I have no idea when the first time I head music by Harry Belafonte was. It could very well be his appearance on the Muppet Show or Sesame Street. Knowing about Harry Belafonte and his music feels like something I’ve known as long as I’ve known things.
Often we grow out of music and styles we enjoyed as children, but sometimes that dumb kid we were got it right. Good job kid.
Belafonte took classic folk Calypso music and brought it to folks like me. “Angelina” has a nice shaker rhythm with horns that only hit a few times but knock your socks off. The stop time feel in the verses before the build up to the chorus is fantastic at keeping the song from becoming too repetitive. You also get a section of a lowering of the volume of the chorus before bringing it back up, something rare in popular music in general. I imagine live it was amazing.
Harry Belafonte passed away just a year or two prior to my writing this. He wasn’t young, way past the point of being able to say he died too soon. But, for me, it would have always been too soon.
Music That Matters (To Me) 
Leave a comment