“Mary Ann” (1958)
On the album “Belafonte Sings the Blues,” the backup group features top jazz musicians and the singing gets loose, frisky and playful. “Mary Ann” is a flirtatious rumba-blues that gives Belafonte room to slide, whoop and break notes — still completely in control, but rambunctiously.
“Cotton Fields (Live)” (1959)
Onstage at Carnegie Hall, Belafonte jazzed up a Lead Belly song about farm work and an encounter with the law in this version of “Cotton Fields,” a song that would later get a Creedence Clearwater Revival version. A walking bass line, and then a swinging jazz trio, give Belafonte a backdrop for brash, syncopated, trumpet-like phrasing. He’s reminiscing about childhood until about halfway through when, suddenly, things get tense: “I was over in Arkansas/When the sheriff asks me, what did you come here for?”
“Jump in the Line” (1961)
A calypso with an irresistible upbeat groove, “Jump in the Line” claims a lot of different authors in various versions, but seems to have come from Lord Kitchener via Lord Flea. With grainy exuberance over peppy horns and percussion, Belafonte praises the more-or-less Latin dance moves — “cha-cha, tango, waltz or de rumba” — of his girl named “See-NOR-a”; if she was a “Señora,” with a tilde, she’d be married. On a frenzied dance floor, perhaps no one cares. When Pitbull did an update in 2011, “Shake Senora,” he pronounced the tilde.
“My Angel (Malaika)” with Miriam Makeba (1965)
Miriam Makeba discovered and popularized “Malaika,” a wistful love song from East Africa, in Swahili, that she turned into an international hit. This version is from “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba,” a split studio album of songs in African languages; it’s one of the LP’s two duets. Both singers tiptoe through the melody with the gentlest shared respect.
“Turn the World Around” (1977)
Belafonte’s voice had grown huskier when he released “Turn the World Around,” a song he wrote with Robert Freedman, but his energy was undiminished. The lyrics are based on Guinean folklore and reflect on water, fire and mountains. Brisk and intricate, it has a leaping 5/4 beat, assorted global percussion and interlocking, celebratory groups of voices.
“We Are the World” (1985)
Belafonte was the little-known impetus behind “We Are the World,” the all-star 1985 benefit single for African famine relief. To line up a younger generation of performers, he enlisted the music manager Ken Kragen, who got Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson to write the song and gathered dozens of other 1980s hitmakers. Modestly, Belafonte didn’t claim one of the lead vocal spots; he just joined the backup chorus. He can be spotted in the video at 4:20 and 5:55, eagerly singing along.
“Paradise in Gazankulu” (1988)
There’s mockery and disdain behind the jaunty beat and the major-key, Shangaan-style accordion chords of “Paradise in Gazankulu,” the title song of Belafonte’s last studio album; he recorded part of it in Johannesburg. Under apartheid — which Belafonte determinedly worked to end — Gazankulu was a so-called “homeland” created to segregate Black South Africans. “I’m just dealin’, trying not to rule you,” he sings, answered by the women: “Oh yeah ha ha ha.” In live performances, outside the restrictions of South Africa, he added, “Free Mandela!” Belafonte’s convictions never wavered.
