Harry Belafonte (1922-2023), By Niyi Osundare

HARRY BELAFONTE  1922- 2023

“I am not an artist who became an activist;
I am an activist who became an artist”

His voice stirred tall reverberations
In the symphony of a waking world, its colour-
Ful timbre so resonant of the Caribbean forest   

In that voice lived a pot of honey
A veritable vial of vinegar
And an amplitude which surprised the wind

From the swing-and-sway of the calypso king
To the rich-rounded tonalities from the roots
Of the African tongue, his singing

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Found the way to the human heart
His mind in constant communion
With all that was wise – and just

No hollow ‘global icon’, this Maestro
For him, ‘star power’ was conscience power
Injustice had no other beside its odious name

And so he never forgot those crowded ghettoes
And their shoeless kids, the ugliness of evil
And the indispensability of Freedom

With defiant fidelity he called Castro
By his proper name, and was never shy
Of the proclamation of Mandela’s Mandate

So unforgettable
His winsome ways
The riveting magic of his presence

Farewell, Long-Distance Maestro
Tell Good MLK and Relentless Robeson
It’s Not Yet Uhuru**

*Martin Luther King
** Title of the autobiography of Oginga Odinga, Kenyan leader, nationalist, and politician.

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans.