Calypso

This album is wonderful. Released in 1956 it was the first LP to sell a million copies in the USA. It is very hard to be depressed and listen to this album. What a great cover.

For years I had this memory of a book I had been made to read at school. It was about a boy living on an island and he was obsessed with Harry Belafonte. For a long time I had no idea who Harry Belafonte was (even though he was sitting in my mother's record collection). One day I dragged this out, dusted it off and gave it a spin. Brilliant.

Belafonte was heavily involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He was mentioned in a History textbook that I use to teach about the civil rights movement. I played the class Day-O. They were horrified (but secretly enjoyed it). Belafonte is still around annoying American presidents by telling them they shoudn't be killing people in foreign countries, they should be building houses for the poor. Hillary Clinton refuses to talk to him. I mean, what an outrageous thing to say: houses for the poor! Sounds like communism to me. Follow this link and look at his comments.

Many years after I read that book I was talking about, still at school but now a teacher, I was leaving my classroom after the day was over. It was a windy, high-cloud day, rubbish blowing through the halls and across the field, and out of the sky dropped a book. Some student had thrown it on the classroom roof and it now flapped its way to my feet. It was called The Cay and I realised as I picked it up that this was the book I had read twenty years ago at school.

At left: Harry Elefonte, with Belafonte