[2 items] Memorial Service for Odetta
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/02/the_all_stars_of_the.html 2/25/09 By: Lloyd Grove The All Stars of the Paleo Left along with a capacity crowd of more than 1,000 that included Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora and even Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara turned out at Riverside Church for last night's memorial service for Odetta, the legendary folk and blues singer who died in December just shy of 78. Big in voice, body, and charisma, she was variously dubbed "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" and, by no less a fan than Martin Luther King Jr., "The Queen of American Folk Music." Her admirers and acolytes also included Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The evening clocked in at more than four hours of speechifying, sermonizing, and occasional singing (take that, Fidel Castro!), and was by turns moving (the testimony of loss by her niece Jan Ford and a young neighbor boy, Max Perkins), rousing (Sweet Honey in the Rock's rendition of "God's Gonna Cut You Down"), and risible (Wavy Gravy absurdly brandishing a rubber fish). In an unavoidable burst of political correctness, Peter Yarrow of "Puff, the Magic Dragon" fame even roped his daughter Bethany and the Brooklyn Tech Choir into performing his treacly anthem of victimization, "Don't Laugh at Me." Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, and Maya Angelou regaled the largely white audience of a certain age with Odetta stories and testimonials, urgently declaiming phrases like "the instruments of social oppression" and "the struggle for liberation," as though some fabulous time machine had transported the entire gathering back to the bad old days before Barack Obama was born, when J. Edgar Hoover was collecting dirt on suspected comsymps and the Ku Klux Klan was a force to be reckoned with. "We were young and black and female and crazy as road lizards," said the frail-looking, cane-using Dr. Angelou, recalling her early friendship with the Alabama-born Odetta Holmes in the cabarets and coffee houses of mid-century San Francisco. "I think of her as a sister who sang us into freedom, really because that's what Odetta did." The ridiculously handsome Belafonte, also leaning on a cane, celebrated the woman whom President Clinton once presented with the National Medal of Arts. "The loss for me has been so deep that words elude me," Belafonte said. "Who will fill that space? It is hard to know." -------- Fans, Musicians Gather to Remember Odetta in New York http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/02/25/fans-musicians-gather-to-remember-odetta-in-new-york/ 2/25/09 by Brian Braiker New York's Riverside Church held an hours-long celebration of the life of folk singer and civil rights pioneer Odetta Tuesday night. More than a thousand fans, family members and loved ones filed into the Gothic cathedral to take part in an evening of music and remembrance for the iconic singer who died at 77 in December. "The syncopation in her song was the human heartbeat in all of us," remembered senior minister Rev. Brad Braxton. "Music makes an altar of our ears; Odetta was the high priestess." The evening included performances by Sweet Honey in the Rock, Josh White Jr., Steve Earle and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. Standout musical moments included Guy Davis's performance of "Payday" a traditional fingerpicked country blues in which he recalled visiting Odetta in the hospital and Pete Seeger, still sturdy at 89, leading the entire congregation through the worksong "Take this Hammer." With more than 30 people scheduled to either speak or perform, the evening stretched towards the four-hour mark a testament to the number of lives Odetta had touched with her songs and her outsized persona. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez remembered Odetta in video tributes; Harry Belafonte and Maya Angelou delivered powerful eulogies to the woman who provided the soundrack to the civil rights movement, most notably in her performance of "Oh Freedom" at the 1963 March on Washington, the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. "I've tried to tell the truth in my books, in the way I live my life," said Angelou. "And much of that, the credit can be laid at the foot of that sweet black woman who could take the rafters off the windows." In her last days, Odetta told friends the election of Barack Obama was a culmination of her life's work. "She lit up the hospital," her friend Wavy Gravy, the activist clown prince, told RS in December. "She was just joyful." . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
