Voice and Hammer – Longreads

Music star and civil rights icon Harry Belafonte died this week at the age of 96. A decade ago, on the heels of the release of the icons memoir and a documentary about his seismic influence, acclaimed journalist Jeff Sharlet wrote an intimate, lyrical profile of Belafonte. Its about his singular cultural symbolism and its complications, about witnessing the evolution of his own legacy, and about reckoning with what, in a life full of remarkable achievements, he couldnt accomplish:

Belafonte wants to tell me about a movie he never made, probably never could havemade.

Amos nAndy. Not likeBamboozled, Spike Lees postmodern riff on blackface, butAmos n Andyas a history of minstrelsy going back to the beginning. It was the director Robert Altmans idea. A movie of a minstrel show. White men in blackface who mimicked every brilliant song, every joke, every true story ever told by a black woman or man: stole it all and played it again, as both tragedy and farce, tragedy because it wasfarce.

Its about the mask, Belafonte says, speaking in the present tense like hes talking strategy and tactics, sipping Harveys Bristol Cream. Its about how much time people spend being false, how often we faade our behavior. Nobodys better at that than the minstrels. And in them I see all of us. Everybodys in the minstrel show. Behind the mask, you can say and do anything. The Greeks did it. Shakespeare used it when he wrote the jester. Those he could not give the speech to, he created the jester to say it. All of Americas problems are rooted in the fact that were all jesters. Not one of us truth tellers. So how do you get to the truth? Well, how doAmos n Andydo it? Whats behind themask?

This: In the mimicry and the falsehood, you can still find the roots of the song. The art for me is how do you bend it yourway?

Maybe it couldnt be done. He told Altman, Youre going to get us both fucking killed. Black people gonna be completely outraged. Dont go to black people with blackface. And white people know its politically incorrect. Theres noaudience.

Altman said, Excepteverybody.

Belafontes quiet. Then: But Altman left me here all alone. Altman died in 2006. His last movie wasA Prairie Home Companion. Belafonte shakes his head, talking to no one now. Everybodys in the minstrel show. Everybodys a minstrelact.

Excerpt from:
Voice and Hammer - Longreads