He was known as the King of Calypso. The sounds of his Caribean homeland of Jamaica were infused in every song. Now Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96.
He died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said publicist Ken Sunshine.
Born in Harlem on March 1, 1927, Belafonte’s early years were spent living between there and Jamaica, where he briefly lived with one of his grandmothers.
He was a consummate activist and close personal friend of Martin Luther King jr. In Spike Lee’s 2018 film “BlacKkKlansman,” he was fittingly cast as an elder statesman schooling young activists about the country’s past.
Belafonte had been a major artist since the 1950s. He won a Tony Award in 1954 for his starring role in John Murray Anderson’s “Almanac” and five years later became the first Black performer to win an Emmy for the TV special “Tonight with Harry Belafonte.”
Here’s one of his classic songs, Day-O, which regained popularity when it was used in 1988’s Beetlejuice.