I wasn't altogether surprised when news of Harry Belafonte's death broke. That's not to say I was expecting it; but he was ninety-six – born the same year as my grandmother, who died ten years ago. He lived as full a life as anyone could hope to live. Naturally, the news overflowed with stories of his activism during and after the Civil Rights Movement. I remember seeing an old picture of him with Charlton Heston and Sidney Poitier, on the Internet a long time ago, when the three of them were among the crowd that had marched to the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King, Jr., to hear him give his famous "I have a dream" speech. I imagine Gore Vidal would have been tickled by Charlton Heston's association with a movement so progressive, considering his reported aversion to entertaining any hint of the homoerotic relationship between Ben-Hur and Messala that Gore Vidal tried to ram through into the screenplay for Ben-Hur four years before. Harry Belafonte, on the other hand, was nothing if not consistent.
I think I was five when my dad brought home a CD version of his album Calypso. Songs like “Day-O”, “Jamaica Farewell”, and the “Jack-ass Song” filled my childhood. Others, like “Man Piaba", I wasn’t quite old enough to understand, but I could tell they were funny. This was among the first albums I ported over to my Zune. I still have a soft spot for Microsoft’s long-vanquished challenger to the iPod.
Listening to Harry Belafonte now, I’m struck by the beauty of his voice, especially in his more somber and tender songs. Weirdly I got an urge to check out his music Spotify after many years a few weeks ago, and then he died not too long after. I’m reminded of how I picked up my first Gore Vidal novel (Lincoln) just weeks before Gore Vidal’s death. Naturally, I had no premonition of either event.
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