The world needs rebels
Dear Harry Belafonte,
Had not you dreamed of spending the fall of your life drinking mojito under a coconut tree? Surrounded by some friends who tell each other how great their life was? No question, that would have been the deserved pension model for the king of Calypso. They have promoted the Jamaican folklore sound to the global trend, sold well over 150 million records to date and turned countless women into hip-swinging "Matildas". I was one of them. And most of your fans did not really belong to me then. Because your songs are more than just ear flatterers. The "Banana Boat Song" is not about Caribbean cruises, but about the misery of exploited banana pickers. They once said, "I'm going to the stage because I hope there's someone sitting there who understands my message." A statement that is valid until today.
Even now, at the age of 80, you will not find yourself relaxing on the beach. They play in "Bobby", a wonderful film that tells the story of Robert F. Kennedy's last hours in a mix of facts and fiction. With her performance, you bow to Kennedy, your very personal friend and political companion.
The state of the world is more important to Harry Belafonte than Hollywood
But much more important than Hollywood is the state of our world. As Unicef ambassadors, you travel to crisis zones in South Africa or Ethiopia, shoot documentary films about racism, denounce the genocide in Darfur on talk shows, promote the supply of cheap AIDS drugs, and co-initiate the Project "We are the World" against hunger in Africa. , , For a long time I could continue this now. Instead, allow me the question: what is driving you? You say that you are in a state of permanent resistance, driven by anger.
The source of your anger is probably in your biography: Born in Harlem, the son of a Jamaican worker and a ship's cook from Martinique, you spent part of your childhood in Jamaica in the slums of Kingston and left school at the age of twelve. Bitter poverty, a father who soff and struck the mother? You could have become a gangster, you confessed in an interview. She was saved from the discipline you learned from the US Navy.
What does skin color have to do with love?
After the end of the war you went to New York and got on with henchman jobs. When you were repairing a faucet at the American Negro Theater in Harlem, there were theater tickets instead of wages. After the performance you knew: I will be the first black Hamlet on stage. Together with Marlon Brando and Tony Curtis they studied drama with the German emigrant Erwin Piscator, but then got only a few roles because of their skin color. In 1954 you became famous with the movie-musical "Carmen Jones", but even when you performed in front of sold-out houses in Las Vegas, you were only allowed to go through the kitchen to the hall. That could never break her pride. They remained inflexible, whistling on conventions. After the first marriage to an African American, you married a white woman in the late 1950s. What does skin color have to do with love? You asked.
Logically, you had to land in the civil rights movement. Not only marched there alongside Martin Luther King, but also advised him. Nelson Mandela says about you, after King, be the most influential black man in America. Some conservatives in the US stinks that tremendously. They insult you as a traitor, when you go back to court with George W. Bush and his government, calling your ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell a "house slave", comparing the Department of Homeland Security with the Gestapo or as a guest of Venezuela's President Chavez ? a confessed communist? Call Bush the planet's biggest terrorist. Hats off to your clear words, but beware of the wrong friends. Nevertheless, do not rest! Continue to tell us your opinion! The world needs rebels like you.
Your Anke Kapels
