Harry Belafonte Turns Spirituals, Folk Songs into Works of Art

by George Murphy, Democrat and Chronicle, June 30, 1967

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Space is unimportant – merely an interval between things. What matters is how one fills it. 

Harry Belafonte, who opened the sophomore season for the Performing Arts Center last night, crammed his varied talents into two hours, leaving scarcely room for the stifled yawn.

Belafonte is no stranger to Eastman Theater audiences. He returns there each year like the swallows of Capistrano. If there were some among those in the amphitheater here who had not already seen or heard him in movies or in person or on television or records, they must have been quick-frozen and stored away years ago.

In reflecting upon his performance last night, I am tempted to use the phrase “work of art.” It is a term I do not like because I am not in favor of work. Besides, the term sounds pretentious, a word which has nothing whatever to do with Belafonte.

BUT HERE IS A FELlow who takes folk songs and spirituals, two mediums of communication not renowned for their aesthetic values, and makes of them, well, let’s face it – works of art.

Belafonte and Company (his guest artist was Mariam Makeba, South African songstress who tells the press “I never took lessons; I just sing”) got things started at 9 p.m.

Belafonte is not unaware of the attraction his almost feline grace has for the ladies, so we got our first glimpse of him in high-heeled brown shoes, brown trousers that looked as though they were painted on and a white shirt,  slit at the sides and arriving at a V just below the breastbone.

His program of old and modern folk ballads began with “The Rock Island Line,” and he was accompanied in this, as in most other songs of the evening, by five instrumentalists and 12 male singers.

Miss Makeba was very good, too, especially in her first song of the evening, “What is Love? Loving is Love,” which followed intermission.

Belafonte and Company will repeat their program here this evening.