Harry Belafonte was a Jamaican-American singer, actor, and campaigner who popularised calypso music among international audiences in the 1950s. Calypso (1956), his breakthrough album, was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.

Sadly, Belafonte died of congestive heart failure on April 25, 2023, at the age of 96, at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Harry Belafonte parents: Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., Melvine Bellanfanti

Belafonte was the son of Jamaican-born parents Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., a cook, and Melvine, a housekeeper.  There are differing accounts of his father’s birthplace, which is also given as Martinique, a French territory at the time.

His mother was the daughter of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father, while his father was the son of a Black American mother and a Sephardic Jewish father. Harry Jr. grew up Catholic.

From 1932 to 1940, Belafonte resided in Jamaica with one of his grandparents, where he attended Wolmer’s Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School before joining the United States Navy and serving throughout World War II.

He was working as a janitor’s assistant in the 1940s when a renter handed him two tickets to the American Negro Theatre as a gratuity. He fell in love with it and became friends with Sidney Poitier. The financially strapped couple purchased a single seat to local plays on a regular basis, swapping places in between acts after notifying the other about the play’s progress.