"Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression.”
–Harry Belafonte
It’s probably not typical for a teenager in California during the early ‘00s to go through a calypso phase, but it happened to yours truly. As I meticulously entered in the information about every song I had in iTunes to keep these mp3 files organized, all the way down to the release year… I became pretty curious about the oldest tracks I had in my library.
There were some 20’s and 30’s jazz albums. Silence from the 1940s. Then some of Belafonte’s more popular songs. The album art itself was a relic of a past era. But the music, in its simplicity and brightness, was still so accessible. It was workers’ music. People’s music. I dug it.
Much later, I would learn about Belafonte’s legacy beyond music- particularly his support for the Civil Rights Movement and his direct friendship with MLK. He bailed him out of the Birmingham Jail. You know. The one from the letter.
I’m not much of a musician, especially these days, but Belafonte's still an interesting and unlikely influence. I want my work to represent the hard-working, everyday person resisting that oppression.
Belafonte