Last night was Mardi Gras, but there was different sort of celebration at Riverside Church in NYC as friends, family, and fans gathered to pay tribute to the life and legacy of the late, great Odetta.

The emcees were Tom Chapin and Bernice Johnson Reagon (who recalled her first encounter with Odetta at Morehouse College a half century ago and who coaxed the large congregation into singing “Kumbaya”).  Some of those attending included Bernice’s daughter Toshi, Nora Guthrie, Sylvia Tyson, Jerry Stiller, and Anne Meara.

There was lots of music, of course:  Dr. Johnson’s old group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, kicked into “Nobody’s Gonna Cut You Down; Josh White sang “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”; Pete Seeger led the crowd in “Take This Hammer”; Emory Joseph cut loose on “Keep On Movin’ It On”; Peter Yarrow performed “Don’t Laugh at Me” with Bethany and Rufus and the Brooklyn Tech Choir; Steve Earle did “Deportee”; Tom Chapin, Peter, Steve,  Oscar Brand, and others joined their voices on “This Land Is Your Land”; Lizz Wright did an a capella “Make Me a Pallet”; Guy Davis sang the blues; and the Holmes Brothers accompanied Maria Muldaur on “Down By the Riverside.”

There were many memorable remarks, too.  Maya Angelou spoke of their friendship going back to the early 50s in S.F., when they scared people as a pair “of tall black ladies with attitude, crazy as road lizards.” She said Odetta taught her how to tell the truth and that “being her sister was no small thing.”

Odetta’s adopted daughter Michelle Esrick humorously and touchingly evoked many details about Odetta that we all recognized.  Wacky old Wavy Gravy composed a haiku:  “Odetta sang out/Her mighty song of freedom/Now she’s free at last.” The poet Sonia Sanchez topped that with a 21-haiku tribute to Odetta.

But no one was  more spellbinding than Harry Belafonte, still strikingly handsome at almost 82. For more than 10 minutes he spoke from the heart and without notes about the woman he called one of the three forces who touched his life (along with his mother and Paul Robeson). “She gave me the engine on how to use a moment that was cast upon me,” he said. “Whenever I asked her to come to a rally, she was there.” Speaking of her enormous role in the worlds of music and civil rights, he asked “Who will fill that space?” And he closed with a message from Bill Clinton.

Such a presence in so many lives. I don’t think we’ll see her like again anytime soon.

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