Ahora estamos lejos de aquel valle de dolor
pero su memoria nunca olvidaremos;
Así que antes de que continuemos esta reunión
pongámonos en pie por nuestros gloriosos muertos.
One of my first, and one of my favorite, memories of living in Manhattan was the beautiful four-hand piano music (Schubert?) that came pouring out of our neighbor’s apartment. Already in her mid-eighties, spirit undimmed, Henrietta was full of music and life.
She was one of those characters — a real character — that seem larger than life, although in her case I don’t think she was much over five foot even. Part of the original folk scene in NYC in the early sixies, she knew everyone from Leadbelly to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. She wrote Woody’s authorized biography, A Mighty Hard Road. Supposedly, I learned from her NY Times obit, Pete wrote “Kisses Sweeter than Wine” in her bathroom. Still when we knew her she was politically active and I think — although I may be conflating imagination with reality here — we sang “We Shall Overcome” in her apartment together once. She loved the fact that my grandparents were Spanish Republicans in NYC in the 1930’s — she, too, had protested fascism before WWII and afterwards had spent time in Spain and North Africa chronicling the music of Sephardic women. Oh, the stories. She had also spent years doing field recordings, again of women’s songs, in Mexico and Central America, and was on a first name basis with both of the Lomaxes, father and son. She had a long-running radio show in NYC and had interviewed a young Bob Dylan in the early sixties, although she still didn’t like the idea of him going electric. Seriously! How cool is that?
Her corner apartment, stuffed full of mementos from her adventurous life, had been a regular party stop all those forty years ago and still, when we lived next door, radiated light and song.