{"id":4824,"date":"2023-04-29T08:20:21","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T12:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4824"},"modified":"2023-04-29T08:48:46","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T12:48:46","slug":"jamaica-farewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/jamaica-farewell\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamaica Farewell (Harry Belafonte, Perry Lederman)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jamaica Farewell\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-1vBRR6lkrA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Like pretty much everyone born in the 1950s, I can&#8217;t remember not knowing &#8220;Jamaica Farewell.&#8221; I never learned the words, but could sing all the verses &#8212; and still can, though I more often play it as an instrumental. By the time I got seriously interested in guitar, I was into folk and blues and thought of this as a kind of lightweight pop song. A lot of people in my generation were reacting against the pop-folk wave pioneered by people like the Weavers, which had reached its apex with Harry Belafonte&#8217;s &#8220;calypso&#8221; recordings, and tended to dismiss this song as &#8220;not real calypso,&#8221; and I probably would have continued to ignore it if I hadn&#8217;t started playing with Perry Lederman.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written about Perry in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/perrys-march\/\">a previous post<\/a>, so here I&#8217;ll just say that he was one of the most <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3981\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Me-and-Perry-at-Georges-80th-birthday-party.jpg?resize=246%2C253&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"246\" height=\"253\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Me-and-Perry-at-Georges-80th-birthday-party.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Me-and-Perry-at-Georges-80th-birthday-party.jpg?resize=292%2C300&amp;ssl=1 292w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 246px) 100vw, 246px\" \/>dedicated, tasteful, and virtuosic musicians I&#8217;ve ever heard, and a huge influence on my playing. I was fortunate to spend many hours playing with him over many years, and one of his quirks was that he tended to stick to a very small repertoire. He was deeply influenced by Indian classical music &#8212; he studied sarod for many years with Ali Akbar Khan &#8212; and his thing was digging deeply into a few familiar pieces, often playing a single tune for fifteen or twenty minutes. Most of his favorites were old-time, three-chord fingerpicking classics from artists like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/monday-morning\/\">Mississippi John Hurt<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/freight-train\/\">Elizabeth Cotten<\/a>, but they included a couple of pop-folk hits: he often played Donovan&#8217;s &#8220;Colours&#8221; and when I got into Congolese guitar, he responded to my interest in African rhythms by suggesting we play &#8220;Jamaica Farewell.&#8221; I&#8217;ve been playing it ever since and still play one of Perry&#8217;s licks in it, though mostly I just improvise variations loosely based on the style I learned from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kijana-muke\/\">Jean-Bosco Mwenda<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/\">Edouard Masengo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4832 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Belafonte-Calypso.jpg?resize=235%2C236&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"235\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Belafonte-Calypso.jpg?w=597&amp;ssl=1 597w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Belafonte-Calypso.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Belafonte-Calypso.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 235px) 100vw, 235px\" \/>I later went back and listened to a lot of Belafonte&#8217;s work &#8212; or rather, watched a lot of it. For me, the records don&#8217;t capture his magic &#8212; though &#8220;Matilda&#8221; in particular is irresistibly catchy &#8212; but I always enjoy watching him, and when I was writing my history of popular music (&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/beatlespop.html\">How the Beatles Destroyed Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll<\/a>&#8220;), I was struck by the ways he reshaped and exemplified a range of new attitudes and approaches to popular music, and his central role in the cultural shifts of the 1950s and 1960s. I don&#8217;t think he has received anything like the attention he deserves from folk music historians in particular, and more broadly from cultural historians, not only in the US but around the world.<\/p>\n<p>I had already filmed this video and was planning to post it when I got the news of his death, and have since been rewatching his old performances, along with many of his interviews and speeches. I mostly just play &#8220;Jamaica Farewell&#8221; as a pretty tune with a nice rhythm, and associate it with Perry, and with Masengo, who also played it. But by sad coincidence, this week it also feels like a bit of a tribute to Belafonte, and a reminder of how deeply his music and presence permeated the world in which I grew up.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like pretty much everyone born in the 1950s, I can&#8217;t remember not knowing &#8220;Jamaica Farewell.&#8221; I never learned the words, but could sing all the verses &#8212; and still can, though I more often play it as an instrumental. By the time I got seriously interested in guitar, I was into folk and blues and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/jamaica-farewell\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jamaica Farewell (Harry Belafonte, Perry Lederman)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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He performed it in the movie I Walked with a Zombie (1943), then recorded it with Gerald Clark's Caribbean Serenaders on Keynote Records, the leftist New York label known for\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Zombie-SirLancelot.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2101,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/perrys-march\/","url_meta":{"origin":4824,"position":1},"title":"Perry&#8217;s March (Perry Lederman)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I met Perry Lederman for the first time at my brother Dave's house in Oakland. He showed up with two bags of groceries, mentioned that he'd just talked a storekeeper out of them, and hung out for a while talking about this and that. He was a guitarist, seemed to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/perry_head.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2784,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/know-means-lonesome\/","url_meta":{"origin":4824,"position":2},"title":"I Know What It Means to be Lonesome (Bill Williams)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned this off a lovely album by a little-known guitarist and singer from Kentucky, Bill Williams, who recorded a couple of LPs for the Blue Goose label in the 1970s. Williams was presented as a blues artist, but his music ranged all over American music, from old rural music\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Bill-Williams-LP-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3980,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/railroad-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4824,"position":3},"title":"Railroad Blues (Sam McGee)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I first learned an instrumental version of this from Perry Lederman. Perry was a good friend and playing with him reshaped my understanding of the guitar. He was particularly noted for his vibrato, which was incredible -- he had exceptionally strong hands and could hold a full chord and get\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Me-and-Perry-at-Georges-80th-birthday-party-292x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2058,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/fancy-pants-gambling-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":4824,"position":4},"title":"Fancy-Pants Gambling Man","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is one of the rarest songs I know; to the best of my knowledge, it has never been publicly available until now. Which is truly weird. I heard it on a reel-to-reel tape in the position of Amy Cohen, the friend who introduced me to Dave Van Ronk, sometime\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Frandsen-Van-Ronk-Massengill-2-300x216.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1593,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/georgie-and-the-irt\/","url_meta":{"origin":4824,"position":5},"title":"Georgie and the IRT (Lawrence Block)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A bit of Newyorkiana from Dave Van Ronk's second album and the nimble pen of his friend Lawrence Block. Now well known as a mystery\/thriller\/private eye writer, Block was then churning out naughty novels at a terrific pace under numerous pseudonyms, many of them set in the Greenwich Village Bohemian\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Pads-are-for-Passion-177x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4833,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions\/4833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}