Louis Edwards, a New Orleans novelist and an associate producer of the Jazz and Heritage Festival, said, “No other city is so equipped to deal with this.” A French Quarter resident, Mr. Edwards was taking refuge last week at his mother’s house in Lake Charles, La.
“Think of the jazz funeral,” he said. “In New Orleans we respond to the concept of following tragedy with joy. That’s a powerful philosophy to have as the underpinning of your culture.”
— NY Times, September 8, 2005
I’ve been spending a lot of time this week staring at a blank MS Word document; the blinking cursor taunting me: “What witty and carefree thing are you going to write this week for the Jazz Jam, hmmm?”
I’ve been having writer’s block, because somehow I didn’t feel right to be writing about jazz with the situation in New Orleans; it felt disrespectful.
Then, as I sat here pondering what to do, I remembered what happened to me at dinnertime last Saturday night. Here in Knoxville at least, the NPR program “A Prairie Home Companion” runs at 6PM Saturday, right after “All Things Considered.” There I was chopping vegetables, and Garrison Kellior introduced the Dirty Dozen Brass Band to the crowd at the Minnesota State Fair, and man, they played their hearts out. I guess they were on the road when Katrina hit. So there I was trying to hold it together, soaking in both the beauty of the music and the poignancy of the moment. Then they started playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” and I just lost it. I was never so happy to be chopping onions in my life, loving that blessed burning in my eyes so I could just let loose, the tears running down my cheeks, nose running, the whole nine yards…
I was sitting here with Mr. Accusatory Cursor when I remembered this, and the thought hit me:
“Who the hell are you to cop a writer’s block when these guys are out there playing like there’s no tomorrow?”
And that’s why I (and hopefully you, too) love jazz and blues so much; like all great artists, these musicians open themselves to the world in all its beauty and pain, in the hope that Truth will find them a worthy and useful tool to speak to the rest of us. May we all answer that call, each in our own way, with the same integrity.
“We’re going to get those musicians back, the brass bands, the jazz funerals, everything.” — Kermit Ruffins, New Orleans jazz trumpeter, quoted in the NY Times, September 8, 2005
Next week, I promise we’ll get back to news, reviews, and all the latest on the music scene. But tonight I want to just pay tribute to all the artists (of whatever medium) that somehow distill beauty and truth out of tragedy and pain, prophets who leave us all immeasurably richer for their suffering and devotion.
So the topic for discussion this week is: “Tell us about an artist or work of art where you saw someone transcend tragedy to touch a spark of the divine; who did the hard work of the alchemy to forge pain into gold, and then like Prometheus brought it as a gift to humanity, despite the cost.” Peace.
I’ve been thinking about 3 little movies that I have seen in the last two days. They are so well done and we know they were hastily constructed on sheer talent and passion in the moment. I’ll get the links. Just got in.
Also there was a great article in the New York Times:
The New York Times
September 7, 2005
This Song Goes Out to You, Big Easy
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
(The link will be valid until 14 September.)
The Songs:
“The Rivers of Babylon” by the Melodians,
Louis Armstrong asking, “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?”
Fats Domino song “Walking to New Orleans.”
“Louisiana 1927” by Randy Newman
“When the Levee Breaks,” by Memphis Minnie
Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground”
Sam Cooke’s “Change Is Gonna Come.”
Dirty Dozen Brass Band for “The Lost Souls (of Southern Louisiana)”
I didn’t cry until Sam Cooke’s “Change Is Gonna Come.”
Nominate: Nick Spitzer for the Art of Radio for this show that he put together after evacuating from his home and almost everything he owned.
Even though I did not actually hear his show but only read about it and sampled the music. Don’t worry, those songs are all going on my Amazon wish list.
Thanks for the link. 🙂
I didn’t cry until Sam Cooke’s “Change Is Gonna Come.”
You’ve got stronger tear-duct muscles than I do, LOL.
Movies nominated by me:
New Orleans
Katrina
Us and Them
You will need the plug-in QuickTime.
Us and Them just absolutely ripped me apart. I wish I could get the kool aide drinkers to see this.
I heard Tab Benoit a few weeks ago. He plays Cajun with 100% heart and 100% of his soul. Every song. Every concert.
I’ve no doubt that the next time anyone hears him he will “transcend tragedy to touch a spark of the divine”.
I just hope he and his band members survived.
Did I ever get your drift…
You are talking about what art is. The reason why we have society.
Business is just the plumbing in heaven – bringing a little plain joy and getting rid of the crap.
The reason we have society is to share in mysteries – the mystery of what we hear, what we see, what we touch, smell, taste and feel. And mysteries are expressed thru culture – high and low.
We’ll never know the answers – but we need to know that there might BE answers.
….I’ve got nothin’,
but thanks for not letting the block get in your way!
I tried to get my Muse to let me include the following in the diary somehow, but was threatened with being shrunken down and drowned in a bathtub:
Of course we lament the loss of life. But should Europeans lament more for NO residents than any other place on the planet, in which thousands die every day?
Our reaaon for lamenting is ultimately the loss of culture – it’s like an old oak tree finally died.
because it is more than geography. It lives on in the people, scattered all over the country now. Geography has a great influence on culture. There is a correlation between New Orleans’ precarious geography and the volume of culture produced in that city. But that will live on in memory. It’s all we got.
Cajun is a corruption of ‘Arcadia’, an idealistic French-speaking society founded further up the Mississippi by adherents to Sidney’s idyllistic book ‘Arcadia’.
The whole American south was full of slaves. Why was NO diffferent? Read ‘Arcadia’
Most Canadians know about the expulsion of the Acadians and their migrations to the American south. Many returned though and there has been a renaissance of their culture in the Maritimes. But the French who founded New Orleans predated that diaspora.
What makes New Orleans special is the spirit of the people…I cannot believe that their spirit is broken, and consequently, I must believe that they will once again claim it as their own. There are horrendous obstacles to overcome, not the least of which being the current government and it’s accompanying greed. While much of the city is damaged, it is not gone…
Peace
There’s talk of rebuilding but most buildings have structural damage from standing in flood waters for days. They won’t pass inspection.
The Republicans’ plans for rebuilding portend a Neo Orleans for the rich.
My pleasure.
True, but there are already all many people pushing for “1 st. rights” of return for the original folks who have been misplaced. Much of what may not be salvageable was pretty dismal already. It is going to require a lot effort by a lot of concerned people to make sure it is done properly. I for one do not relish the Republican vision of a Neo Orleans, nor do my friends that live there. The Quarter and many other neighborhoods have been flooded many times before and have always managed to resurrect themselves. I am hopeful that this will be done correctly.
Peace
but it shaped my week and saved my spirit.
I play the flute, quite seriously when I was younger. By the time I got to college, I knew I wouldn’t be a professional musician, but I still did one major in music (the other in East Asian studies). I decided before I graduated that I would be the kind of serious amateur who plays chamber music, and that flute would be a touchstone in what was shaping up to be a nomadic life of academic pursuits.
My first and best musical collaborator was my closest brother, Paul. He played piano, both the classical solo repertoire and as an accomplished accompanist. He really lived my dream of “serious amateur” status, even working steady gigs playing for or music-directing community theater productions on a regular basis, as he built a career in something quite unrelated.
As adults we lived in different cities and often on different continents. But when we visited, we invariably got around to making some music together. The last time he visited me, we wandered over to the campus where my husband teaches, found a really grand old piano in the college guesthouse, and plunked and flubbed our way through a few old favorites before my chops gave out. I was a new mom and had barely touched my flute in a couple of years.
A few months later, Paul died suddenly. It’s very strange, the things that stick in your memory from the chaotic upheaval of unexpected tragedy. My whole family discussed and carefully selected the music for Paul’s memorial service. I think the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life was to consider the question: who should play piano at my brother Paul’s funeral? It still feels like a nongrammatical construction, a sentence that looks like English but does not compute.
It was well over a year before I could hear solo piano music without weeping. I stopped going to concerts. I don’t think I opened my flute case once. It hurt too much to hear or make music and know that Paul would never be part of it again. I just let that part of my spirit freeze. Until this week.
A colleague e-mailed to let me know he was organizing a marathon benefit concert, all donations to go to the Red Cross. He needed twelve hours’ worth of volunteer performers and he needed them immediately, for the concert was scheduled but two days hence. Somehow, I still don’t know how, he knew that I played flute. Would I consider performing?
I’m a classically-trained flutist. I’ve never even been to New Orleans (isn’t that sad?) The closest thing to jazz I’ve ever worked up is a fun little piece by Claude Bolling, “Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano.” My technique and chops were far too rusty to tackle most of it, but a couple of the movements seemed doable. The concert organizer confessed to having played the piano part many years ago and offered to accompany. A few e-mails even turned up students willing to join us on bass and drums.
We barely rehearsed. My chops and fingers were what you’d expect after such a hiatus. But we plunked and flubbed our way through the two easiest movements — including one that I had last performed, with Paul on piano, for our father’s 80th birthday party. And I did it with singing and not weeping in my heart.
The concert raised more than $12,000 for hurricane relief efforts. I know there is so much more to be done, so many different tasks in front of me before I can say I’ve done anything close to my part. But this experience with music this week has helped me make another step towards peace with my brother’s death. It has led me to understand a little better that as long as we are drawing breath, we have gifts, and we have pain. And the pain, far from being reason to shun our gifts, is better viewed as the reason we keep returning to them.
Lord, I WANT to be in that number.
Thank you so much for this beautiful story.
Claude Bolling’s “Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano” is filled with the joy of life and is a wonderful reflection of the love you and your brother (and your father) shared.
I’m sure next time I hear it I’ll be getting a little misty-eyed. May I take the liberty of putting a quarter in the juke box in honor of you and Paul?
What a wonderful song to have in my head all day.
dirty dozen brass band picked off the benches on Jackson Square. Young, loud, energetic and perfectly in tune.
drawing large throngs of tourists, then scaring them off with in your face but smiling pass the hat routines which never failed to collect less than the full value of their high energy