adminNEW YORK. – Harry Belafonte, the Jamaican-American singer, songwriter, actor and activist whose music helped break Caribbean music through to a global audience, and whose humanitarian efforts changed the world, has died.
He was 96.
Representatives for the musician confirmed in a press release that Belafonte died yesterday morning “of congestive heart failure at his New York home at the age of 96, his wife Pamela [Frank] by his side.”
Last year, the “Jump in the Line” performer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category. He was the oldest living person to join the organization.
In one of his final acts of charity, the singer celebrated his 94th birthday in March 2021 with a star-studded virtual party that raised money for The Gathering for Justice, a social justice organization he founded in 2005.
The Gathering for Harry featured performances and guest appearances from entertainers and religious and political leaders like Common, Danny Glover, Chuck D, Bernie and Jane Sanders, Stacey Abrams, Aloe Blacc, Tamika D. Mallory, Rev. Al Sharpton and Jackie Cruz.
Born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem, New York on March 1, 1927, Belafonte spent his youth shuffling between the city and his mother’s native Jamaica (his father was from Martinique, and he had two White grandparents).
“My mother took us there to avoid the pressures and the pains of New York,” he told The Scotsman in 2012.
“She took us there because it was easier to raise a child in the village than it was on the streets of New York.”
After a brief stint in the Navy, he befriended Paul Robeson, who would go on to become his mentor, and began his recording career in 1949 after working his way through the New York City club scene.
Though he began as a jazz act, and then a pop singer, he’d started performing folk music by 1950, and soon, his star was on the rise, according to a 1996 New Yorker article.
Following the release of his first album in 1954, Belafonte expanded his talents to the silver screen, breaking racial barriers in critically acclaimed hits like Carmen Jones, which co-starred Dorothy Dandridge. He also won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway musical Almanac.
Though his marriage to first wife Margurite crumbled around that time (“I just found the show-biz world to be shallow, and false,” she told the New Yorker), Belafonte was on the cusp of a breakthrough.
In 1956, he released Calypso, which topped the Billboard charts and sold more than 1 million copies, earning him the nickname “King of Calypso.”
The album contained timeless hits such as “Day-O (Banana Boat Song),” a traditional Jamaican folk song that would go on to become Belafonte’s signature track. Belafonte’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. – msn
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter