9:00 pm
Harry Belafonte—Calypso (1956)
After running and running and running the invisible man finally begins to tire and finds himself far from the crowded downtown streets in some far-flung residential neighborhood he's never been to before. He wanders the quiet sidewalks for a while before the faint sound of Caribbean music drifts through the air around him. Following it, he winds up in a church basement packed with a large group of mostly geriatric Jamaicans. It takes just a little bit of observation and a little bit of eavesdropping for him to understand the circumstances that surround him. The crowd is dressed to the nines. A multi-tiered cake sits in a corner waiting to be cut and served. He hears comments here and there about childhood love back in Moneague, a lifetime of separation, a recent reunion late in life. A gray, wrinkled man and woman sway slowly in the middle of crowd of watery-eyed family and friends. These elderly newlyweds seem so happy to finally be together as they drift around the dance floor to Harry Belafonte's "I Do Adore Her". Love-scorned and jaded as he feels this evening, it's still hard for the invisible man to choke back the lump in his throat as he gazes on.
Harry Belafonte's breakthrough album
Calypso has the distinction of being the first LP to ever sell over a million copies within a year of its release, and with good reason—it's absolutely flawless. The album functions as perfect slice of life really, full of innocence, joy and love, but also pain and struggle and even some disturbing socio-political content. It's an album of contradictions in many ways. The largely upbeat music is often coupled with surprisingly dark lyrics for example. It's also named
Calypso despite the fact that it's full of Mento music not Calypso. And it's the biggest Jamaican album of its time despite being released by an American (though he did live in Jamaica from age 5 to age 13).
It starts with one of Belafonte's most famous songs: "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)", a prime example of the dichotomous nature of the tracks herein being that it's a somewhat gritty description of the lives of dockworkers set to a very upbeat tune. It immediately follows with the gorgeous "I Do Adore Her", a heartbreakingly romantic track which is revealed to be a tragic tale of regret and lost love on a closer listen to the lyrics. Similarly, the next track, "Jamaica Farewell", is filled with homesickness and longing despite its low-key arrangement. It's not until "Will His Love Be Like His Rum?" that we reach something truly happy, in this case a humorous and upbeat wedding song. Likewise, the next track "Dolly Dawn" is incredibly lively and uplifting. Side two opens with "Star-O", a sort of sequel to "Day-O", which is both weary-sounding and contented. "The Jack-Ass Song", the silliest three minutes of the album, follows and is one of the release's purest moments of joy. After the most religious song on the album, "Hosanna", we are treated to the bittersweet pairing of "Come Back Liza" and "Brown Skin Girl". The former being a heartbroken tune in the vein of "Jamaica Farewell" and the latter being the album's angriest track, deceptive in it's mellow arrangement but extremely critical of American exploitation its lyrics. Last is "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)", a jokey song that's substantially different from the rest of the album with its elaborate percussion and bigger sounding production.
Smiling, surprisingly, the invisible man bounds up the steps of that church basement, the sounds of clinking glasses and happy chatter following behind him. Flinging the doors at the top wide open, he strides out rejuvenated, ready to reach out to this city with a warm bear hug. Ready to strut.