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PROOF PROOF 1 2 3 Larry Blumenfeld 4 5 6 Since the Flood 7 8 Scenes from the Fight 9 for New Orleans Jazz Culture 10 11 12 13 In this place, there is a custom for the funerals o· jazz musicians. 14 The funeral procession parades slowly through the streets, fol- 15 lowed by a band playing a mournful dirge as it moves to the ceme- 16 tery. Once the casket has been laid in place, the band breaks into 17 a joyful second line, symbolizing the triumph of the spirit over 18 death. Tonight the Gulf Coast is still coming through the dirge, yet 19 we will live to see the second line. 20 —President George W. Bush, televised address from Jackson 21 Square, French Quarter, New Orleans, September 15, 2005 22 23 y mid- October, when the ± rst real second- line 24 parade rolled in the streets of New Orleans, in me- 25 Bmoriam for chef Austin Leslie, President Bush had 26 disappeared along with and most of the recovery assis- 27 tance he’d promised. The jazz funeral and the second- line 28 parade would be invoked again and again in the name of 29 recovery, yet nowhere as crudely as in Bush’s address. 30 Yes, the glorious and exotic culture of New Orleans 31 provided potent metaphor. Those jazz musicians, Mardi 32 Gras Indians, and fancy- dancing second- liners made for 33 instant B- roll and catchy human- interest characters in 34 story after story of despair and destruction, repair and 35 resilience. And they raised questions. Would the musi- 36 cians return? Would they get new instruments? Could 37 they ± nd their groove and inspire good times again de- 38 Tseng Proof • 2011.11.11 08:48 8985 Weisbard • Pop When the World Falls Apart • Sheet 150 of 328 Tseng Proof • 2011.11.11 08:48 8985 Weisbard • Pop When the World Falls Apart • Sheet 151 of 328 PROOF 1 spite the pain? Largely missed was the fact that those at the center of New 2 Orleans jazz culture were very much the foreground story. They held the 3 keys to the larger questions of recovery. And, out of view of most cameras, 4 they—and what they stood for—weren’t exactly welcomed back. 5 Second line parades are derived from traditional brass band funeral 6 processions, a de± ning element of New Orleans jazz culture that trans- 7 forms mourners into celebrants through music as it moves from dirge to 8 uptempo rhythm once a body is “cut loose.” The “second line” originally 9 referred to those who followed the main line, the family and friends of the 10 deceased, funeral directors and musicians. Second line parades, as they’ve 11 come to be called, are four- hour Sunday afternoon aº airs, sponsored by 12 social aid and pleasure clubs, organizations that are direct descendants of 13 Reconstruction- era black benevolent societies. The jazz funerals and sec- 14 ond line parades referenced in Bush’s speech in fact formed the ± rst post- 15 Katrina expressions of community, the earliest assertions of a right to re- 16 turn. A year later, those parades were threatened by Draconian fees and 17 restrictions. The musicians who honor their dead in the processions Bush 18 described occasionally faced arrest, cited with “disturbing the peace.” And 19 at Mardi Gras Indian gatherings (a closely related and no less signi± cant 20 tradition), the spectacle o· black men standing ± erce in eight- foot- tall 21 suits of feathers and beads, doing battle by competing to be “prettiest,” 22 had more than once been overtaken by the sirens and à ashing lights of 23 § cruisers. Tensions have long existed between the city’s black culture 24 bearers and its power brokers, but what’s happened since the à ood, what’s 25 still happening, is of a diº erent order and begs consideration in a deeper, 26 more urgent context. 27 There’s a culture war going on in New Orleans—one with deep histori- 28 cal roots but also brand- new ± repower and dangerous stakes. That conà ict 29 de± nes the tangle o· issues ± guring into the rebuilding process (which 30 has ended up meaning the creation of a “new” New Orleans more so than 31 a recovery of the old one) and the matters of race and class underscor- 32 ing them all. The story o· how this culture war has played out provides a 33 piercing look at New Orleans since the à ood, as well as into how we really 34 feel about traditions that have helped shape American music for more 35 than a century. And it makes clear that New Orleans—a city built on cul- 36 ture, a city that to so many stands for culture—must be rebuilt through 37 culture i· it is to stand for anything at all—or just stand. 38 146¾ ¥ ¦ Tseng Proof • 2011.11.11 08:48 8985 Weisbard • Pop When the World Falls Apart • Sheet 152 of 328 Tseng Proof • 2011.11.11 08:48 8985 Weisbard • Pop When the World Falls Apart • Sheet 153 of 328 PROOF PROOF I know all that now, but I didn’t when I began writing about New 1 Orleans after the à ood. In October 2005, I’d penned an angst- ridden 2 essay for Salon about the cultural implications of the Katrina tragedy. 3 Soon after, I spent a week researching a Village Voice article timed to pre- 4 cede the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which, merely 5 by virtue o· its mounting that year, was a mighty symbol and not minor 6 triumph of communal will and fundraising. I’d set out to document the 7 reality confronted by the prime movers within the city’s musical subcul- 8 tures: the network o· jazz musicians, the stable o· brass band players and 9 their closely aligned social aid and pleasure clubs and second- line dancers, 10 the tribes of Mardi Gras Indians. I wanted to detail the situation from 11 their eyes, outline their challenges, and evaluate the potential for commu- 12 nal loss or recovery. 13 As I researched, the dimensions of crisis in what has long been con- 14 sidered the birthplace o· jazz grew larger and clearer: As historian Ned 15 Sublette put it when I called in September 2005: “We’re not just watch- 16 ing history disappear, history is watching us disappear.” I sensed what he 17 meant. As Ellis Marsalis explained in his living room in early 2006: “In 18 other cities, culture comes from the top down. In New Orleans, it’s the 19 reverse: it springs from the street up. No neighborhoods, no culture.” He 20 was right. The culture of New Orleans depends on the integrity o· its black 21 neighborhoods, however troubled, lest it be turned into a tourist show or 22 museum piece. And lest it lose its function, leaving a whole lot of people 23 disenfranchised. 24 One nagging fact ignited my passion: after writing about American 25 culture for twenty years, I was surprised to ± nd many in my so- called 26 jazz community oddly complacent about the cultural consequences of 27 the à ood, strangely unaº ected by what has and has not happened in 28 New Orleans in its aftermath. New Orleans was history to them, owed a 29 debt of gratitude and proper credit (see episodes 1–4 of Ken Burns’s § 30 series, Jazz) but otherwise largely irrelevant to the present modern- jazz 31 moment. I knew that wasn’t true. New Orleans produced the ± rst real 32 jazz star, Louis Armstrong, and it is, I’ve come to believe, the only place 33 left in this country with a real living jazz culture—one in which swing- 34 ing music is elemental to the everyday lives o· large swaths of ordinary 35 people. Placed in stark relief since 2005 is whether that culture—which 36 Burns’s series famously cast as a signal of American values and virtues on 37 38 ¦¾147 Tseng Proof • 2011.11.11 08:48 8985 Weisbard • Pop When the World Falls Apart • Sheet 152 of 328 Tseng Proof • 2011.11.11 08:48 8985 Weisbard • Pop When the World Falls Apart • Sheet 153 of 328 PROOF 1 the order of the Constitution—still carried currency when it comes to the 2 issues Katrina raised: identity, race, poverty, and basic decency. 3 4 Possible Body 5 6 By March 2006, six months after the à oods that followed the levee fail- 7 ures, New Orleans was two cities, so starkly in contrast it tested the mind’s 8 limits. One New Orleans inched toward renewal, the other was caught in 9 what David Winkler- Schmidt of the local Gambit Weekly called “the hor- 10 rible unending of not knowing.” 11 Stick to the “Sliver by the River,” the high- ground neighborhoods along 12 the Mississippi’s banks, and you might have thought the place was heal- 13 ing. Take a taxi from Louis Armstrong Airport to the French Quarter and 14 you might easily miss the fading water line, fourteen feet high in some 15 places, on the sides o· buildings as you sailed down I- 10. Sluggishly ap- 16 proaching its former self, the Quarter again boasted coº ee and beignets, 17 music in the air and mystery around each corner. 18 But the Gray Line Hurricane Katrina bus tour revealed miles of de- 19 struction, still stunning six months past the storm.

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