Belafonte…true lover of Caribbean culture

EDISON HOLDER

It was the evening of May 27, 1987, and Desperadoes Steel Orchestra, led by the illustrious Pat Bishop, had just conquered the mighty Carnegie Hall, the colossus of concert venues, leaving the usually reserved audience, the cream of the New York upper crust, in uproar.

We were backstage, ecstatic and basking in the moment when a tall, handsome man, his youthful look belying his 60 years, walked in, grinning from ear to ear. I recognised him immediately as the legendary American singer, actor, civil rights icon, Harry Belafonte, and walked over to greet him and to get a photo for the Tuesday edition of TnT Mirror, of which I was the editor.

Two other band members, Fitzroy Alexander and Denzil Botus, joined us, and New York-based Trinidadian photographer, Mervyn Bamby, who was with us capturing the celebration, came over and snapped a picture of the four of us, and later a group shot of the band and Belafonte.

Belafonte of Jamaican ancestry would tell the band after, according to Trinidadian journalists Dalton Narine and Rick Howard, that it took him 40 years to get to Carnegie Hall, adding that Desperadoes “made it and were super.” And to Bishop, he said the band didn’t know what it had done for black people.

Known for his deep love of Caribbean music, given voice through his Calypso album of 1956, one could interpret the statement to mean that a group of predominantly Afro-Trinbagonians, playing the classics on steeldrum instruments created by the hands and minds of Trinidadians was special, and awesome, and noteworthy, considering the scourge of slavery, and the colonial history of the Caribbean, and that traditionally, the classics had been played by the European symphony orchestra of strings and horns.

But on that evening, 40-plus members of Desperadoes, without scores in front of them, stood behind sleek chrome-plated and silver-painted drums and did excellent readings of two well-known European operas (Russian Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and German-French man, Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld), proving that the inventions of the descendants of slaves were authentic and versatile, no flash in the pan.

Belafonte’s sentiments backstage were obviously delivered with a sense of West Indian pride, being the son of Jamaican immigrants in New York, and as a black man born and raised in the United States, where his musical abilities and tastes were seen as limited to jazz, blues and rhythm and blues.

But long before he expressed his appreciation of Desperadoes’ sensational performance, Belafonte had been pushing Caribbean music in the United States and around the world.

His 1956 album, Calypso, featured songs delivered with a lilting calypso rhythm and in Caribbean dialect, among them his signature Banana Song (aka Day O), Jamaica Farewell, Brown Skin Girl and The Jack Ass Song, an album which sold over one million copies.

He also recorded Matilda and performed Lord Melody’s Mama Look a Boo Boo Dey with the great American Crooner, Nat King Cole, in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

Though he was often referred to as the King of Calypso, Belafonte never embraced the title, acknowledging, perhaps, that the art form originated in Trinidad, where the practitioners aspired to the title of Calypso King and Queen in annual competitions.

Nonetheless, Belafonte popularised the art form in the United States and beyond in the 1950s and continued to do so throughout his life, proving that he was a true lover and ambassador of Caribbean culture.

With his passing on April 25, the United State and the world have lost a cultural and civil rights titan.

Edison Holder is a former Trinidad and Tobago journalist and author of Desperadoes Musical Conquerors