Harry Belafonte remembered by David Lammy
For me, growing up in the 1970s in inner-city London, in Tottenham, there were a few black American global figures that entered your life and just brought so much colour and vibrancy. And I only really now understand this as an adult, of course, but my parents came alive, too. Our whole parochial existence suddenly became so much bigger at these moments. And there were only a handful of people who could do that. Sidney Poitier was one; the Jackson Five and Diana Ross were others. And then there was the singer and actor Harry Belafonte.
My introduction to Harry was in the words: “Daylight come and me wan’ go home” from his 1956 version of Day-O (The Banana Boat Song). It was on vinyl, playing in our terraced house. I remember my parents – who would have been working so hard, struggling to make ends meet in London – walking around rather lightly. His music would have taken them back to village life in the Caribbean. It was a backdrop to that Windrush era.
There was so much in his story that chimed with my own
So for me to meet him and to spend time with him, when he came to the UK in the summer of 2012 to publicise his memoir My Song, was really special. I interviewed him twice over the week or so he was here: first at the Hay festival and then at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham. Oh my God, his use of language: Harry was in his 80s then but was so erudite and articulate. You were in the room not just with him, but with Paul Robeson, with Maya Angelou, with James Baldwin.
There was so much in his story that chimed with my own. His father was rather feckless and not the best of men. His mother had to deal with, frankly, being a woman, being black. He talked about the petty criminality that his father and some of his uncles brought into his life. That made me think back to Tottenham in the 1970s as well. When Harry came to Tottenham, he was coming to a place that was still trying to heal after the 2011 riots. The community was very much recovering from the rubble and fire of rioting. I think Harry enjoyed having an urban audience. He reflected on poverty, on Harlem, on race and on America and was asked a lot of questions about that.
Belafonte addressing schoolchildren in Nairobi as part of his role as a Unicef goodwill ambassador, 2004. Photograph: Antony Njuguna/Reuters
I thought of Harry again in 2018, watching Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman with my son, who was 15 at the time. He was absolutely captivated by this amazing film and of course sitting there is Harry Belafonte in his last role! I felt such joy watching my teenager connect to this individual who spanned not just my life, but also my parents’. My parents aren’t alive, so there was something wonderfully triangular about that.
When I heard Harry had died, I put his songs on. His book is sitting on my bookshelf in my office and I pulled it out and flipped the pages. I was very sad and obviously I thought about my parents a lot. But I just thought: what a life. What a great life lived.