Hello Harry
Making a nine year old’s dream come true
On April 25, 2023 Harry Belafonte died. He was 96 years old and hadn’t (as far as I know) entertained in decades. But, when he was much younger and my daughter, Sarah, was celebrating her ninth birthday, Harry Belafonte came to Ann Arbor for a concert at Hill Auditorium. She loved Harry, listening all the time to an album, The Best of Harry Belafonte, and especially the song, Man Piaba. We got tickets for the four of us, even though David was only four years old, didn’t yet appreciate Harry Belafonte, and couldn’t care less. Sarah, however, was thrilled.
On a lark, I wrote a letter to him, telling him that he had a little fan in the audience, and would he please, when he sang Man Piaba, mention Sarah’s name. We gave it to an usher when we were seated and didn’t think anything more about it, especially that anything would come of it. But, after the intermission, someone came to our seats and told us that Mr. Belafonte had invited us to meet him after the show! We were told that he planned to come into the audience to sign autographs and we should move to the orchestra section of the theater (we were seated way up in heaven!).
During the second half of the show, Harry stopped the show to say that there was a little girl requesting that he sing Man Piaba, but he hadn’t sung it in years and his band didn’t even know it! So, we weren’t going to hear Sarah’s favorite song. But, he said, he would sing it to her after the concert.
We moved down, closer to the stage, and waited for him to mention Sarah and sing the song. Never did we imagine that we would be told to wait until he left the stage, but another man came up to us and invited us to follow him backstage, but “only the mother and Sarah,” so Larry (who was a much bigger fan than me) and David (who was sleeping on Larry’s shoulder) had to remain in the audience. We were really going to meet Harry Belafonte!
We were escorted into his dressing room and he said, “Hello, Sarah,” to which she replied, “Hello, Harry.” He smiled gently at her, almost ignoring me. He said, “Hello, Mother.” I replied more politely, “Hello, Mr. Belafonte.” He laughed and told me I could call him Harry too! Then he turned his attention back to Sarah. He asked her how she knew the song Man Piaba and she told him that she always listened to it on her father’s record. He sang the first verse and chorus to her there in the dressing room. Of course, she had no idea what the song meant, but it did have a catchy melody!
When I was a lad of three-foot-three
Certain questions occurred to me
So I asked me father quite seriously
To tell me the story ‘bout the bird and bee
He stammered and he stuttered pathetically
And this is what he said to me
He said, “The woman piaba and the man piaba
And the Ton Ton call baka lemon grass
The lily root, gully root, belly root, ugh
And the famous grandy scratch-scratch”
He asked her a few more questions — about her interests and school — and then the visit was over. She shook his hand; I shook his hand and thanked him for making Sarah so happy (that may have been all that I said during the entire visit!) and we were escorted back to Larry and David.
As we walked back to the car, Sarah was floating on air. Then she asked us, “How are you going to top this next year?”
