The world lost a giant this week. In his 96 years on this planet, Harry Belafonte didn’t just leave a mark – he blasted the landscape, carved and etched roads and paths others could walk down, as activists and as artists. He loved music and it loved him, but the fight for civil rights became the calling into which he poured his intellect, his clarity of purpose and his impatience with injustice. He had a voice and he used it. His friend Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. I think that’s true, but only if, like Dr King and Harry Belafonte, we grab ahold of it and pull. It was one of the honours of my life to know Harry Belafonte, and he taught me one of the most important lessons of my life – while tying his shoes.
I am sitting on Harry ’s bed. There is only one chair in this small hotel room, and Bob Geldof is sitting on it as we watch our host get dressed. I recall the old French proverb “No man is great in the eyes of his valet”, but Harry Belafonte is great even when he’s pulling on his pants. What am I doing here? His backing band once included Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He is the king of calypso; he sang “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)”, a track released on the first-ever million-selling album. He’s also a lifelong troublemaker for equality. And so good-looking he probably never had to check himself in a mirror.
