Belafonte Applies New Rhythms to Old Favorites

It is surprising that in crayon boxes and car-paint finishes there isn’t a color known as Belafonte Red, so ubiquitous was the singer’s crimson-colored “Calypso” album cover in American homes of the ‘50s and ‘60s. It holds the distinction of being the first LP to sell 1 million copies, and in so doing spawned a craze in popular music and even warranted a Stan Freberg satire.

In its lilting way, it also may have been one of the most subversive albums ever to hit the charts. For a generation still trying to put behind the rigors of the Depression and World War II, and in the atomic race of the Cold War, Harry Belafonte’s irresistible calypso songs helped introduce a new concept to the culture: leisure. That it’s OK to loosen up and live a little was subversive enough an idea in a money-driven society, but there was more to Belafonte than that.

Though born in Harlem, the singer made his mark with music from his mother’s Jamaica homeland--where he lived for a time in his youth--jumping the barrier of race by seeming foreign and exotic to American listeners.

Like Nat (King) Cole, there was no escaping Belafonte’s warmth and dignity as a performer; with the advent of the civil rights movement, there also was no escaping his outspoken views and opinions as an activist.

That may all seem ancient history to some, but to the singer who performed Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, it is still clearly part of an ongoing struggle.

Midway through his show Belafonte told the audience: “This is the last tour that I’ll be doing . . . for a while.” He then spun out a long list of racially themed film work he’ll be undertaking in the next several years and pled the case for the activist role he takes on behalf of a variety of causes.

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He indicated that even his O.C. booking had been something of a struggle when he said: “Orange County Performing Arts Center: At last I can now die happily. Five years I’ve been trying to get here!”

While Belafonte’s performance wouldn’t have seemed out of place in most of the world’s music halls, it was something--given the center’s history of unusually conservative pop music bookings--to hear the typically staid hall resounding to the sound of its well-heeled patrons singing “Highly deadly black tarantula!” at the top of their lungs.

At 67, Belafonte has aged at least as well as Paul Newman. He still has a regal bearing and warm presence that overrode the often canned and schmaltzy content of his 2 1/4-hour performance. His still-evocative voice has grown husky over the years, but interestingly so, with touches of the double-octave overtones of some South African singers, and, for that matter, Nelson Mandela.

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Belafonte’s five-player, three-singer band Djoliba drew much of its style from South African music, recasting many of his ‘50s island hits in a township mold. It was a good graft, not impinging on the nostalgia value of songs like “Matilda,” “Island in the Sun,” “Jamaica Farewell” and “Banana Boat (Day-O),” while keeping the songs fresh for the singer, who has sung them countless times before.

Though there were enough old favorites to satisfy anyone--his marathon 10-minute-plus versions of some ditties gave surfeit of them--he also assayed less-familiar material. One was a song about a poor 8-year-old street hustler, “Paradise in Gazankulu,” the title song from his 1988 South African-recorded album. (Unlike Paul Simon, Belafonte stayed out of that country during the cultural boycott because of his outspoken anti-apartheid position; he dubbed his vocals over the musical tracks.)

On the romantic ballads “Skin to Skin” and “How Do You Keep the Music Playing” he shared the vocals with singer Gina Breedlove, their voices twining in a rare musical intimacy.

A less pacific side of relationships was displayed in “Hole in the Bucket” with Belafonte engaging in an uproariously argumentative duet with fiery backing singer LaTanya Hall.

While Belafonte’s voice was solid and effective throughout--if anything gaining in clarity and power as the show progressed--it was time-stoppingly evocative on the ‘60s standard “Try to Remember,” which he dedicated to the late Audrey Hepburn, his longtime UNICEF partner.

That voice was still a nimble tool, though scarcely an emotive one, when he applied it to a hammy, interminable sing-along on an encore rendition of “Hava Nagila.”