The Honourable Harry Belafonte OM.

I grew up hearing Harry Belafonte. I heard his songs like Mama Look a Boo Boo. And I heard folk songs sung by him. That was in the days when he looked like the photo of his younger self on this page. He received the Order of Merit in absentia a few years ago as he was not in a sufficiently healthy state to come and receive it personally, as he did some years earlier when he received the honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies. By the time he received the Order of Merit, he looked like the photo of his older self.

It was Jamaica Welfare, established by Norman Washington Manley in 1937, who employed Harry Belafonte to sing Jamaica Welfare and the Banana Boat song, which were flip sides of the same 78 RPM. and we had a copy. It was Louise Bennett (later Mrs. Bennett Coverly) who was employed by Jamaica Welfare who went into the countryside

with the old-fashioned large-reel tape recorder to record a lot of Jamaican music to develop a music bank for Jamaica. (It did not start with Olive Lewin, although Olive Lewin is to be credited for carrying the documentation and research of our Jamaican music so much further Harry Belafonte was also a civil rights activist. Those who never knew found out when they saw him (maybe on TV as I did) at the funeral of Martin Luther King in 1968. Harry Belafonte was a great friend of the Manley family in Jamaica and attended Michael Manley's funeral when he died in 1997. In the first 30 years or so after Norman Manley died, the Norman Manley Foundation

would have annual awards in different fields according to the year in different things. In July 1982, the award was given in the field of music and Jimmy Cliff received the award that year. Harry Belafonte was the guest speaker at that function.

In those days I drove a 1969 model Fiat 124 (yes, a 13 year old car in 1982, and I drove that car until it was 16 years old until 1985). I recall vying for the same parking spot outside Carib Theatre as another driver-guess who?- P.J. Patterson. He was driving himself in a left-hand drive car (PNP was out of power, he had lost his seat, and it was back to reality for him). But he waved to me to take the spot while he went for another. After a few items, which included a pianist playing music, Harry Belafonte was introduced. Harry Belafonte lambasted the Ronald Reagan-led US government and lambasted the government of Edward Seaga, who had developed a tourist programme in the USA to attract tourists that said "Come back to Jamaica where your child can be nursed by a Black Nanny". About two days later, Edwin Allen (a former minister of education who at that time was a government back-bencher) moved a resolution in parliament to have Harry Belafonte declared persona non grata. But that resolution was quietly withdrawn due to the outcry caused by the resolution. I spoke to Harry Belafonte after the presentation, which was at Carib Theatre. I remember saying, "Belafonte in the flesh". I saw the car that took Belafonte away from Carib Theatre that night, and I learned once again the difference between when a political party is in power and when it is not. One Toyota car carried six people, including Michael Manley, Beverly Manley, Edna Manley, Harry Belafonte, the driver and one other person.

I do not think it would have been THAT tight-squeezed had Michael Manley still been prime minister, but this was less than two years after the PNP lost power in 1980.

But recalling the persona non grata resolution caused some amount of amusement to me that a later JLP government, that of Andrew Holness, the latest JLP leader who honoured Harry Belafonte with the Order of Merit a few years ago. He had already been honoured at the University of the West Indies some years earlier honorary degree of doctor of law (at that time, P.J. Patterson was prime minister). However, with the conferral of the Order of Merit on Belafonte, the government seemed to have been making amends for the faux pas created by Edwin Allen, who easily introduced the largest amount of censure motions ever introduced in parliament. years before in the 1970s, the late Carl Wint wrote in the Daily News that Edwin Allen had 'cheapened' the censure motion. Incidentally, I have learned that Harry Belafonte is related to all the Belinfantis in Jamaica (never mind the difference in spelling whether Belinfanti, Bellanfanti or Belafonte). It was Jamaica Welfare founded by Norman Washington Manley in 1937. Harry Belafonte was chosen as the best way to promote tourism because of his mother, who was a Jamaican. The number of songs I can sing by heart, like "Island in the Sun", "Scratch Scratch", "Don't Ever Love Me", "Coconut Woman", Love Love Alone", "Haiti Cherie", "Judy Drowned" and " Angelina" because Harry Belafonte sang them is quite long. The Christmas Carol, "Mary's Boy Child", written by another author perhaps in the 1940s, did not become popular until Belafonte sang it in London, England in 1956. Even then, it was not known in Jamaica until the mid-1960s. May his soul rest in peace.