Iconic singer and actor Harry Belafonte, most renowned for breaking down racial barriers in the US, has died at home in Manhattan, aged 96. He is considered one of the most successful African-American pop stars in history, with hits with Island In The Sun, Mary’s Boy Child and the UK number one Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).

According to the BBC, he died of congestive heart failure, said his spokesman Ken Sunshine.

Actress Mia Farrow was among the first to pay tribute, remembering Belafonte as a “beautiful singer,” and “a deeply moral and caring man”.

“Miss you already,” she tweeted.

Belafonte was born in Harlem, New York, in 1927. He was a highschool dropout but he joined the Navy during the Second World War, working as a munitions loader at a base in New Jersey.

After the war, he pursued his dream of becoming an actor, studying drama at Erwin Piscator’s famed Dramatic Workshop alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau and Tony Curtis.

He paid for the classes by singing at New York clubs, where he was backed by groups that included Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

That led to a recording contract and, in a search for material, Belafonte began to study the folk song archives at the US Library of Congress, alighting on the Calypso music his parents had grown up with.