| Turn the World Around | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1977 | |||
| Genre | Folk | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Harry Belafonte | |||
| Harry Belafonte chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  [2] |
Turn the World Around is an album by American singer Harry Belafonte, released in 1977.[1]
After recording exclusively for the RCA Victor label since 1953, Belafonte signed with Columbia Records in the mid 1970s. After a series of pop-oriented albums, Turn the World Around was a return to interpreting folk songs of other cultures. Gary Ginell stated in his AllMusic review: "It is an absolute triumph and one of the finest albums of his career." Although recorded in the US, it was only released overseas.
The title track became the focus of one of the most acclaimed performances on the successful television series The Muppet Show, where Belafonte explained the artistic theme of the song before performing it with specially designed Muppets that resembled African tribal masks:
I discovered that song in Africa. I was in a country called Guinea, and I went deep into the interior of the country. In a little village, I met with a story-teller. That story-teller went way back into African tradition—into African mythology. He began to tell a story about the fire—which means the Sun—about the water, about the Earth. And he pointed out that all of these things put together turn the world around. And that all of us are here for a very, very short time. And in that time that we are here, there really isn't any difference in any of us IF we take time out to understand each other. And the question is, Do I know who you are? Do you know who I am? Do we care about each other? Because, if we do, together we can turn the world around.
— Harry Belafonte on The Muppet Show, 1979
Series producer Jim Henson considered this production to be his best work on the series, and featured it in numerous retrospectives of his art; Belafonte performed the song again at Henson's memorial service in 1990.[3]
- ^ a b AllMusic entry for Turn the World Around Retrieved November 2009.
- ^ Larkin, Colin (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Omnibus Press.
- ^ Blau, Eleanor (22 May 1990). "Henson is Remembered as a Man with Artistry, Humanity and Fun". The New York Times.