Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 11, 2005|Volume 34, Number 11

Harry Belafonte

Famed singer tells of his
determination to voice his views

Even though there have been efforts to silence him because of his politics, performer Harry Belafonte told a Yale audience that he is determined to continue to speak out about the important issues facing the nation.

Visiting as a Chubb Fellow on Nov. 1, Belafonte spoke to a packed crowd at Battell Chapel. His velvety voice, somewhat hoarse with age, spun out the unusual version of the American dream that was his life and explained how he came to find the values that anchor him. He spoke of the promise of democracy and his love for America, as well as the obligation to hold accountable "those who sit in the seats of power."

Blacklisted in the 1950s by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee under Senator Joseph McCarthy because of his association with left-leaning artists and activists, Belafonte warned that today, "Corporate America is on the march again."

Born to an immigrant Jamaican woman, Belafonte spent his childhood traveling between Harlem and the West Indies. Despite his mother's emphasis on the importance of education, Belafonte rebelled, joined a street gang and dropped out of high school.

As a teenager, he recalled, he was stirred by Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement, inspired by newsreels of Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie, but appalled by the grotesque portrayal of Africans in Tarzan movies of the 1920s. The disparity taught him "the way in which truth can be distorted and the way in which truth can be manipulated by people intent on mischief," he said.

Service in World War II gave Belafonte a chance to "escape the degradations of the ghetto" and taught him self discipline, he told his audience. His return to civilian life, however, brought deep disillusionment, he said. "There was no generosity of spirit extended to the returning soldiers of color, and America was more racist than before I left."

He had no skills and took a job as a janitor's assistant. Then one day, someone gave him tickets to the Schomburg Theater in Harlem as a gratuity. Watching the American Negro Theater Company perform was a spiritual experience, he said. "It was the first important revelation of my life. I volunteered for everything in that theater. ... My life was transformed. For the first time, I had a need to know, to be approved of." Members of the company at that time included Sidney Poitier, Ozzie Davis and Rubie Dee, he noted.

Using the G.I. Bill, he enrolled in the drama program at the New School for Social Research. His fellow students included Marlin Brando, Rod Steiger, Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis and Bea Arthur. He studied with and "became a disciple of" Paul Robeson, he said.

After hours, Belafonte hung out at the Royal Roost jazz club, where, on a slow night, the musicians mingled with the audience. Those musicians, he noted, included Max Roach, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

One night those two worlds came together when he invited some of the jazzmen to attend a drama workshop performance of "Of Mice and Men," in which he had a part as interlude singer. Based on what they heard, the jazzmen asked Belafonte to sing at the jazz club -- his first-ever job singing in public. He sang jazz standards, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly protest songs and found "suffering, joy, wit, richness of text" in the words, he said. "The songs flowed through me." When he began to sing the songs of Jamaica and other folk traditions, he added, he discovered his calling.

His debut calypso album was the first recording ever to sell more than a million copies in a year.

With success came opportunity, said Belafonte. "The universe opened up and I was exposed to power at my disposal. 'What to do with it?' was the question." His answer, he told the audience, was to use his voice to bring people together, to give hope and joy -- and to speak out against wrong. He described singing "Havana Gila" to 50,000 Germans in Berlin, and marveled, "Imagine a black American singing a song of the Jews to Germans, only a few years after the war!" He sang songs of peace in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his songs were sung in South Africa by prisoners of the anti-apartheid movement.

Belafonte's politics made him, for a time, unemployable, due to the McCarthy hearings, he noted, adding that he persisted and feels that his goal has been to "help to put light in darkness."

These days, Belafonte told the audience, he is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and an opponent of the political mind-set in America that leads government "to build more prisons than schools." He noted that he recently had a talk cancelled by people who didn't want to hear what he had to say but believes that keeping quiet on such matters is tantamount to betraying the country he loves.

"I have decided that I will not be charged with patriotic treason," he said.

-- By Gila Reinstein

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