Harry Belafonte was a Jamaican-American singer, actor, and campaigner who popularised calypso music among international audiences in the 1950s. Calypso (1956), his breakthrough album, was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
Sadly, Belafonte died of congestive heart failure on April 25, 2023, at the age of 96, at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Inside Harry Belafonte’s house: Where did he live?
According to public records, the singer, actor, and social activist resides in adjacent 4th-floor rooms in the 8-story Apple Bank building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York City. He is perhaps best known for his rendition of the “Banana Boat Song,” which includes the iconic lyric “Day-O.” Throughout his career, he has been an outspoken supporter of civil rights and humanitarian issues.
Belafonte was born on March 1, 1927, at Lying-in Hospital in Harlem, New York, the son of Jamaican-born parents Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., a cook, and Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper. There are differing accounts of his father’s birthplace, which is also given as Martinique, a French territory at the time.
His mother was the daughter of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father, while his father was the son of a Black American mother and a Sephardic Jewish father. Harry Jr. grew up Catholic.
