Irving Burgie has been called one of the greatest composers of Caribbean music. Son of a mother from Barbados and a father from Virginia, he was born in New York City. After high school, he sang at various clubs in New York — under the stage name Lord Burgess — until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He served in an all-Black unit in China, Burma and India. After the war, he was accepted at Juillard School of Music and expected to become a classical singer; he also studied music at both the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California. However, he met singer Harry Belafonte at Camp Minisink run by the Harlem-based New York City Mission Society in upstate New York, and the two became friends. He and William Attaway collaborated on a version of the lyrics for the Banana Boat song (Day-O) for Belafonte, a major hit of the mid-1950s, and he went on to create 33 other songs for the Calypso star. In 1966, he wrote the lyrics for the national anthem for newly independent Barbados. He was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2007.

One of the most successful Jamaican-American pop stars in history, singer, songwriter, activist, and actor Harry Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Trinidadian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Belafonte is known for his recording of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, including Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), and Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).

Born in Harlem, New York Belafonte lived for several years with one of his grandmothers in Jamaica. He returned to New York and attended high school there, then served in the Navy during WW II. After the war he worked as a janitor's assistant when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater which inspired him to study acting.

Belafonte has released 30 studio albums and eight live albums and has achieved critical and commercial success. He has three Grammy Awards (including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award), an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors and in 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

An early supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, he was a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for political and humanitarian causes, such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement and USA for Africa. Since 1987, he has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Belafonte acts as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards.

Shortly after his 93rd birthday in March, 2020 the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture announced it had acquired Belafonte's vast personal archive.