Bono pays tribute to the late Harry Belafonte
U2 singer Bono has paid tribute to the late singer Harry Belafonte and said being his friend “was one of the honours of my life”.
Earlier this week, it was confirmed Belafonte had died aged 96 due to heart failure. The musician was best known for his song, ‘Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)’, and was the first artist to sell a million copies of an album in the United States during a single calendar year. Belafonte was also a political activist during the fight for civil rights and used his celebrity status to help bring about social justice.
In a new statement, Bono said (via The Independent): “The world lost a giant this week. In his 96 years on this planet, Harry Belafonte didn’t just leave a mark – he blasted the landscape, carved and etched roads and paths others could walk down, as activists and as artists. He loved music and it loved him, but the fight for civil rights became the calling into which he poured his intellect, his clarity of purpose and his impatience with injustice. He had a voice and he used it.”.
Continuing, he added: “His friend Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. I think that’s true, but only if, like Dr King and Harry Belafonte, we grab ahold of it and pull. It was one of the honours of my life to know Harry Belafonte, and he taught me one of the most important lessons of my life – while tying his shoes.”
In his autobiography, Surrender, the U2 frontman revealed the lesson he was taught by Belafonte, which was “the search for common ground starts with a search for higher ground”. Bono said this realisation was a “lightbulb moment for me and a conviction that’s informed my life as a campaigner ever since.”
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