How Ethiopian famine created bond between Harry Belafonte and Kenya's Mohamed Amin

 Harry Belafonte with Mohamed Amin's family and Michael Jackson's brother Marlon in Nairobi in 1985. [Camerapix]

When Salim Amin, son of legendary cameraman the late Mohamed 'Mo' Amin heard about the demise of Harry Belafonte, his heart sank.

The 'King of Calypso', known for the hit Day-O (Banana Boat Song) and the popular rendition of the folksong There is Hole in the Bucket (duet performed with Odetta Holmes), died of congestive heart failure, his publicist Ken Sunshine told American media on Tuesday. He was 96.

Salim still remembers that day in 1985, when, as a lanky 15-year-old lad, he stood next to a towering Belafonte in Nairobi, quietly soaking in the fame behind the man. "I was just in awe of him," he told The Standard in an interview.

Belafonte and Amin's family's affection for each other came through one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

On October 9, 1984, Mohamed Amin travelled to Korem in northern Ethiopia where he captured on film the horror visited on the residents by a devastating famine.

Thousands were already dead. Hundreds of thousands of others were on the verge of dying by the time of his visit. The world knew nothing about the horror that was unfolding in the East African country.

For the globally-acclaimed photographer and filmmaker, nothing in his previous two decades of fieldwork had prepared him for what he saw in Ethiopia. "It was the closest thing to hell on earth," Mohamed said.

Amin's images were splashed across the world and awoke the world's conscience. While organisations scrambled for some emergency aid, it was Belafonte who came up with the idea of organising well-known musicians to compose a song that would rally the entire world to the Ethiopian cause.

For the singer, actor and songwriter, the Ethiopian cause was the most humbling assignment he ever undertook.

And though he counted himself among the forceful civil rights activists who at one time gave refuge to Martin Luther King Jr., Belafonte was faced with the gargantuan task of curating the largest ensemble of musicians then and having them record under one roof.

The thought of approaching icons such as Michael Jackson gave him goosebumps for days on end.

"I thought getting to Michael Jackson would be very difficult," he said in an interview. "But when I called Michael and met with him, I was quite taken with how accommodating he was and how ready he seemed. There was no place for individual attitude. This is a sacred moment. You saw (Mo's) pictures as they began to flow. The world was exposed to this devastation."

The result was the award-winning single, We Are the World, released in March 1985 and featured, among others, Belafonte, Bob Geldof, Lionel Richie, and the Jackson 5 (Michael, LaToya, Marlon, Tito, and Randy).

The song helped raise over $60 million, a tidy sum back then. The campaign is considered one of the most successful philanthropic efforts in the world.

Mohamed first met Belafonte during the recording of the song in the US where he invited him to come to Ethiopia via Kenya with the first aid shipment from the funds collected by the US for Africa scheduled for the middle of that year.

The Ethiopian famine would bind the two men and their families together as Belafonte often stated that the world would never have known about the Ethiopian famine were it not for Mo. "Mohamed Amin was no ordinary man. Would ordinary men be made of such courage?" Belafonte said in 1996.

The two met again in 1995 during the 10th anniversary of the concert in Los Angeles. Their friendship was severed a year later when Mo died in a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane that had crashed in the Indian Ocean.

Salim Amin, now chairman of the Mohamed Amin Foundation, reunited with Belafonte during the making of Mo & Me, a 2005 documentary that honoured the works of his father. Belafonte was among the interviewees.

"I saw Harry again a few times and did the last interview with him in 2019. He was an intense, kind and hugely knowledgeable man. He was generous with his time and had a genuine love for Africa," says Salim.

Former US President Barack Obama, whose father came to America through the study programme airlifts that had the support of Belafonte eulogised him as "a barrier-breaking legend who used his platform to lift others".

"He lived a good life - transforming the arts while also standing up for civil rights. And he did it all with his signature smile and style," said Obama in a tweet.