RIP Harry Belafonte
- Thread starter Mr. Met
- Start date
fuck
mods merge these threads
Harry Belafonte, Music Legend And Civil Rights Activist, Dies
The “King of Calypso” never stopped speaking out for progressive causes.
RIP
DAAMMMMMNNNN !!!!
RIP
RIP
RIP King
It was Sidney Poitier and now him, so sad........blessings to him and his family.
Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, "Jump in the Line", and "Jamaica Farewell". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He also starred in several films, including Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).
Belafonte considered the actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and he was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. As he later recalled, "Paul Robeson had been my first great formative influence; you might say he gave me my backbone. Martin King was the second; he nourished my soul."[3] Throughout his career, Belafonte was an advocate for political and humanitarian causes, such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement and USA for Africa. From 1987 until his death, he was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.[4] He was a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush presidential administrations. Belafonte acted as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues.[5]
Belafonte won three Grammy Awards (including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award), an Emmy Award,[6] and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards[7] and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category and was the oldest living person to have received the honor.[8]
Early life
Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.[9] at Lying-in Hospital on March 1, 1927, in Harlem, New York, the son of Jamaican-born parents Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef, and Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper.[10][11][12][13][14][15] His mother was the child of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father, and his father was the child of a Black American mother and a Dutch-Jewish father of Sephardic Jewish descent. Harry, Jr. was raised Catholic.[16]From 1932 to 1940, Belafonte lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. Upon returning to New York City, he attended George Washington High School[17] after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II.[13] In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also became friends with Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play.[18] At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theater. He subsequently received a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1954). He also starred in the 1955 Broadway revue 3 for Tonight with Gower Champion.
He died at age 95 on April 25, 2023 at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, said Ken Sunshine, his longtime spokesman.
I just saw this.
Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives. Some people add something to the Earth they leave behind when they pass and Harry Belafonte was one of those people.
How involved he was in the fight for civil rights is something that cannot be overlooked when you mention the name Harry Belafonte. Black people today, everyone actually, will have no idea the amount of work and the sacrifices he made for all of us.
It's bigger than Geechie Dan Buford. May he rest in peace
Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives. Some people add something to the Earth they leave behind when they pass and Harry Belafonte was one of those people.
How involved he was in the fight for civil rights is something that cannot be overlooked when you mention the name Harry Belafonte. Black people today, everyone actually, will have no idea the amount of work and the sacrifices he made for all of us.
It's bigger than Geechie Dan Buford. May he rest in peace
RIP
