POP MUSIC REVIEW : Still Going Bananas Over Belafonte

D ay . . . O! Li . . . sa . . . day, ay, ay . . . O!

It’s still the kind of cry that can rouse an audience out of its seats.

Harry Belafonte may not be quite as slim and trim as he was 35 years ago, when “Banana Boat (Day-O)” first hit the charts, but he continues to look pretty good. On Sunday at El Camino College’s Marsee Auditorium, he sang and strutted, captivated and charmed an overflow assemblage into total submission. And he did it with his shirt open, his sexy good looks intact and a feral charm that made being over 60 seem like a not very bad proposition at all.

The use of “Banana Boat” in the movie “Beetlejuice” did not exactly harm Belafonte’s familiarity quotient, of course, especially with the youngest of his listeners, most of whom responded with energetic enthusiasm whenever he made his frequent calls for audience participation. Belafonte’s vocal projection was strong, expressive and accurate. Much of the program was devoted to the long, Caribbean-style vamping of songs like “Matilda” and “Jamaica Farewell,” which Belafonte performed with great style and enthusiasm.

One of the evening’s unexpected high points, however, came with a song that possessed neither rhythmic impact nor social thesis. Lowering the voltage on his seven piece (plus three backup singers) band, he sang a starkly simple but deceptively rich interpretation of Don McLean’s too-rarely heard “Empty Chairs.” It was the kind of reading in which the occasional creak and strain in Belafonte’s voice simply added focus and drama to the performance.

With his list of credits, Belafonte (who also appears Thursday through Saturday at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert and on Sunday at Bridges Auditorium in Claremont) could probably make a performance these days on fame and charm alone. That he spent two non-stop hours on stage in Torrance, sweating hard and using every skill he had to entertain his audience, may be the best testimony one can offer to his continuing stature as an artist and a communicator.