2023-04-25 19:44:11
Renowned American singer, actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, responsible for popularizing the Caribbean musical style of calypso in the north country, passed away on Tuesday morning from heart failure in New York City.
As reported by the specialized site The Hollywood Reporter, the news was confirmed by its historic spokesman, Ken Sunshine, who added that Harold George Belafonte Jr. -such his birth name– died at his home in Manhattan while in the company of his wife, Pamela.
Born in 1927 and son of Jamaican parents, Belafonte began his career in music in 1949, with a career that stood out for his ability to mix genres such as pop and jazz with sounds from the Caribbean, with some thirty albums published and which included hits such as «The Banana Boat Song» and “Jamaica Farewell”, both belonging to the album «Calypso»which topped the Billboard chart for 31 weeks and became the first LP to sell one million copies in a single year.
With the aim of entering the world of entertainment, the artist enrolled in the famous Actors Studio and in the Acting Workshop of the German theater director and producer Erwin Piscator, where he had as student colleagues figures such as Tony Curtis, Bea Arthur, Marlon Brando y Sidney Poitier -the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor-, with whom he formed a lasting friendship thanks to their shared struggle to make a place for himself in the field.
After interpreting with applause his song “Recognition” As part of his studies, Belafonte considered taking a turn and entering the field of music, landing a contract as a singer of jazz standards in different New York nightclubs Which later led to the acquisition of his own bar, where he leaned towards the folk genre and took the opportunity to combine his acting skills in each presentation.
On that tour, under the wing of the RCA label since 1953 -with whom he worked steadily until the mid-70s-, he also released other hits such as “Mama Look at Bubu” and a version of “Hava Nagila”, starred in el especial «Tonight with Belafonte», which earned him an Emmy; and he recorded two well-received live albums at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960.
He never quite abandoned his original passion for acting, however, and in the early 1950s broke into the big screen with “A Brilliant Path” (1953, with Dorothy Dandridge)which was followed by some controversial roles for the time that he was able to adopt thanks to his star status, such as that of the supposed lover of Joan Fontaine’s character in “Island in the Sun” (1957) or that of a thief associated with a partner racist in “Challenge to Destiny” (1959).
Already crossed by the racial question and dissatisfied with the roles he was offered in Hollywood movies, Belafonte decided to focus on his music, although in the 1970s he appeared once more in feature films such as “Hate on the Prairies” (1972) and “Uptown Saturday Night” (1974) -both co-starring Poitier- and continued over time with work in “White Man’s Burden” (1995, alongside John Travolta), “Kansas City” (1996, by Robert Altman), “Bobby” (2006) and in the acclaimed “The KKKlansman” (2018)which would be his last step in the cinema.
Your concerns regarding the civil rights of their African American compatriots were present both in his musical and acting work, from where he promoted greater participation and integration, but they were also reflected in an active militancy supported by his fame to attract attention to the subject and that linked him to the priest and activist Martin Luther King.
In this sense, Belafonte was one of those responsible for summoning different celebrities for the memorable demonstration in Washington DC of 1963, in which King delivered his historic “I have a dream” speech, in defense of racial peace at the Lincoln Memorial, and later was part of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, where the Afro community asked for the right to vote in rejection of the repression of segregationist policies.
In addition, the artist was one of the main promoters -with Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie and Bruce Springsteen- of the non-profit organization USA for Africa, dedicated to making visible and eradicating famine and disease on that continent, and Best known for the single “We Are the World”, which Quincy Jones produced in 1985.
When accepting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award that the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him in 2014, who was also behind the fight once morest apartheid in South Africa and for the release of Nelson Mandela, he assured: “Along with this trophy, there is another layer that gives this trip this sort of beautiful Hollywood ending. Being recognized by my peers for my work for human and civil rights and for peace powerfully silences the thunder of the enemy.”
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