And now Harry Belafonte is gone. Doesn’t it seem like so many of our icons are passing these days?

…..and he wanna go home.
He has left this earth for his final home.

I loved him for his music, his beauty and then as time has gone on, I’ve gotten more and more aware of his activism which made me admire him even more. A wonderful human being.

A great entertainer, and as a folk singer he was an inspiration to many who loved the music of the “folk”. As @janbb said above, his actions spoke much louder than his words, and his words were heard around the world.

Doesn’t it seem like so many of our icons are passing these days?

My late father used to say, “People are dying today who’ve never died before!”

Then he died too!

We all have to go sometime and he did beat the average. Well done!

I think it reflects more on our own ages than it does the state of icons and celebrities. We’re aging. He was a great performer and a great man.

Echoing @Hawaii_Jake, it is that our contemporaries are dying off.

I saw a list of aging rockers the other day, so many people I saw perform 50 and 60 years ago are now barely able to stand, let alone perform.

Given his affinity for Caribbean tunes, I was surprised to discover that he was born in NYC.

But then I read that he grew up in Jamaica, which satisfied my curiosity. I’m sure that he had some influence on Bob Marley.

I wish he’d had a chance to sing solo in We Are the World.
They should have given the slots of Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, and Huey Lewis to Harry.

@Strauss

“My late father used to say, ‘People are dying today who’ve never died before!’”

I think that applies to everyone, except for Zsa Zsa G, who I believe is still dead. ;)

From the details: ”I guess for most of us older ones, this is to be expected.”
Yeah, not the point…

@canidmajor There is a difference between the term “icons and celebrities” as I wrote and the specific term ”our icons and celebrities.” There are still many icons and celebrities. People of different ages have different icons. I think what I was trying to point out that I should have elaborated more on is that we’re seeing ours die. Icons and celebrities as a whole are doing just fine. Ours, like us, are aging and dying.

Because your details are brief and your answer immediately above this one are also brief, I’m having difficulty knowing what the point is.

The point is that I am sad that Harry Belafonte died, and so many of the great ones that I grew up revering are, predictably, passing of old age.
But mostly, today, I wanted to post about Harry Belafonte.

^He was indeed a great talent and a great man.

The world will miss him. A class act.

It’s been happening for years.

In the late 1980’s through the 90’s I felt a lot of loss of icons and celebrities because of AIDS. Friends and coworkers were dying from it too, it was unbelievably sad and very present for me, and many of them were very young to be dying.

There did seem to be a little bit of a lull in the early 2000’s.

The last five years it has been happening more due to age. My age and theirs. It is starting to feel like every week someone famous, someone who I respected their work, is passing away. I don’t know how often it actually is, but it feels that way.

We’re getting older. Our age cohort is dying. Just like we are. Just yesterday I heard about a high school friend of mine (He was born in `1955) who kicked off. It happens.

Really, let me say again, the post is supposed to be about Harry Belafonte. I thought I had cleared that up with my previous post.