Categorized | Music, Reviews

Harry Belafonte’s An Evening With Harry Belafonte and Friends

Posted on 19 April 2007

This was a live performance, and if you can ever see one on video, do.  He’s an artist who has lost nothing with age.  This is the best performance by him I’ve heard yet.  The precise, expert, varied arrangements and accompaniment combine smoothness and pep in an almost flawless production.  If I could make one change, I’d eliminate one of the two songs by Richard Bona, the

Cameroon guest artist, but it’s still a fantastic recording.  Best songs are many, but I select “We Are the Wave,” “Skin to Skin,” Matilda,” “Dangerous Times,” “Try to Remember,”

Jamaica Farewell” (done completely differently than I’ve ever heard him do it before), and “Day-O.”  He grew up in

New York, served in the

US navy in World War II, then went to a dramatic workshop at

New

School of Social Research with classmates like Walter Matthau, Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando.  But being black kept doors closed to him, and in music he found opportunity, along with Dizzie Gillespie, Billie Holliday and others.  Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie, Mahalia Jackson and others influenced him.  He has since involved in his concerts international artists Nana Mouskouri from

Greece, Ladysmith Black Mambazo from

South Africa, Odetta from

America, Youssou N’Dour from

Senegal and many other people.  Harry Belafonte is now a world performer—Japanese sing “Day-O” (The Banana Boat Song), Germans sing “Hava Nagila” (led by an African-American with

Caribbean roots), and Carnegie Hall has seen command and repeat performances.

« Cecilia Bartoli’s A Portrait
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