The world bade farewell yes­ter­day to a leg­end of ca­lyp­so and Caribbean folk mu­sic, as Har­ry Be­la­fonte, 96, suc­cumbed to con­ges­tive heart fail­ure at his Man­hat­tan, New York home.

Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­gion un­doubt­ed­ly owe him a debt of grat­i­tude for his con­tri­bu­tion to the spread of our mu­sic and cul­ture, and the aware­ness that he brought to the re­gion with his song.

Be­la­fonte made mu­sic his­to­ry in 1956 as the first so­lo artiste to ever have an al­bum sell over a mil­lion times - 'Har­ry Be­la­fonte: Ca­lyp­so'.

In the late 1950s, the Brook­lyn-born en­ter­tain­er of Ja­maican parent­age took ca­lyp­so mu­sic across the world, as the al­bum topped the Bill­board charts for 31 straight weeks, spent 58 weeks in the top ten and 99 weeks in the top 100.

It was due most­ly to the in­fec­tious lyrics of The Ba­nana Boat Song, with the catchy lines 'Day O, Day O....Come Mis­ter tal­ly man, tal­ly me ba­nana, day­light come and we want go home', which re­mains to this day among the most pop­u­lar set of lyrics borne out of Caribbean life.

Songs such as Is­land in the Sun, Lim­bo Song, Farewell to Ja­maica, Co­conut Woman, Seno­ra and Matil­da re­flect­ed the cul­ture of the is­lands and paved the way for sev­er­al oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans to gain in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure.

Be­la­fonte in re­turn, had sev­er­al T&T artistes to thank for some of his big songs. 'Jump in the Line (Shake, Seno­ra)' was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by late T&T ca­lyp­so mae­stro Lord Kitch­en­er, al­though it was made fa­mous by Be­la­fonte in 1961, and he had Lord Melody to thank for 'Ma­ma Look a Boo Boo' which ap­peared on his 1957 al­bum, 'The Ver­sa­tile Mr Be­la­fonte'.

The re­gion­al con­tri­bu­tion to his mu­sic al­so ex­tend­ed to Bar­ba­dos, as late Bar­ba­di­an-Amer­i­can Irv­ing "Lord Burgess" Burgie, who com­posed Bar­ba­dos' na­tion­al an­them, wrote 34 songs for Be­la­fonte, in­clud­ing eight of the 11 songs on the 1956 Ca­lyp­so al­bum.

As his pop­u­lar­i­ty spread, Be­la­fonte was dubbed the "King of Ca­lyp­so," a ti­tle he wore with reser­va­tions, since he had no claim to any Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tles.

Be­la­fonte, in­stead, saw The Mighty Spar­row as the true ca­lyp­so king, a ti­tle that has re­mained with 'The Birdie', whose ca­lyp­soes have al­so had reach far be­yond the Caribbean.

His mu­sic aside, as a for­mer close con­fi­dant of 1950s/60s civ­il rights leader Mar­tin Luther King Jr, Be­la­fonte was known to have bailed Dr King and oth­er ac­tivists out of jail and was one of the or­gan­is­ers of the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton.

While his ac­tivism earned him even greater love among the Black com­mu­ni­ty in the re­gion, it was the leg­endary 1956 al­bum and his ren­di­tions of ca­lyp­so and folk mu­sic for which Be­la­fonte will for­ev­er be re­mem­bered.

The al­bum was in­duct­ed in­to the US Na­tion­al Record­ing Reg­istry in 2017 be­cause of its cul­tur­al im­por­tance to the USA's record­ed sound her­itage. Be­la­fonte al­so won three Gram­my Awards (in­clud­ing a Gram­my Life­time Achieve­ment Award), an Em­my Award and a Tony Award and in 1994, he was award­ed the Na­tion­al Medal of Arts.

Above all, he gave his tal­ent to pro­mot­ing the cul­ture of these is­lands in the sun and as­sured that for the love he gave, these shores will al­ways re­mem­ber him.

May he rest in peace.