Musician, singer, actor and human rights campaigner Harry Belafonte died on Tuesday at his home in New York, the New York Times reported.
Belafonte, among other things, brought the music of the Caribbean, Calypso, to the attention of a wide audience. It was influenced by both France and West Africa. Among his most famous songs is Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).
Belafonte’s 1956 album Calypso is reportedly the first solo artist’s album to sell more than a million copies.
A couple of years earlier, Belafonte won the Tony Award as the first African-American. It was for a Broadway musical.
Six years later, he won an Emmy Award for his TV music show, also the first African-American to do so. He also won three prestigious Grammys in the music industry.
But apart from being an artist and actor, Belafonte was also known for his work as a human rights activist. He fought, among other things, against the policy of racial segregation, apartheid in South Africa.
– Activism is thought to require some sacrifice, but for me it has been a privilege and an opportunity, he said in his speech in 2004.
Belafonte also participated in the world-famous charity song We Are The World in 1985, which raised millions for the famine victims in Ethiopia.
Belafonte was born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York, where his mother and father had moved from Martinique, Jamaica.
– Even though there were gangs and gang wars in Harlem, there was always an interpreter in everything. We didn’t beat our mothers or the mothers in the neighborhood. We didn’t rob anyone, and we didn’t steal. There was hardly any drugs in circulation. They were not approved, Belafonte told CBS in 1993.
He died at his home in Manhattan, New York at the age of 96 with his wife Pamela by his side.
*Sources: AFP, Reuters*