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Harry Belafonte

Born:
Harry Belafonte, Jr. is a humanitarian and political activist known best as a singer from the 1950’s who started the craze for Caribbean inflected music. “The Banana Boat Song” became his signature song. Born in New York City of a Jamaican mother and Martiniquan father in 1927, Belafonte was sent to live with his grandmother in Jamaica from 1932 to 1940. When he returned, he worked as an assistant janitor in a building. He was given two theatre tickets from one of the tenants and subsequently took acting classes in New York. He took classes with Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier and performed at the American Negro Theatre.
Sunday Best: A Netflix Documentary

by Thomas Cole
Ed Sullivan, at one time was the most renowned name in US television. Most of us hear that name and think of Elvis Presley and his electrifying game-changing performance in 1956. Few of us will ever forget the hip-shaking gyrations that captivated a nation. Nothing like it had ever been seen on national television. Or so ...
Arturo O'Farrill: It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Sting!

by Leo Sidran
Arturo O'Farrill was, by his own admission, a long-haired, stoned-out freaky kid" of 19, playing piano in a small bar in upstate New York when he caught the ear of pianist and composer Carla Bley. She took a chance on him and invited him to join her band--a pivotal moment for the young musician who, at ...
Luca Dell'Anna: Tactile

by Neil Duggan
Italian pianist and composer Luca Dell'Anna draws from a rich tapestry of musical traditions. His earliest influences came from his grandfather, whose accordion playing was rooted in Italian folk music. At home, his father's diverse record collection introduced him to the works of Nat King Cole, Ray Charles and Johann Sebastian Bach. As Dell'Anna developed his ...
Salvation through rhythm: Max Roach—The Drum Also Waltzes

by Peter Jones
Max Roach--The Drum Also Waltzes Directed by Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro PBS American Masters2023 Anyone who enjoyed the recent Wayne Shorter documentary Zero Gravity might also dig this--a more conventionally structured but equally fascinating look at the life of Max Roach. Filmmaker and interviewer Sam Pollard began making it in ...
Nina Simone: You've Got To Learn

by Scott Gudell
Socially conscious black troubadours such as William Warfield, Harry Belafonte, Odetta and many others were challenging the U.S. government's questionable policies on numerous things including war, civil rights, equality and more, by the mid-20th century. R&B soul master Marvin Gaye would follow in the early 1970s and pointedly ask What's Going On" while the Temptations were ...
A Fireside Chat With Tony Bennett

by AAJ Staff
This interview was first published on All About Jazz in September 2001. Tony Bennett hails from a period in Americana where style loomed larger than sustenance and men were less than men without a martini or scotch in one hand and a cigar or cigarette burning from the other. Those were the days. And ...
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

by William H. Snyder
IntroductionApril is the cruelest month... so begins The Burial of the Dead section of T. S. Eliot's 100-year-old poem. The Waste Land" laments the decline of culture in the world after World War I. In April of 2023, we lost Harry Belafonte and Ahmad Jamal. The loss of these two men is part of contemporary ...
Harry Belafonte, Elvin Jones, GoGo Penguin & Bruce Barth

by Joe Dimino
From the gifted world of veteran pianist Bruce Barth, we make our way into the 803rd Episode of Neon Jazz. We also hear from a crop of established cats with new music in Isaiah J. Thompson, GoGo Penguin, Gabriel Latchin and Marty Isenberg. We slip in classics from Stanley Turrentine, Dave Brubeck and the mighty Elvin ...
Harry Belafonte: Humanitarian, Social Justice Leader and Artist Extraordinaire

by Christine Passarella
Destiny Not many people from my old neighborhood of Old Mill Basin, Brooklyn get to go to the movies with Harry Belafonte, but I did. It was a September evening in 2015 and I went to see The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution at the Film Forum with philosopher Dr. Cornel West, and his friends ...