Belafonte, Harry

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Harry Belafonte

1937—

Singer, actor, activist

It has been said that in the life and work of entertainer Harry Belafonte, the worlds of music and morality do not collide, but balance harmoniously. In the 1950s Belafonte introduced the colorful, bouncy melodies of calypso music to the United States, and American listeners began swaying to the jaunty Caribbean beat and singing "Day-O" along with the masterful crooner. Since that time, Belafonte has used his visibility as an entertainer to cast a political spotlight on humanitarian causes ranging from world hunger to civil rights to the plight of children in the third world. Belafonte's accomplishments, and the awards bestowed on him in the spheres of entertainment and activism, show a man equally committed to musical excellence and political virtuousness.

Known as the "consummate entertainer," Belafonte was born in New York City in 1927. His parents were West Indian, and he moved with his mother to her native Jamaica when he was a child. In the five years he spent on the island, he not only absorbed the music that was such a vital part of the culture but also observed the effects of colonialism, the political oppression that native Jamaicans had to endure under British rule. "That environment gave me much of my sense of the world at large and what I wanted to do with it," Belafonte was quoted as saying in the Paul Masson Summer Series. "It helped me carve out a tremendous link to other nations that reflect a similar temperament or character."

Was Fascinated by Acting and Singing

Once back in Harlem, another culturally and artistically rich environment, Belafonte became street smart, learning the hard lessons of survival in the big city. When the United States entered World War II, he ended his high school education and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After an honorable discharge, he returned to New York City, where he bounced between odd jobs. His first foray into the world of entertainment came in the late 1940s, when he was given two tickets to a production of the American Negro Theater. He was hooked after one performance. "I was absolutely mes merized by that experience," he told the Ottawa Citizen in 1990. "It was really a spiritual, mystical feeling I had that night. I went backstage to see if there was anything I could do."

His first leading role with the company was in Irish playwright Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. Impressed by the power and message of O'Casey's words, and by the promise of theater in general, Belafonte enrolled in the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research, studying under famous German director Erwin Piscator, whose other students included renowned actors Rod Steiger and Beatrice Arthur.

Belafonte was concerned about the scarcity of work for African-American actors but got a break when, as a class project, he sang an original composition called "Recognition." His audience was spellbound. Among the listeners was the owner of the Royal Roost Nightclub, a well-known Broadway jazz center. Belafonte was offered a two-week stint that, due to such positive reception, blossomed into a twenty-week engagement. At the Roost and later at other clubs, such as the Village Vanguard in New York City's Greenwich Village, Belafonte charmed audiences with his husky-yet-sweet-voiced adaptations of popular and West Indian folk songs.

Recognized Nationally for Acting and Singing

In 1949 Belafonte was approached by representatives of Jubilee Records. Armed with a recording contract and the praise of critics, this bright new talent started making his mark. He first appeared on Broadway in John Murray Anderson's Almanac, for which he won a Tony Award. In the 1954 film Carmen Jones, based on French composer Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, Belafonte played the lead role and endeared himself to a national audience. Throughout the next few decades, he continued to act in films such as Island in the Sun and Uptown Saturday Night and produced television programs such as A Time for Laughter, in which he introduced U.S. audiences to then nationally unknown humorists Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx.

It was in 1956, with the release of his album Calypso, that Belafonte sealed his status as a superstar and consummated America's love affair with Caribbean music. His most famous recordings, "Banana Boat Song" (popularly known as "Day-O") and "Matilda," recall the melodies, rhythm, and spirit of Jamaica and other West Indian cultures. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Belafonte reached into the lore and music of other cultures, most notably those of South America and Africa. He also continued with his celebrated interpretations of American folk ballads and spirituals, but he has always been most closely associated with the zest and spunk of calypso.

Belafonte's Calypso was the first album to sell more than one million copies, a benchmark that led to the establishment of the Grammy Awards. The album was only one of many illustrious firsts in Belafonte's life. He was the African-American man to win an Emmy Award as well as the first African American to work as a television producer. He was also the first entertainer—African American or white—to be named cultural advisor to the Peace Corps by U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

At a Glance …

Born Harold George Belafonte Jr. on March 1, 1927, in New York, NY; son of Harold George and Melvine Love; married Marguerite Byrd, 1948 (divorced); married Julie Robinson, 1957; children: (with Byrd) Adrienne, Shari; (with Robinson) David, Gina. Education: Attended Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research, studying under Erwin Piscator.

Career: Acted in various theater, movie, and television productions, late 1940s—; helped organize We Are the World recording session, 1985; named cultural advisor to the Peace Corps by President John F. Kennedy; Southern Christian Leadership Conference, member of the board of directors; Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Fund, chair; appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, 1987.

Awards: Tony Award, 1953; Emmy Award, 1960; Grammy Award, 1985; U.S. Committee for UNICEF, Danny Kaye Award, 1989; National Medal of the Arts, 1994; Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 2000; Black Entertainment Television's Humanitarian Award, 2006.

Addresses: Office—Belafonte Enterprises Inc., 830 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10019.

Belafonte's success on vinyl and tape has always translated well in his live concerts, where he uses sing-alongs, dialogue with audience members, and a contagious energy and excitement to get the crowds responding jubilantly. Dave Hoekstra wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1990 that Belafonte "sings from discovery and fulfillment…. So when you listen to the Belafonte songbook on a perfect summer night, you know the dignity, poise and spiritual exploration will still be heard long after the voice has passed. That is Harry Belafonte's lasting contribution to American popular music."

Merged Political Activism with Performing Career

As a young boy keenly aware of British domination over the lives of Jamaicans, Belafonte learned a lasting lesson about the power of art in general, and song in particular, to express and shed personal meaning on the physical, psychological, and cultural constraints generated by colonialism. "People living in that sort of oppression are always very creative," he was quoted as saying in the Summer Series magazine. "The environment was terribly musical. People sang while working in the fields, while selling their wares in the streets, in church, during festivals. That background had a great impact on me."

Even though he would always believe that music should be a cherished vehicle for commentary on the human condition, Belafonte recognized in the 1960s that song alone, no matter how politically and moralistically charged, would not right the wrongs suffered by society's disenfranchised people. Taking advantage of the fame garnered from his music and theater successes, Belafonte donned the cape of activist and quickly earned the respect of those who might have worried that he was simply an entertainer dabbling self-servingly in politics.

After World War II, in which he was first exposed to what he viewed as an honorable fight waged on moral grounds, Belafonte found political mentors and ideological inspiration in former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and actor and singer Paul Robeson. He saw in Roosevelt an irrepressible dedication to human rights and the courage to take stands with which mainstream America might have disagreed. Robeson, a trailblazing, African-American entertainer, was an early campaigner against racial segregation and had been blacklisted by the U.S. government for his pro-communist beliefs. Of Roosevelt and Robeson, Belafonte was quoted as saying in the Ottawa Citizen, "Both taught me by example to be resilient and fight for things I believed in even if it could get me into trouble."

Throughout the 1960s, Belafonte's primary ethical focus was on the Jim Crow laws of segregation. He unified cultural elements behind the civil rights marches in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and helped organize the celebrated 1963 Freedom March in Washington, DC, at which his close friend, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered the historic "I Have a Dream" speech. Years earlier, Belafonte had been forced to stop a South Carolina performance at intermission because of rumors that the Ku Klux Klan was intending a violent demonstration. But in viewing the development of American society and the evolution of the civil rights struggle, Belafonte has come to realize that the racism he and others have long decried is evident throughout society's cultural mosaic and not merely in the Klan's vicious epithets and signature white sheets. "There's a lot of racial tension coming out of our communities," he told Summer Series magazine. "There's a tremendous amount of crack and dope in black neighborhoods, which I think is an extension of racial inequalities. Racism has become more insidious, sometimes more clandestine, sometimes more blatant, as in the case of the Skin heads and others who represent the new wave of white, lower-middle-class people who have come together to preach racial violence. It's quite unnerving."

In 1966 Belafonte performed in Paris, France, and Stockholm, Sweden, in the first European-sponsored benefit concert on behalf of King. As a result of his efforts to fight segregation and racism, he was appointed to the board of directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a leading civil rights organization, served as chairman of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Fund, and was named one of the three executors of the King estate after the celebrated leader was assassinated in 1968.

Focused Political Activism on International Issues

In recent years, Belafonte has used his celebrity to draw attention to civil rights issues and injustices on a global scale, particularly in respect to children suffering from malnutrition and sickness. In 1985 Belafonte, with friend Ken Kragen, organized the hugely successful and inspirational We Are the World, which won a Grammy Award, and more important for Belafonte, raised millions of dollars for and heightened an awareness of victims of famine and drought in Africa. An outgrowth of that record was the USA for Africa Foundation, on whose board of directors Belafonte has served with, among others, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, and Kenny Rogers. Belafonte was also deeply involved in Hands Across America, an outgrowth organization benefiting hungry and homeless Americans.

In 1987 Belafonte was appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, only the second American ever to hold the title. His first humanitarian odyssey in that position brought him to Dakar, Senegal, where he served as head of a four-day symposium in which African intellectuals and artists strove to publicize and consider solutions to the variegated problems besetting children on that continent. His commitment to the survival and health of third-world children led Ebony magazine to dub him "The Children's Patron Saint" and a "prime minister of hope," and earned him the 1989 Danny Kaye Award by the U.S. Committee for UNICEF. Vigorously pursuing a UNICEF drive to immunize children in developing counties, Belafonte has been called on frequently to testify before congressional committees. Through a fund bearing his name, Belafonte has opened new cultural exchanges with African nations, enabling African students to pursue an education in the United States.

As an outspoken critic of South Africa's apartheid government, Belafonte orchestrated a burst of artistic, if not political, liberation with the 1988 release of his critically acclaimed album Paradise in Gazankulu. Because of his arrest years earlier during an antiapartheid protest outside the South African embassy in Washington, DC, his advocacy of strict international economic sanctions, and his repeated calls for the release of then imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, Belafonte was considered a persona non grata—unaccepted or unwelcomed—in South Africa and could not go to that country to work on the album. Instead, musicians recorded the music there and the tapes were sent to the United States, where Belafonte added the vocals. Though banned on South African radio, Paradise was praised internationally for beautifully capturing in music the painful and haunting stories and poems describing life in a land infamous for its oppression.

In 1989 Belafonte was one of the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement in the performing arts, arguably the most prestigious award given to artists by the U.S. government. "I couldn't help thinking how much of my life had been spent at odds with these people, with the establishment, and here they were honoring me," he was quoted as telling the Ottawa Citizen. "I've been critical of government actions and I will continue to be critical, and here I was being recognized for my accomplishments. It made me fall in love with America all over again."

Belafonte was a host for the World Summit for Children, which was held in September of 1990 at the United Nations (UN), where world leaders and social workers met to discuss and debate the current state of children's issues. Leaders of the summit produced the World Declaration for the Survival, Protection, and Development of Children, a document that codified the goals of UN members toward protecting children's rights across the globe. The effects of the World Summit translated into direct legislative efforts in many countries to enhance legal and social services for children.

In 1994 he received the National Medal of the Arts for his lifetime achievements in both film and music. He continued performing and acting throughout the 1990s, often winning critical acclaim for his performances. In 1995 he appeared in the racial drama White Man's Burden; he also appeared in the 1996 Robert Altman film Kansas City, in which he portrayed "Seldom Seen," the head of a criminal organization in Altman's stylized homage to Kansas City's underworld of the 1930s. In 2000 Belafonte was honored with a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.

Became a Vocal Critic of Bush Administration

After the election of George W. Bush in 1999, Belafonte emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration. In a 2002 interview with San Diego radio station KFMB-AM, Belafonte likened Secretary of State Colin Powell to a "house slave," who had been allowed entrance to his "master's" house but was still beholden to his master's bidding. Belafonte's remarks brought sharp criticism from both the White House and supporters of the Bush administration, who dismissed Belafonte as a "celebrity liberal" whose accusations were uninformed. The incident elevated Belafonte's activism to the national stage as both Belafonte and Powell were asked to comment on a number of television and radio programs. Belafonte refused to apologize for his characterization of Powell and expanded his criticisms to other African Americans in the administration.

In 2006 Belafonte joined a group of activists and scholars that met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to discuss Chavez's leadership, the state of democracy in Venezuela, and the Bush administration's opposition to Chavez's government. In interviews given during the meeting, Belafonte defended the "socialist revolution" in Venezuela and characterized Bush as a "tyrant" and "terrorist," who was attempting to portray Chavez as a dictator for political benefit.

Despite the controversy surrounding his political activities, Belafonte's activism continued to win him praise from within the African-American community. In 2006 Belafonte was honored by Black Entertainment Television with the Humanitarian Award for his passionate and multifaceted services to African Americans. When he accepted the award, E! Online quoted him as saying, "This award doesn't just touch vanity. It is a validation of what I stand for, what Paul Robeson stood for. It's a validation of what W.E.B. Dubois stood for, what Malcolm X and Dr. King stood for."

Selected discography

Albums

Mark Twain, RCA, 1954.

Calypso (includes "Banana Boat Song"), RCA, 1956.

Belafonte (includes "Matilda"), RCA, 1956.

Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall, RCA, 1960.

To Wish You a Merry Christmas, RCA, 1962.

Homeward Bound, RCA, 1970.

Paradise in Gazankulu, EMI, 1988.

Harry Belafonte: All Time Greatest Hits, RCA, 1988, volumes 2 and 3, 1989.

Belafonte '89, EMI, 1989.

Belafonte '89 (abridged version), EMI, 1990.

Sources

Books

Fogelson, Genia, Harry Belafonte, Holloway, 1980.

Periodicals

Chicago Sun-Times, July 27, 1990.

Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1990.

Ebony, September 1988.

Fun and Gaming, March 1, 1990.

New York Times, March 21, 2006.

Ottawa Citizen, January 13, 1990.

Paul Masson Summer Series, June 1989.

Online

"Belafonte: Bush ‘Greatest Terrorist in the World.’" MSNBC Online,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10767465/ (accessed December 18, 2007).

"Belafonte Won't Back down from Powell Slave Reference," CNN Online,http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/10/15/belafonte.powell/ (accessed December 18, 2007).

Finn, Natalie, "BETs for Blige, West, Foxx and Brown," E! Online, http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid_7f8be5bf-0d96-4a87-abb5-8361c90d9e8e&entry_index (accessed December 18, 2007).

"Powell, Rice Accused of Toeing the Line," Fox News Online,http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,66288,00.html (accessed December 18, 2007).