EVERY ‘DAY-O’
Belafonte’s tunesmith wants to work with Rihanna
fear of the police, but for fear of their parents.”
Burgie had some early brushes with music — in school and a drum and bugle corps — while growing up. But music got serious for him after he returned from a three-year stint in the U.S. Army, serving in an all-black battalion in World War II’s China, Burma India Theater in Asia. He used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend New York’s prestigious Juilliard School and two universities, majoring in voice. And he learned to play guitar.
“During my entire college education, four years, I studied nothing but the classics, no pop. My mother was from Barbados, so I got involved with folk.”
Before his collaboration with Belafonte began, Burgie took his folk music act on the road. His “first really main gig” was at Chicago’s Blue Angel nightclub. He also performed at the Village Vanguard in Manhattan in shows featuring famed Jamaican folklorist Louise (Miss Lou) Bennett.
He’s traveled and entertained audiences around the world, but family life for Burgie took place in Hollis, Queens, where he settled with his first wife, Page Turner, in the 1950s and raised two sons, Irving and Andrew. She died in 2003.
With his second wife, Vivia Heron, Burgie gave cultural and musical presentations at New York area public schools from 1973 to 1980. Heron died in 2007.
Burgie wants to use a songbook of his hit tunes to create classroom lessons and activities for educators and their students.
Living in Queens during the Civil Rights Movement, Burgie aided the national crusade by organizing the Coalition for Political Representation organization in southeast Queens and serving on a local NAACP board.
And through his calypso lyrics, he has tried to link the civil rights struggle to the Caribbean colonies’ quest for independence, in contrast to the verses of double entendres and sexual innuendos weaved into some calypso songs.
“I gave an image of their lives, their homes and their homeland,” he said of the longtime colonies inching towards independence at the time.
“I was the first one writing about these people trying to gain their own lives. They wanted their own country. And that’s what my songs were all about,” he explained, using lyrics from his 1957 song, “Island in the Sun,” as an example: This is my island in the sun, Where my people have toiled since time begun, I may sail on many a sea, Her shores will always home to me. be
Burgie has music, books, photos, videos on his website, www.irvingburgie.com.