Belafonte mixes success in versatile Spa concert

by Steve Webb, The Knickerbocker News, July 28, 1981

Harry Belafonte’s two sets Monday night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center were a paradox in showmanship.

Most popular music concerts build toward a dramatic or heartstopping close. Belafonte hit the moon during his first set, started his second set off slowly and dissolved it in anticlimax by the end of a two-hour evening of music.

In addition, the songs that were supposed to work didn’t, including such signature tunes as “Banana Boat Song” and “Mary Anne.” Instead, such ludicrous notions as the singer’s disco calypso version of Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” and a subdued theme from “The Rose” were impressive.

“Pastures of Plenty” opened the first set, as it did in his 1980 dates in Albany. Many of the songs matched those dates, by the way, with the changes either coming from an album Belafonte said he recently recorded for Columbia Records or from his special guest, South African singer Letta Mbulu.

The first set was a concert in itself, highlighted by a passionate, rhythmic topical song called “How Long Have You Been Blind” and a comical calypso about a visitor from Trinidad trying to catch a cab from John F. Kennedy Airport to Harlem.

Ms. Mbulu was an exquisite addition to the program. Her material drew from the traditions of African, West Indian and American music, tied together with quite contemporary arrangements for the seven-piece band and six accompanying vocalists.

The second set began with a reggae-like version of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” a duet by Belafonte and Ms. Mbulu. It worked all right, and her solo numbers following it were fine. But Belafonte appeared to get a little giddy, spending long times between songs doing some kind of Katherine Hepburn imitation and leading the band through a spooky transformation of “Banana Boat Song” into “Hava Nagila.”

The second set squandered the first’s good feelings, entertaining the 4,725 present but wearing them out too. His various calls for audience participation met less and less success by the end.

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