The History Of Harry Belafonte's Famous Day-O

Publish date: 2024-05-02

To make the point clear, Harry Belafonte didn't write "Day-O." His version is a cover of a much older folk song first recorded in 1952 by Trinidadian musician Edric Conner. You can listen to this very different, much slower and mournful version on YouTube, titled "Day De Light." Belafonte didn't write the lyrics to his version, either. Song Facts says that Caribbean composer Irving Burgie and novelist William Attaway modified the lyrics for Belafonte, as well as wrote most of the lyrics on "Calypso." In other words, Belafonte's "Day-O" remixed an existing song with revised lyrics, and Belafonte himself provided the stage presence and voice.

As for the lyrics, we've got the well-known, "Day-o, day-ay-ay-o / Daylight come and me wan' go home" line, and the famous "Come, mister tally man, tally me banana" line that folks might remember. Without knowing any other lyrics, these lines tell us everything we need to know about the meaning of the song: It's about laborers at the end of the day waiting for their workload to be counted. The tally man is the guy who counts the bananas from the day's work. As The New Yorker says, the tune for "Day-O" likely spans back to "the turn of the 20th century" as a call-and-response song composed of two sets of singers. This is exactly what the composition in Belafonte's version does. His version also ties the period-accurate tune to period-accurate labor. 

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunB9kW9ucmtiZLWqv9OoqbJln5t6qa3Rq7BmmpWhrqe7za2cZp6Rory2v4ydmLJln2Q%3D