Belafontes

Harry Belafonte‘s daughters, Shari and Gina, are calling out the Grammys for not doing more to recognize the late singer during the 2024 awards ceremony on Sunday. During the In Memoriam segment, Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Fantasia Barrino and Jon Batiste took to the stage to perform emotional tributes for Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Sinead O’Connor, Clarence Avant and more. While they performed, images of other artists the music industry lost last year were displayed onscreen behind them,…

You can’t have “Beetlejuice” without Harry Belafonte.The music from the entertainer, who died Tuesday at 96, is forever intertwined with Tim Burton’s 1988 comedy about a couple of ghosts (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) who hire a deranged bio-exorcist (Michael Keaton) to rid their home of its new tenants (Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones). Belafonte popularized the Jamaican folk song “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” by recording it for his hit 1956 album “Calypso,” which helped bring the music genre to the masses. Then…

In the middle of the 20th century, Harry Belafonte was at the dizzying high point of his stunning multi-hyphenate celebrity: this handsome, athletic, Caribbean-American star with a gorgeous calypso singing voice was at the top of his game in music, movies and politics. He was the million-selling artist whose easy and sensuous musical stylings and lighter-skinned image made him acceptable to white audiences. But this didn’t stop him having a fierce screen presence and an even fiercer commitment to civil rights. He was the…