The ping today of a WhatsApp message and my heart wrenching at the news. Harry Belafonte. Gone.
Not that he hadn’t earned his rest at 96, but this was an incandescent beacon of most everything that can be good and right in a man – intelligence, closely considered and courageous political activism, guided by an unwavering moral compass that paused for neither breath nor age, encased in a package of heart-stopping beauty and grace.
Those seductive eyes and husky voice. In his earliest days, undulating hips tightly clad in what were sometimes known as calypso pants, shiny things that triggered dreams. Open-collared shirt clung to smooth muscular chest and the entertainment world hardly knowing what hit it when audiences of every race and class fell panting to his feet and all of it subversive vehicle for changing hearts and minds. Glorying himself but always us as well.
The world must always treasure and celebrate such a gift; and the poignancy of losing him, but 15 months after Sidney Poitier’s passing? Those of us of a certain age, particularly of the African diaspora, will be needing to take a moment to steady ourselves, for these two titans bestrode and uplifted our world. Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, best friends and occasional competitors, born nine days apart, pioneers in challenging and changing dominant attitudes towards Black men by steadfastly refusing to embody either beast or fool: by being themselves and declaring what we all were/could be.
They were Harry and Sidney to us all, family members of whom we were beyond proud, loving them for what they did for us and for the joyous love they had for one another. Having assistant-directed several of his films, I was privileged to know Sidney’s intelligent dignity chased by a mischievous humour fairly well, but Harry’s fire was a more distanced legend to me.
He was known for his legendary support of Martin Luther King and what we all just call the Movement. But my aunt recalled this ambitious young buck luring fellow cast members to his cabin with promises of free food to try out his nightclub act, them all thinking him a bit full of himself, but reasonably talented.
Soon the world was simply wild about Harry and how he worked to circulate and elevate the breadth of African diasporic talent and culture. Talent like Miriam Makeba. Shattering walls in television and films. Encountering resistance but neither stopping nor caving.
I caught the occasional glimpse of Harry and Sidney together. One caramel in colour, the other ebony. Both tall. Comfortable in their skins and with what the world demanded of them. Never shirking before our need for them to always be their very best. Continually taking all breaths away.
I was only eye to eye with Harry once. When was it? One loses track. Six years ago, maybe seven. Some time before I’d written a novel on the Black female trumpet player Valaida Snow. Harry’s youngest daughter, Gina, had expressed interest in acquiring rights. Nothing had come of it, but then I heard that Harry himself would like to meet at his art-filled office in Hell’s Kitchen.
For two hours I was led through my tale by those probing eyes and that whispering voice, walking stick by his side but charisma undimmed, and I felt myself truly blessed to be in the presence of a king: one who will now rest with our deepest gratitude and profound love.
Candace Allen is a writer and film-maker
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