
Singer Sarafina Belafonte debuts ‘Wandering Eye’
Season 2025 Episode 6 | 4m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Sarafina Belafonte performs her new song “Wandering Eye.”
Sarafina Belafonte, granddaughter of Harry Belafonte, performs her new song “Wandering Eye” and reflects on her grandfather.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
ALL ARTS Dispatch is a local public television program presented by WLIW PBS

Singer Sarafina Belafonte debuts ‘Wandering Eye’
Season 2025 Episode 6 | 4m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Sarafina Belafonte, granddaughter of Harry Belafonte, performs her new song “Wandering Eye” and reflects on her grandfather.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Basically, this is what's inside of my brain, so we wanted to be a little mischievous.
We also wanted to pull in an audience member.
We just wanted to sort of activate the audience and show a very different way of doing any kind of entertainment and dinner theater and fashion shows.
I had a lot of fun, and creating it was a lot of fun.
I come from show business, more classical than David, and David comes from show business, so it's all within the family.
Our kids perform, he does some production, and I will say that Harry heard about this idea a long time ago and he absolutely loved it.
So I know that he was very, very proud tonight, and I know that he was looking down and was like, "All right, you did it.
You did it, you did it."
Sarafina: My mom has had this show concept for probably more years than I am old.
And honestly, I'm just so beyond proud of her for making it happen.
It's dinner theater, it's cabaret, it's burlesque, it's music, it's dance, it's fashion.
It's just everything and more.
The choreographer and I got together to choreograph this stuff, and then we just taught it to the dancers.
It was a quick turnaround.
♪♪ Ever since I was little, I loved to sing, to dance, all of that.
I'd be in my like mirror, brushing my hair at the age of three, just making up songs.
But I think a few years ago, I really found my stride in songwriting.
I'm trained as a dancer from the age of nine onward at the National Dance Institute, trained by Jacques d'Amboise, and he really showed me how to bring dance and theater together.
And the music part came from my family.
My grandfather was singer, actor, activist Harry Belafonte.
And so that music was always in me.
Malena: Creating the Belafonte Family Foundation, which is our little family and what we can do moving forward in -- in his honor and also just honoring all of the work that he did, but also taking it on into the next generation.
So I think that that was very special to me, because he was very close to my kids and being able to take his dreams and the work that he did and move it into our generation and then our kids' generation and then their generation, that's what I think about the most.
Sarafina and Harry were extremely close, and there's a lot of the performance gene and the smile.
Sarafina has Harry's smile.
Amadeus has Harry's nose, the curls.
There's so much of Harry in both of them.
And I just watched them and go, "Wow, he's still here."
You know?
Sarafina, being the youngest granddaughter, and she was inspired by Harry, but she never really saw Harry perform apart from, like, when she was very young.
But we never pushed her to do it, so she ignited when she started dancing.
She was so enamored by it, and I can just see how she's now becoming this woman at 21.
And I'm super proud of her.
Super, super proud of her.
My parents definitely wanted me to find it on my own to make sure when I loved it, I loved it.
And so lately, I've been making a lot of music, and I have my first song, "Wandering Eye," so I'm really excited.
♪ I got a wandering eye ♪ ♪ Stuff like this, boy, never caught in a lie, lie, lie, lie ♪ I knew my grandfather as Fafa, or Grandpa, not as Harry Belafonte, the icon so many people know him as.
For me, he was just such a source of love and warmth.
And so he's inspired me in so many ways.
He wanted to hear our stories.
He wanted to share his stories.
I think he's a voice that we would need right now for guidance, personally and globally.
No matter what, he would say, keep pushing forward, keep marching just like he did literally till his last breath.
My grandfather did have the most amazing smile.
I look at photos of us side by side, and I like to think that I have some of his smile in mine, and I could totally envision him just sitting here with that big smile, looking at me and me looking at him.
And although I'm performing and doing all of this, I would know that that pure love we have is there.
And so I think he would love the song.
I played him a lot of my music before and he, in his raspy voice, would be like, "Wow, kid, I'm proud of you."
And those moments, I hold on to them so dearly.
Those memories of him smiling are what push me to just perform and be happy.
And so my advice is just stay true to yourself.
I think kind of that idea of hope and visualizing that dream and doing what you love is so impactful.
♪ I got to wondering eye ♪ ♪ Stuff like this, boy, never caught in a lie, lie, lie, lie ♪ ♪ Lie ♪
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ALL ARTS Dispatch is a local public television program presented by WLIW PBS