Harry Belafonte reportedly died on April 25 at his home in Manhattan. He was 96. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his spokesman Ken Sunshine.
Born to Jamaican immigrants, Mr Belafonte spent his childhood living in poverty in Harlem during the Great Depression before becoming a significant Black crossover success in the music industry.
As a movie, television, and stage star for five decades, he continued to break down numerous barriers. His work as both an artist and a humanitarian regularly crossed over, which was in line with his view that “the role of art isn’t just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.”
Bernice King, daughter of Dr Martin Luther King, shared a picture of Belafonte at her father’s funeral and said that he “showed up for my family in very compassionate ways. In fact, he paid for the babysitter for me and my siblings.” The Beninese-French musician Angélique Kidjo called Belafonte “the brightest star in every sense of that word. Your passion, love, knowledge and respect for Africa were unlimited.”
In 1954, he issued his debut record, which was a collection of classic folk tunes. His third album, Calypso, which featured songs from his Jamaican ancestry the next year, outperformed his second, Belafonte, which peaked at No. 1 in the new US Billboard album list in March 1956. It was the first record to sell more than a million copies in the US and introduced the upbeat calypso sound to many Americans.
Harry Belafonte cause of death
At the age of 96, Harry Belafonte passed away from congestive heart failure at his residence in Manhattan’s Upper West Side on April 25, 2023.
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