An Evening With Harry Belafonte & Friends (Live)

Fans of Harry Belafonte know that he has used the title "An Evening With..." for several of his albums, and they may assume that the "friends" noted in this one are high-profile guest stars. This is not the case; Belafonte uses the term "friends" to refer to his backup group. But the billing does signal that several members of that group are given their own showcases while the star, who turned 70 before this video was released, takes a breather backstage. The most prominent stand-in is guitarist Richard Bona, a Cameroon musician who gets two solos, "Eyala" and "Eyando," spotlighting his expressive fingerpicking and high tenor voice. The four backup singers, LaTanya Hall, Gwen Jackson, Fluitt, and Sam McKelton, get their own song, "The Glow of Lightness" (not included on the CD version of the concert), while Hall performs a duet with Belafonte on the tender ballad "Skin to Skin" and McKelton joins him on "Try to Remember." Such support should not be taken to indicate that Belafonte is anything but the focal point of the show, however. Singing newer numbers like "We Are the Wave" and "Paradise in Gazankulu" (with its references to South African heroes Stephen Biko and Nelson Mandela) from his late-'80s albums or '50s favorites like "Matilda" and "Jamaica Farewell," he is animated and effective, showing little evidence of his age. The concert, recorded at the State University of New York at Purchase for PBS, sums up Belafonte's long career extremely well and suggests that he is still as capable of moving an audience as he was 40 years earlier.