“Each of you has the power, the will and the ability to make a difference in the world we live in. » That was Harry Belafonte’s motto. Bewitching voice and charming physique, the one who was nicknamed “the king of calypso” has just died on Tuesday, at the age of 96, according to several American media.
Born in Harlem on 1is March 1927 of a Jamaican mother and a Martinican father, he had known glory in the 1950s, by the swaying rhythms of “Matilda”, “Day-O”, “Island in the Sun”, “Jamaica Farewell” or “Coconut Woman”.
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This two-step dance, originating in Jamaica, he had discovered when he went there as a child. Before falling madly in love with this syncretic music, with West African influences born in the carnivals of Trinidad and Tobago. An exoticism that will conquer the American public and propel it into the mouthpiece of these melodies that it propagates.
First singer of ballads in cabarets, he managed to impose himself with a popular repertoire that mixes the influences of American variety, Caribbean music and black culture of Harlem. In 1955, he triumphed with the title “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and the album “Calypso” (1956) became the first in history to sell more than one million copies. Harry Belafonte fills the halls with his charisma and his vocal qualities, and his recordings, including six gold records, have worldwide success and will earn him several Grammy Awards from 1960.
These melodies become the springboard for his commitment against racial segregation. From 1949, he began to imagine himself as an actor, making regular appearances in the “Sugar Hill Times” series. It is finally with “Carmen Jones” by Otto Preminger (1954) that he enters the big leagues of the cinema, and continues with “the Coup of the staircase” by Robert Wise (1959), “Kansas City” by Robert Altman (1996), “Buck and his accomplice”, by and with Sidney Poitier (1972) or even “Bobby” by Emilio Estevez (2006) on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Support from Martin Luther King
The artist became the first black actor to play, in 1957, a love story with a white actress in Robert Rossen’s “An Island in the Sun”, and also the first African-American to produce a television show and win a Emmy Award (1959). But the young man is not content to be a symbol. Quickly, he finances the campaign for civil rights and becomes close to Martin Luther King Jr.
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“When people think of activism, they always think it involves sacrifice, but I’ve always seen it as a privilege and an opportunity”he said in 2004 during a speech at Emory University.
In 1963, he even raised $50,000 (the equivalent of almost $500,000 today) to get out of Martin Luther King prison, at a time when artists were pocketing comfortable incomes.
“I could have made 2 or 3 billion and ended up with some cruel addiction, but I chose to be a civil rights fighter instead”he explained in an interview with the “Guardian” in 2007.
Suspicious of politicians, he had met John Kennedy in 1960, inviting the then presidential candidate to his home. He had not at first been convinced by the senator in search of support, reporting later that the ex-president “knew very little about the black community”.
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« We are the World »
Once elected, “JFK” appoints him cultural attaché of the Peace Corps. Later, in 1987, he was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Unicef. He spent time in Africa, notably in Kenya, and campaigned against apartheid in South Africa. In 1988, he dedicated his last album “Paradise in Gazankulu” to this cause.
To unite peoples and fight racism, his main fight, he became the main promoter of “We are the World” sung, in 1985, by 45 American artists raising funds to fight against famine in Ethiopia.
After opposing the war in Iraq, in 2006 he accused President George W. Bush of being a “terrorist”, being no better, according to him, than Osama bin Laden. He also takes controversial positions, getting angry with the heirs of Martin Luther King who criticize in particular his admiration for the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez, or reproaching the wealthy black couple Jay Z and Beyoncé in 2012 for having “turned their backs on social responsibilities”.
