Celebrating Evelyn Harris: Her voice filled the room again

NORTHAMPTON — When acclaimed singer Evelyn Harris died unexpectedly late last year, her family, friends, fellow musicians and fans might have thought that they’d never get to sing with her again.

Yet there she was on Saturday afternoon — at her own celebration of life — leading a sold-out crowd of 300 people, plus at least 247 more people via livestream, at Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence. They sang and clapped along with Harris to the hymn “This Little Light of Mine” by way of a video she recorded in 2021.

Harris, who died at the age of 75 on Dec. 16, 2025, was a Grammy-nominated singer, composer, and activist who lived in Easthampton. She grew up in Virginia and studied music at Howard University. In 1974, she joined the Black women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, which she was a member of for 18 years. She also co-produced nine of the group’s albums. One of her compositions, “Emergency,” which was about South African apartheid, was a nominee for the “Best Contemporary Folk Recording” Grammy Award in 1988.

Locally, she was the director of the Ku’umba Women’s Choir, the predecessor of the Ujima Singers; a member of the faculty at The Institute for the Musical Arts in Williamsburg; a member of the Young@Heart Chorus; and frontwoman of the blues/rock/soul band StompBoxTrio.

In her opening address, Rev. Andrea Ayvazian, associate pastor of the Alden Baptist Church in Springfield, drew upon a biblical phrase often used for notable prophets and leaders: “They grew old and full of days.”

“Our Evelyn did not grow old, but she was full of days,” Ayvazian said. “Many days of performing in venues in countless cities and towns. Many days of singing at political events up and down the Valley. Many days of leading choirs, teaching students, mentoring young voices. Many days of singing solo, in duets, in trios, and in choruses. Many days of acting and singing in theatrical productions. Many days of singing in churches and basking in the worship services. Our Evelyn did not grow old enough, but she was full of days — strong, song-saturated, and love-packed days.”

In front of the pulpit, Harris’ cremated remains rested in a silver urn, flanked on either side by arrangements of pink, white, and green flowers.

Ayvazian then asked members of the crowd to join hands with somebody near them: “Let our hands be like the links of a chain which hold our lives together,” she said. “Not a chain of bondage, but a silver cord of strength. A ribbon of love in this time of sorrow.”

Harris’s friend Rev. Elder Akosua McCray, pastor of Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Washington, D.C., was unable to take part in the ceremony in person due to travel challenges related to the recent snowstorm. Instead, in a video, she did a libation, during which she poured water in memory of Harris.

“Those who have died have never, never left,” she said. “The dead are not under the earth. They’re in the running water. They’re in the trees. They’re in the air. They’re in the grass. The dead are not under the earth. So listen more often to things than to beings, and remember that the ancestors surround us.”

McCray instructed the crowd several times to call out Harris’s name — and they did.

“Evelyn!”

“We’ve called her,” McCray said. “She’s here with us.”

Poems, songs, prayers

After Ayvazian led the crowd in a prayer, Harris’s cousins Yvonne Shirley and Erica Shirley gave readings from the books of Psalms and Romans, respectively.

“I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus our Lord,” Erica Shirley read.

Marcia Gomes, Samirah Evans, and Hala Lord, Harris’s friends and musical collaborators, took the stage to sing the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

Harris’s friend Mary Cowhey read a poem by one of Harris’s favorite poets, Langston Hughes, albeit with the “he” in the original poem changed.

“I loved my friend. / She went away from me. / There’s nothing more to say,” Cowhey read. “The poem ends, / Soft as it began, / — I loved my friend.”

Harris’s second cousin Patricia Clay Shirley explained that Harris got the nickname “Little Evelyn” as a child because she was named after her grandmother.

“Even then, Little Evelyn was a songbird. Often, we would remind Evelyn to stop singing so we could talk, but it did little good. We didn’t realize then that she was a God-given talent and we were witnessing a star developing. Stars develop as much from personality as from talent, and Little Evelyn had both. She could not have stopped singing, even if she wanted to.”

Edwin Shirley, Patricia’s husband, read a speech by Harris’s cousin Eric Clay, who was unable to attend.

“Some people expand the world just by being in it, and that was Evelyn’s gift,” he said. “She had a profound way of reaching people, even though she didn’t know. Like her music, which spread information and joy as a force of freedom, her spirit was a bridge to others.”

“She truly wanted you to win, believing that where our passions come from is less important than what we do with them,” he added. “Evelyn leaves behind a legacy of music, advocacy, and a lingering warmth in every room she ever entered.”

Then, attendees watched two videos, the first of which, made by Harris’s cousin Yvonne Shirley, featured performance footage of Harris with Sweet Honey in the Rock in her younger years.

“When there’s laughter all around me and my family and friends surround me / If I seem to be forgetful, remind me / That somewhere in the world, people are weak, be aware,” she sang. “And while you speak your mind, others can’t speak, be aware / And while your children see somewhere in this world, a child is homeless / When we have so much, should any child be homeless? / Oh no, not even one child, be aware.”

Activism, powerful music

In an undated interview in the video, Harris explained the origins of her activism:

“There was no participation in my household in the Civil Rights Movement. I was reading about it in the paper and aching to be a part of it at 13 years old. You know, I knew that there was something out there that was better. I’ve always been different and have always been comfortable being different, because I don’t like passive people. I don’t like people who don’t care about change. I don’t like people who are complacent to live in conditions that they feel they can’t do anything about.”

The second video came from members of Sweet Honey in the Rock, who sang a song dedicated to her.

Harris’s close friend Bill Blatner, who was also one of her vocal students, recalled a story in which the two were complaining about the challenges of old age.

“I thought I was being very wise and said, ‘Well, getting old sure beats the alternative,’” he said. “She looked at me and said, ‘Bill, we don’t know that.’”

Blatner said Harris helped him understand the core of the music he was performing.

“Evelyn had a way with words and knew their power. ‘The one thing you have as a singer,’ she told me, ‘that no one else in the band has, is the poetry. Start there. Listen to the original. Try to discern the composer’s intentions. Don’t go through the motions, though. Articulate. No point singing words if no one can understand them.’ She wrote to me, ‘Your motives speak to a desire for making music that speaks to you, and no one can take that away.’”

“In my 66 years, Evelyn is the first person that I’ve lost that I talked or texted or hung out with practically every day until the day she died. The hole that’s left at times feels unbearable,” he said. “I know I am exceptionally lucky for all the time I had with her, but I miss her very much. I don’t know where she is now, but I hope to honor our friendship by living and striving as she did: in humor, kindness, and love; for peace and justice; singing, always singing, the poetry that moved her.”

Guitarist John Caban and bassist Paul Kochansky, Harris’s bandmates in StompBoxTrio, remembered her as someone who “always brought her game” and a “perpetual songbird,” respectively.

“It was a great run,” Caban said. “I love ya.”

The Ujima Singers, a chorus of BIPOC performers that operate out of the Northampton Community Music Center, performed the hymn “When I Die,” composed by former Sweet Honey in the Rock member Ysaye M. Barnwell.

Indë Francis, the group’s director, explained that their last rehearsal with Harris wasn’t “a real rehearsal” — rather, it was a grief circle, during which group members talked about their experiences with death, because Harris wanted them to learn and understand the song.

“It was a really funny and serendipitous thing,” Francis said. “Her spirit knew even though she didn’t.”

After the celebration, Francis said they considered Harris a mentor figure and a role model with “musical integrity at the center.” Before her passing, Harris was preparing to transfer the group’s leadership to Francis so that she could enjoy singing in the group without having to direct as well.

“She was really, really passionate about her music, her art, and what she was teaching,” Francis said, “and she would not settle for people who didn’t understand why they were singing what they were singing.”

“The intention really mattered,” they added. “… If you’re going to sing something, it had better mean something.”

Francis, who identifies as queer, chose their outfit for the event, which included a long skirt and cowboy boots, because they’d once worn it to a rehearsal, where Harris complimented it: “She liked the outfit, so she said, ‘You go, dude, or dudette, or whatever!’”

“When she was younger, she stood out as different in Richmond, and she stands out as different here in Northampton as well,” Francis said “She really did a great job of recognizing that I also stood out and uplifting me for that.”

Though the group’s last rehearsal before Harris died involved discussions about death, Francis doesn’t consider it tragic.

“It’s been difficult to communicate to people that it is a beautiful and spiritual thing that she was able to have those experiences before she passed,” Francis said. “It hasn’t felt like a tragedy to me. She definitely has gone too soon. But she also was really clear with everybody about what she wanted. And the Ujima Singers was perhaps her biggest dream, and she was able to realize that dream, so I’m grateful.”

Yasmeen Williams, who was part of Sweet Honey in the Rock with Harris, said that Harris “took small things and made them great.”

“Evelyn didn’t just hope for a better life,” Williams said “She visualized it. She saw it, and then she built it. One song at a time, one stone at a time. If she could not find a stone, she created one. … Her life was defined by a relentless, transgenerational tenacity. She stood on the stones of those who came before her. She laid down new ones for us to stand on today. There are many in this room, and many streaming live, who can attest: if she hadn’t done what she did, we couldn’t do what we do.”

Smith College incident

In her speech, Williams also called out Smith College, for which she received loud applause and cheers, for what she called its “public hysterectomy” of Harris.

In 2025, Harris was supposed to have received an honorary degree from the college, which she would have accepted with a speech at commencement in May. However, the college rescinded the degree when they discovered that parts of her speech were plagiarized. President Sarah Willie-LeBreton said at the time in an emailed letter to the Smith community, “In conversations about this after the event, Ms. Harris was forthcoming about her choices while also acknowledging that she sought to infuse the words of others with her own emotional valence.” 

After it happened and word of the situation spread more widely, Williams wanted to take action, but Harris said no: “‘I just want peace. Let it go,’” Williams recalled. “She said, ‘You always told me God would take care of it.’”

Williams thanked the Northampton community for showing its support for Harris: at every one of her concerts after that fallout, she said, crowd members would shout, “We love you, Evie!”

“You have no idea what that did for her,” Williams said. “She called me in tears because of what you stood for for her. After that calamity, your public acclamation gave her back the one thing she tried to give everyone else: dignity. Your love circled back and let her die with dignity.”

“She showed us that you die standing, like a grown person does,” she added. “Today, we celebrate her stones — rough, muddy, and permanent. After you have done all you can do, you just stand.”

Singer Marcia Gomes remembered her friend as a woman who “enriched our lives with her huge heart and her many gifts.” As a performer in “STILL,” Gomes’ musical memoir about intergenerational trauma, “The wisdom and tenderness [Harris] brought to her portrayal of my grandmother was brilliant and deeply moving,” Gomes said.

Gomes said Harris led her to a number of opportunities: to audition for a role in the play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” to become a vocal coach at the Institute For the Musical Arts in Williamsburg, and to join her onstage for the 2024 Sisterfire reunion concert at the Kennedy Center (“when it still was the Kennedy Center,” she said pointedly, referring to the venue’s recent name change.)

“Evelyn, my dear sister, thank you for inspiring us to be brave by your life’s example,” she said. “No matter how many times this world knocked you down, you got back up, dusted yourself off, and continued to sing, to teach, to learn to write, to march, to sing, over and over again.”

Harris’s friend Tolley Jones then read out Harris’s obituary, which was shared in the event program.

As members of the Young@Heart Chorus (which rehearses at Bombyx) took the stage before singing “You Are Not Alone” by Jeff Tweedy, Young@Heart co-director Julia van IJken pointed out that when Harris joined the group in the summer of 2023, she was on the cusp of turning 73, but the group has a minimum age of 75 to join.

“But when Evelyn reached out and asked if she could join Young@Heart, we weren’t about to say no!” van IJken said.

Co-Director Bob Cilman noted that “the social activist in Evelyn” would want the group to share “You Are Not Alone” with the people of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, which received applause. In fact, the last Young@Heart performance she was part of was “10-Alarm Fire: We Won’t Shut Up!!,” a show of protest songs, which the group screened for free via YouTube on Saturday night in her honor.

Cilman later told the Gazette, “To be in the room with all the people who meant so much, that she meant so much to, was an amazing experience. And you could feel it. You could feel Evelyn in everything that was said and every note that was sung.”

After the “This Little Light of Mine” video, Ayvazian offered a prayer of Thanksgiving before leading the assembly in the Lord’s Prayer, then some of Harris’s musical collaborators took the stage to sing “I’ll Fly Away.”

Post-event comments

After the service, a number of Harris’s friends and colleagues spoke to the Gazette about their memories of her and her impact.

Mary Witt, who knew Harris for about 15 years, was part of a gospel and spirituals trio called Giving Voice, in which Harris was the lead vocalist. Witt remembers Harris as someone who “took no prisoners,” someone who “spoke her mind always” but was also “really kind and benevolent.”

“She was amazing,” Witt said. “She always sang everything in a different way than before and just brought so much beauty and love and peace and spirit to everything she sang.”

Harris’s cousin Yvonne Shirley remembered traveling to big concert venues like Carnegie Hall from a young age to see her perform. While gathering photos of Harris for the celebration of life, Shirley discovered one in which she was sitting in Harris’s lap and recalled “feeling like our cool cousin had arrived,” she said.

Besides that, she added, “I always appreciated how much she cared and loved and was passionate about our history as a family, and her presence at our family gatherings, and singing and anchoring us as a unit.”

Her sister Erica Shirley agreed: while Harris’s talent was always obvious, “In these last 20, 30 years, I think getting to know her more personally was just a gift.”

Yasmeen Williams said Harris was “probably the least argumentative on the road” of all their fellow Sweet Honey in the Rock members.

“She was kind, and the only one who would wake me up when we were on tour gently, Everybody else would be brash: ‘Get up!’ But she would touch my shoulder and she’d say, ‘Yasmeeeeen.’ And I really loved that about her, because she heard me say that if you wake me up, suddenly I’m nervous for the rest of the day, so she listened.”

The two had a strong bond — “an old-time kind of friendship,” Williams said — and a shared nickname: “Deputy,” later shortened to “Depty,” which came with a faux-military salute. They could talk for hours.

Still, as Williams was listening to the remembrances at the celebration of life, she was a bit taken aback: “When everybody was talking about what she did on stage and how she needs to come back and do this, and I’m looking at them going, ‘You’re talking about my friend. I don’t see her like that,” she said.

“I know that a lot of people talk about the great things she did, and she did. She was always like that as a person. But for me, I can’t give you anything that’s worth really writing,” Williams said, when asked about the legacy Harris leaves behind. “I can just say that she’s my friend.”