) as payment for carrying out some maintenance work on an apartment, the young Belafonte caught the bug.

In 1945, he joined the Dramatic Workshop of the New School of Social Research, under the tutelage of renowned German director Erwin Piscator and alongside fellow students such as Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, Rod Steiger and Tony Curtis. It was also here that he met Paul Robeson, the man who inspired his social activism.

At the same time, Belafonte pursued his love of jazz music – making his first professional appearance with none other than Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Tommy Potter and Al Haig as his “back-up band”.

Embracing the New York folk scene in the 1950s, Belafonte “created a new repertoire of folk songs, work songs, and calypsos, providing an authentic and dignified look at black life”, according to his Hall Of Fame induction.

‘The King of Calypso’

He signed with RCA Victor in 1953 and his first widely released single, Matilda, came out that year. But it was his third album, Calypso, released three years later, that would be his real breakthrough; it was the singer’s second to top the Billboard chart and the record that would become the first to sell a million copies. The album introduced Caribbean folk music to American audiences, who dubbed Belafonte the King of Calypso.

It is a style that has had a lasting impact on modern music, with artists including Gotye, Lil’ Wayne, and Jason Derulo all sampling The Banana Boat Song in recent years. Belafonte’s version of Jump In The Line (Shake, Senora) also had a recent resurgence, going viral on TikTok in 2020, and featuring in the 1988 film Beetlejuice and its 2019 Broadway musical production before that.

Other hits included the Christmas song Mary’s Boy Child (covered by Boney M in 1978), Island In The Sun, and Jamaica Farewell.

Throughout his career in entertainment, Belafonte worked across numerous fields. According to his Sankofa profile, he was the first black producer in television, winning an Emmy for his CBS production of Tonight With Belafonte.

Gongs for stage performances

As a stage actor, he won a Tony award for his Broadway performance in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, and on the silver screen he starred in films including Carmen Jones, which featured an all black cast, in 1954, and alongside the late Sidney Poitier in Buck And The Preacher in 1972.

Belafonte’s career in showbiz helped provide a platform for his activism. He had met a young Martin Luther King Jr in the early 1950s and had also been inspired by Robeson. “Belafonte’s global popularity and his commitment to our cause is a key ingredient to the global struggle for freedom and a powerful tactical weapon in the civil rights movement here in America,” King later said of his friend. “We are blessed by his courage and moral integrity.”

After King’s assassination in 1968, Belafonte served as an executor of his estate and chaired the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Fund, according to the Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute. In 2013, Belafonte and King’s family were involved in a legal dispute over possession of some of the late civil rights leader’s documents, but the matter was settled the following year.

Writing in the Guardian in 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of King’s famous “I Have A Dream speech”, Belafonte said: “One of my abiding memories of the day was something I will probably never experience again: such a tide of people leaving with such a sense of satisfaction and hope. That was America at its greatest.”

In 1960, he was appointed by then-president John F Kennedy to be the cultural adviser to the Peace Corps, a role he served in for five years. In 1987, he became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, two years after organising the We Are The World single to raise funds for those affected by war, drought and famine in Africa. It is a role for which he “set a high standard”, the charity has said. He was also active in the anti-apartheid movement.

In 2013, Belafonte acted as a grand marshal of New York City’s Pride parade and in 2017, he advised on the Women’s March on Washington, which took place the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president.

Awards and accolades throughout the years include the national medal of the arts from then-US president Bill Clinton in 1994, the Ronald McDonald House Charities’ award of excellence in recognition of his humanitarian work, the Nelson Mandela courage award, the Audrey Hepburn humanitarian award for 25 years of service to UNICEF, and the Spingarn Medal – the highest award given by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People).

He has also received honorary degrees from City University of New York, Spellman College in Atlanta, Tufts University, Brandeis University, Long Island University, Bard College and Columbia University, among others.

In 2020, the performer’s archive was acquired by the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture – a collection including audio-visual recordings, letters, manuscripts and photos documenting his life and career over more than 70 years.

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His extensive family

Married three times, he leaves behind his wife, Pamela, four children – Adrienne, Shari, David, and Gina – eight grandchildren and his great-grandchildren.

Belafonte had told his story in his memoir My Song, released in 2011 alongside a documentary, Sing Your Song, that launched at the same time. The film premiered at the Sundance Festival, backed by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.

So many have described Belafonte as an inspiration and hailed his barrier-breaking achievements. But as Redford simply summed up: he was a man whose story should be told for generations to come.

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