A Deeper Look at The Banana Boat Song (Day-O), Harry Belafonte, 1956

This lesson uses a popular song as a text to encourage listening comprehension skills.  Students will also engage critical thinking and writing skills, and develop perspective-taking and empathy.

This lesson generates a fun and vibrant in-class conversation.

Another highlight of this lesson is that it offers an opportunity to examine the concept of nonstandard English.  

And, this song could fit in nicely with a unit on Labor relations and/or work songs.

I include this song in a unit within my semester-long Latin American & Caribbean Studies course. I like to focus on product history, and, in a mini-unit on the history of the banana, this song offers some deeper context about the historical relationship between powerful U.S. government backed fruit companies such as United Fruit Company in shaping the dynamic for U.S. military intervention.  I like to tie in a look at Guatemala, the notion of “Banana Republics”,  and the history of the assassination of democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.