Thursday, March 29, 2012

My Song by Harry Belafonte


MY SONG
by Harry Belafonte

No autobiography is worth its salt unless it contains as much baring of soul as it does factual accuracy and thorough, painstaking recounting of the subject’s history.  Harry Belafonte’s, a quite recent publication, passes all these three tests magnificently as far as I am concerned.  In addition it turns out to be quite event-filled.  Without reading it all the way through you could turn to almost any of the 443 pages at random and land squarely in the middle of something either highly dramatic or historically amazing and engrossing.  Inch by inch, mile by mile he covers his incredible life story without dry rhetorical digressions or dandyish swagger.  He is ruthlessly honest about himself, painting a childhood picture that is shocking, heartbreaking and full of unspeakable abuse, not to mention rank poverty, as those formative years alternated between residences in both Jamaica and Harlem.  The book may be quite long and thickly detailed, but it never drags and never ceases to grip hard.  


He takes us along the circuitous path of his musical career, which started without any support whatsoever from his difficult-to-please mother or his monstrous father.  He emerged as a truly self-made man professionally.  That career seems to have evolved in tandem with his activism.  It is difficult to notice where the career leaves off and the activism begins.  

Some may be drawn to it simply for what it has to say about how his style of music was conceived.  He is more than a calypso singer.  He drew on many elements to establish himself as a leading pop vocalist.  He tells us how he launched his career without any formal voice training or study and about the troubles he had keeping his throat healthy by way of a few touch-and-go surgeries.  He has performed in the vast majority of countries in the western world and some in other parts of the globe.  Along the way he made friends with countless individuals in government, in politics, in the motion picture industry, in education, in religion, as well as in show business.  And he has won prestigious awards – a Tony, an Emmy, the National Medal of Arts, and is a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.  His work as a UNICEF ambassador is one he holds quite high and proudly in his personal esteem.
 
Late in the narrative Belafonte discloses something that just about knocked me out.  He says that he is not nor has ever been a millionaire.  Get that!  What makes this so believable is his recounting of the vast sums he has given away in support of the many causes and social initiatives in which he has become involved, most especially the civil rights movement.  I was profoundly touched by his depiction of how he and Martin Luther King became co-revolutionaries.  It was King who in 1956 initiated their first encounter by a long distance phone call, inviting Belafonte to meet with him in Birmingham, Alabama in a church basement.  There in one three hour meeting, just the two of them, they forged a bond that held together for the remaining twelve years of King’s life.  Belafonte also poured much of his financial support into the drive to free Nelson Mandela and to end apartheid in South Africa.  He even reached into his pocket to promote the careers of other musical talents.  These are but a few of his munificent donations to enterprises about which he was passionate, not to mention his hands-on participation in so many struggles for equality and justice.

And passionate is a word that does not begin to describe his personality.  He could be a real fire brand, at times burning a little too hot for the good of what he was aiming to accomplish, though he was never a Black Power extremist.  He is very candid in recounting some of his run-ins with fellow activists who differed with him on methodology.  There is sadness, disappointment and tragedy in his life, but his triumphs greatly exceed them.  He admits that his many travels away from home alienated him from his first two wives and interfered with his relationships with his children.  He was a reconciler for many and a controversial figure for others.  But I believe the book’s flyleaf is accurate in saying that “he has led one of the great American lives of the last century” and that the memoir “turns both a loving and critical eye on our country’s cultural past.”

I would like to make one final observation about this man.  He has not only played a major role in knocking down racial barriers; he has also transcended race in the appeal he has had as a concert entertainer.  Several years ago, my wife Ruby and I attended a concert of his in Baltimore, expecting to be one of the white minority members of the audience.  But when we arrived, all we could see were well dressed Caucasians in evening clothes and behaving as if they were attending a symphony orchestra affair.  For a moment we wondered if we had come to the wrong theater or if perhaps we were at the right theater on the wrong night.  We checked our tickets just to be sure.  They seemed to be in order.  And once we stepped into the lobby, sure enough there was the larger than life poster display of him towering over us.  That was his audience, his night, and before the evening was over, I had looked around and spotted no more than roughly one black person for every ten white people in that hall.  We all adored his performance, and he related warmly and excitedly and with shrewd humor to everyone present. 

I cannot recommend “My Song” too highly for every free-thinking, culture savvy, open-minded and open-hearted citizen of this or any other nation.  I have read scores of biographies and autobiographies in my lifetime and for the first time – yes, for the first time – I have come across one that I would like to give a second reading.  For me it is that rewarding.  I hope it will be for many of you.       


No comments:

Post a Comment