Readers remember their experiences with Harry Belafonte

To the editor: I used to be saddened to listen to of the demise of Harry Belafonte. It introduced again the reminiscence of an evening the Watts riots had been underway in August 1965, when my spouse and I went to listen to him sing on the Greek Theater.

As we drove on the ten Freeway towards downtown from Baldwin Hills, we may see the smoke rising over the town. After I reminded my spouse of this truth this week after we discovered of Belafonte’s demise, she replied with a remark he made throughout the efficiency, which we each remembered with excessive readability in any case these years: “I’m going again to Harlem the place it’s secure.”

Relaxation in peace, Harry.

Robert Rosen, Granada Hills

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To the editor: A few years go I narrated Belafonte’s Lifetime Achievement Award on the Grammys.

He had launched calypso to America within the mid-’50s, so I requested him that evening why he by no means recorded any Reggae music. “Oh,” he sighed, “I at all times needed to be forward of the curve, so when Jamaicans like Jimmy Cliff and Desmond Dekker began to make their breakthrough, I didn’t need it to look as if I had been stealing their thunder. However as I look again, I ought to have.”

I replied, “Think about when you had lined ‘Rivers of Babylon’ in 1968 — you might have damaged Reggae 5 years earlier in North America.”

“Don’t remind me,” he mentioned as he walked away.

A real large, not solely as an entertainer, however as an ethical hero.

Roger Steffens, Echo Park

The author is a Reggae archivist and former DJ at KCRW.