"I was good as a singer, but I wasn't the best, and I'd known that from the start," Belafonte wrote in "My Song." "I had to rely on my acting. Not bad for an entertainer who started out as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. In virtually every live performance, Belafonte's audiences would enthusiastically join in the song's call-and-response melody and refrain.Įven more impressive, "Day-O," once sung by Jamaican banana workers, helped make "Calypso" the first album to sell more than 1 million copies. Suddenly, America was mad for the lilting, rhythmic sound of the Caribbean islands. "Day-O" was an instant hit and became Belafonte's signature song.
No one who heard it in the mid-1950s could ever forget Belafonte's warm, slightly husky voice on "The Banana Boat Song," better known as "Day-O" for the opening lyrics of the Jamaican song he recorded in 1956 on his third record, "Calypso." (Composer Irving Burgie, who co-wrote “Day-O" and eight of the 11 songs on "Calypso," died Nov. Harry Belafonte song 'Day-O' ('The Banana Boat Song') brought him to fame It made a difference to his musical influences and his later life as a social justice activist that he grew up shuttling between New York and Kingston, Jamaica, still struggling to overcome its colonial past, he said in his 2011 book, "My Song: A Memoir."īelafonte burst into the American consciousness thanks to a Jamaican folk song. His admiration for his mentor Paul Robeson (the African American concert artist and stage and film actor famous for his civil rights activism and smeared as a communist) also raised eyebrows.īelafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem in 1927, the biracial son of biracial parents, both of whom were born in Jamaica. foreign policy and his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro. He did that in a characteristically idiosyncratic fashion, earning admiration for his humanitarian work to relieve hunger and fight cancer, and scorn for his vocal opposition to U.S. I was an activist who became an artist," Belafonte wrote in his 2011 memoir. "Ever since my mother had drummed it into me, I'd felt the need to fight injustice wherever I saw it, in whatever way I could." "I wasn't an artist who became an activist. But his civil rights work in the 1960s and his anti-apartheid work in the 1980s will be just as enduring. He was 96.īelafonte died Tuesday at his home in New York of congestive heart failure, representative Paula Witt said in a statement Tuesday.īelafonte will be remembered as one of the most popular entertainers of the 20th century, as a singer, musician and actor. In the dinner scene, the guests become possessed and sing and dance to the song.įor further information about the song "The Banana Boat Song", check out Wikipedia.Harry Belafonte, the "King of Calypso" who became one of America's endearing and enduring civil rights activists into his 10th decade, has died. The song is perhaps best known for being used in the comedy film Beetle Juice.
Tally Man, tally me banana/ Daylight come and we wanna go home"). Song lyrics were written by Ivrine Burgie from the island of Barbados.ĭaylight has come, the shift is over and they want their work to be counted up so that they can go home (this is the meaning of the lyric "Come, Mr. The first recorded version was took place in 1952 when Trinidadian singer Edric Conner who along with his band "The Caribbean's" recorded this song onto his album "Songs From Jamaica "and named the song "Day De Light". This song was also frequently sung by dock workers who worked during the dark shift loading bananas onto ships. The melody was very much a calypso style of singing but different locals improvised their own lyrics from time to time often their most common reference "daylight come and we wan" go home". The most interesting thing about this folk song is that it was originally sung by the banana field workers of Jamaica. The origins of "The Banana Boat Song" are not known completely and it's the same for its author but we know for sure that this is a Jamaican folk song. It's six foot, seven foot, eight foot BUNCH!ĭay, me say day, me say day, me say day.
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