New Orleans Music

Adapted from Tulane University MUSC 1900

New Orleans is an American city with a unique history as a European colony, a hub for the slave trade, and a destination for immigrants from Europe and the Americas. The city’s celebrated musical traditions have been created by a diverse mix of people and shaped by their interactions in the shared spaces of the city. This course is intended as an introductory survey of New Orleans music, including jazz, brass band, gospel, Mardi Gras Indian, rhythm and blues, funk, and hip-hop, through writings, audio and visual examples, and suggested supplementary readings.

  • Matt Sakakeeny

    Matt Sakakeeny

    Assistant Professor of Music

    Matt Sakakeeny is an anthropologist of music who has lived in New Orleans since 1997. In his book, Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, he follows brass band musicians as they march off the streets and into nightclubs, festival grounds, and recording studios. Matt also writes essays, produces public radio pieces on New Orleans culture, and teaches courses on a variety of topics ranging from classical music to New Orleans music.

    Matt’s website

  • 1 Congo Square

    Congo Square

    About This Chapter:

    In Louisiana’s French and Spanish colonial era of the 18th century, slaves were permitted to gather and sell goods every Sunday…

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    Chapter 1 Congo Square

    In Louisiana’s French and Spanish colonial era of the 18th century, slaves were permitted to gather and sell goods every Sunday in a grassy field on the outskirts of the French Quarter that later became known as Congo Square. There, they played music and danced in the form of a ring shout, with small groups of instrumentalists, singers, and dancers arranging themselves into a circle surrounding a rotating cast of dancers. Because this tradition was allowed to continue until the 1840s, after the city became part of the United States, historians and musicologists have pointed to the Congo Square dances as crucial to the establishment of Africanized cultural traditions in New Orleans.

    Musicologist Samuel Floyd locates “all of the defining elements of black music” in the ring shout, including “call-and-response devices; additive rhythms and polyrythms;…timbral distortions of various kinds; musical individuality within collectivity;…and the metronomic foundational pulse that underlies all Afro-American music” (1991, 267-268). The most detailed account of Congo Square, from an 1819 journal entry by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, makes reference to several of these characteristics. The many drummers, whose sound Latrobe compared to “horses trampling on a wooden floor” (1819, 203), were likely creating the complex polyrhythms that characterize ritual drumming in West Africa and the Americas. While one group of women was “respond[ing] to the Song of their leader” in call-and-response fashion, others were “walk[ing], by way of dancing, round the music in the Center,” creating what Floyd would recognize as “an activity in which music and dance commingled, merged, and fused to become a single distinctive cultural ritual” (1991, 266).

    The slave dances in Congo Square provided a formidable basis for the development of the city as an epicenter of African American music, while also communicating to the fascinated crowds on the square’s perimeter. The only accounts of the dances were written by white spectators, and the most popular image associated with the dances, the drawing by E.W. Kemble, was illustrated in 1868, long after the dances ended, by someone who had never attended. Congo Square is then not only an important site for African cultural retentions and the future of American music, it also teaches us about race relations and myth making through music.

    The former site of Congo Square is now Louis Armstrong Park, which is located in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, just across Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. The Tremé neighborhood is famous for its history of African American music.

    • New Orleans Music, Congo Square, commons.wikimedia.org
    Congo Square

    In Louisiana’s French and Spanish colonial era of the 18th century, slaves were permitted to gather and sell goods every Sunday in a grassy field on the outskirts of the French Quarter that later became known as Congo Square. There, they played music and danced in the form of a ring shout, with small groups of instrumentalists, singers, and dancers arranging themselves into a circle surrounding a rotating cast of dancers. Because this tradition was… read more

  • 2 Jazz Funerals and Second…

    Jazz Funerals and Second Line Parades

    About This Chapter:

    New Orleans is a city of parades, most famously the Mardi Gras processions that roll down the wide boulevards of St.…

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    Chapter 2 Jazz Funerals and Second Line Parades

    New Orleans is a city of parades, most famously the Mardi Gras processions that roll down the wide boulevards of St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street during Carnival season, but in all the seasons and in every neighborhood there are jazz funerals and parades known as second lines that fill the backstreets with a joyful noise. On Sunday afternoons from September through May, African American forms of music, dance, and dress are put on display in parades that have become symbolic of New Orleans and its association with festivity and pleasure. The upbeat tone of second line parades originates in the distinctive local tradition of jazz funerals.

    The Jazz Funeral
    Though funerals would seem an unlikely source for such a festive tradition, the jazz funeral celebrates life at the moment of death-a concept common among many cultures until the twentieth century. In New Orleans and elsewhere, Europeans and Anglo-Americans attended funerals with music that featured a brass band playing “solemn music on the way to the grave and happy music on the return.” There is also a history of rejoicing at death through music in West African burial traditions. In 1819, architect Benjamin Latrobe witnessed a continuance of this tradition at a black funeral in New Orleans. The funeral began with the mourners making “loud lamentations” and ended with “noise and laughter.” With the end of slavery, black funerals with brass bands became commonplace. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the funerals had become forums for the performance of a new style of music – jazz -eventually becoming known as jazz funerals. Simultaneously, the popularity of funerals with brass band music waned among white New Orleanians.

    In the traditional jazz funeral, a prominent member of the community, often a musician and nearly always a black male, is “buried with music.” Benevolent and burial societies traditionally arranged these funerals, often offering the services of a brass band for an extra fee. The societies collected dues throughout the year to pay for members’ health care and burial costs. The musicians, funeral directors, family, and friends of the dead make up what is called the first or main line, while the crowd marching behind is collectively known as the second line. As the procession moves from the funeral service to the burial site, the first and second lines march to the beat of a brass band. At the beginning, the band plays dirges, somber Christian hymns performed at a slow walking tempo. After the body is laid to rest, or “cut loose,” the band starts playing up-tempo music, the second liners begin dancing, and the funeral transforms into a street celebration.

    Second Lines
    At some point in the late nineteenth century, the second line detached from the jazz funeral and developed its own identity. Organized by social aid and pleasure clubs, second lines wind through the neighborhoods of club members, making designated stops at their houses and other significant neighborhood sites, usually barrooms. From September through May, there is at least one parade every Sunday, often held on the anniversary of a club’s founding. Each club hosts fundraisers throughout the year and collects dues at regular meetings in order to pay for police permits, brass bands, and the coordinated outfits that members wear at their parade.

    Anthropologist Helen Regis defines a second line parade as a public festival in which club members, musicians, and second liners come together to create “a single flowing movement of people unified by the rhythm.” At the head of the parade, club members wear suits and sashes that display the club’s name, often twirling matching umbrellas above their heads. For approximately four hours, they strut their dance moves in front of the band while the second liners fall in behind and along the side. Many second liners show off popular dance steps such as the high step and the buck jump. Others make their own sounds by singing, clapping, blowing whistles, hitting cowbells and beer bottles, and shaking tambourines.

    Contemporary Parades and Jazz Funerals
    Second line parades create a sense of community among participants, and the public nature of the spectacle makes parading a powerful representation of black New Orleans. This has led to debates among parading organizations and musicians about how parades and funerals should be presented in public.

    In recent years, the jazz funeral tradition has opened up to include, most notably, young men and women who have died tragically young. At these funerals, the number of dirges performed is drastically reduced, altering the transition from dirges to up-tempo music that is the hallmark of the traditional funeral. Musicians no longer wear the traditional uniform of black band caps, white button-down shirts, and black dress pants, and instead dress in everyday clothes. Some tradition-minded organizations, such as the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club, bemoan these changes and have sought to perpetuate parading traditions in an orthodox manner. Black Men of Labor organizes funerals for families who want to honor the dead with a traditional burial, and the club sponsors an annual second line parade in which musicians are required to dress in uniform and perform traditional music.

    The power of parading as a symbol of local culture has also brought increased attention from spectators outside the community. Brass bands have made recordings of parade music since the 1940s and toured the globe as representatives of local culture since the 1960s. Photographs of community parades, particularly those of Michael P. Smith, began circulating in exhibits and books in the 1970s. Around this time, bands and second line dancers began to be hired for the entertainment of tourists and others. Today, these staged parades can be seen marching through the grounds of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the lobbies of the Convention Center.

    The rhythm of community parades may have changed pace, but they have never skipped a beat. For every staged parade, there is a social aid and pleasure club marching through the backstreets to the whoops and hollers of neighborhood second liners. For every brass band that has been relegated to the halls of history, such as the Olympia or the Eureka, there is a Rebirth Brass Band or Hot 8 to fill the void in their own way. Each jazz funeral begins with a respectful dirge and ends with a cathartic dance. Even in a New Orleans that habitually packages itself as entertainment, the beat of the street remains closely tied to the rhythms of everyday life.

    – Matt Sakakeeny

    Brass Bands

    Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the New Orleans brass band has only grown in stature. In the space of a few years, the Hot 8 Brass Band has gone from playing strictly parties, parades, and club gigs to performing regularly in Europe and across America.

    TU Prince of Wales Oral History Project

    In the Fall of 2009, Tulane students from the course, “The Interview: Cultural Conversation as Cultural Conservation,” conducted a documentary project about the Prince of Wales Social Aid & Pleasure Club. By documenting this particular club, the students were also assisting the local non-profit, Sweet Home New Orleans, in gaining a deeper understanding of their clients.

    Treme Brass Band

    They built a reputation for their live shows through performances in New Orleans clubs and on the road, in shows that included a four-year stint opening for the Grateful Dead during the late 1970s.

    Harold Dejan

    Harold “Duke” Dejan was a New Orleans jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader. Dejan is best remembered as leader of the Olympia Brass Band, including during the 1960s and 1970s when it was considered the top band in the city.

    In his later years Dejan often appeared at Preservation Hall. Dejan suffered a stroke in 1991, which left him unable to play the saxophone, but continued as a band leader and singer until shortly before his… read more

  • 3 Creole and Concert Music

    Creole and Concert Music

    About This Chapter:

    Focusing on music during the colonial and antebellum periods, we might expect that the city was most associated with the famed…

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    Chapter 3 Creole and Concert Music

    Focusing on music during the colonial and antebellum periods, we might expect that the city was most associated with the famed slave dances at Congo Square, which laid the foundation for jazz. But while these dances were a spectacle that received their share of commentary, most people associated New Orleans with opera and ballroom dance. In the 1820s, a pair of émigrés from Saint-Domingue organized the first permanent opera company in the country and established New Orleans as an elite cultural center through celebrated tours to the Northeast. In 1827, when their troupe visited New York and gave the Northern debut of no less than 30 operas, the praise was unanimous. The New York American gushed, “This company is as good as those heard in the provinces of France and superior to those heard in the Capitals of Europe outside France.”

    At home, attendance at the opera reflected the diversity of the city’s inhabitants. The French were partial to the company at the Théâtre d’Orléans in the Vieux Carré while the Americans flocked to the St. Charles Theater. Each company offered segregated seating for free people of color: in 1820, white patrons of the French opera house could purchase a season subscription for 60 dollars while gens de coleur libres paid 50 for their section. The musicians were predominantly European immigrants but also included Creoles of mixed European and African ancestry as well as American carpetbaggers.

    Concert music also flourished in halls offering separate seating for whites, free people of color, and slaves. Among the city’s many symphonic offerings there was the Negro Philharmonic Society, a full orchestra founded by black classical musicians. These were mostly French-speaking Creoles like Edmond Dédé, a violinist and composer who attended the Paris Conservatory and was part of a deep pedagogical tradition that included European and Creoles teachers and students.

    Nearly every travel account of nineteenth-century New Orleans testifies to the city’s penchant for ballroom dance. William C.C. Claiborne, the first American governor, recoiled at the countless private dances, subscription dances, society balls, public dances, and taxi dances where New Orleanians intermingled. After one month in the city, the governor wrote to Secretary of State James Madison and apologized for “calling your attention to the balls of New Orleans, but I do assure you, sir, they occupy much of the public mind.”

    Ballrooms were spaces where racial, ethnic, religious, and national identities were negotiated to the tunes of the latest contredanses. For example, in his monumental book – Music of New Orleans: The Formative Years -, historian Henry Kmen recounted a ball soon after the Louisiana Purchase where antagonisms between Americans, Creoles, and the French ancienne population played out on the dance floor: The Americans were agitating for the Virginia reel and the jig in place of the waltz and cotillion. To prevent just this the Creoles, for their part, turned out in force. Both sides carried arms to the conflict…Addressing the angry Americans, a [creole woman] cried: “We have been Spanish for thirty years and the Spaniards never forced us to dance the fandango; neither do we want to dance the reel or jig.” The municipal authorities ruled that there should be a set order of two French quadrilles, one English quadrille, and one waltz in turn, while Governor Claiborne ordered that an officer and 15 troops be present at every public ball.

    There were also “quadroon” balls, where elite white men danced with creole women as a preface to concubine arrangements known as plaçage, and “colored” balls that were theoretically restricted to blacks but were continually crashed by whites. A weekly ballroom schedule might include a night for whites only, another for white men and creole women, and a third for free colored only, but the ordinances enacted to maintain these boundaries were virtually ignored. The Globe Ballroom was closed in 1855 for allowing “tricolor” balls, and police raiding a free colored ball in 1834 found that two-thirds of the men they arrested were slaves.

    The echoes of these musical pasts cannot be fully measured in the jazz, brass band, blues, and funk of latter-day New Orleans. These are the styles that come to mind today when we ask ourselves “What is New Orleans?” But for patrons at the Théâtre d’Orléans or the Globe Ballroom, just as for spectators at Congo Square, the city’s musical reputation was built on the sheer plenitude of offerings and their freedom of accessibility.

    – Matt Sakakeeny

    Creoles

    Jelly Roll Morton

    Jelly Roll Morton was the first important composer and arranger of New Orleans jazz, as well as an agile pianist, a compelling singer, and one of the early jazz world’s most flamboyant characters. The nickname “Jelly Roll” was derived from sexual slang, and Morton was a stage moniker. His given first name was Ferdinand, and his surname has been variously stated as LaMothe, Lemott, or LaMenthe, while his year of birth is either 1885 or 1890.

    Sidney Bechet

    Clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet was one of the first great soloists of traditional New Orleans jazz. Renowned for his lyrical, swinging phrases, emotional blues sensibility, and ample use of vibrato, Bechet continues to exert vast influence on the traditional jazz scene in New Orleans and elsewhere. He is especially lionized in his adopted homeland of France.

    Hirsch, Arnold R. and Joseph Logsdon, editors. 1992. Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

    This collection of six original essays explores the peculiar ethnic composition and history of New Orleans, which the authors persuasively argue is unique among American cities. The focus of Creole New Orleans is on the development of a colonial Franco-African culture in the city, the ways that culture was influenced by the arrival of later immigrants, and the processes that led to the eventual dominance of the Anglo-American community. Essays in the book’s first section focus not only on the formation of the curiously blended Franco-African culture but also on how that culture, once established, resisted change and allowed New Orleans to develop along French and African creole lines until the early nineteenth century. Jerah Johnson explores the motives and objectives of Louisiana’s French founders, giving that issue the most searching analysis it has yet received. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, in her account of the origins of New Orleans’ free black population, offers a new approach to the early history of Africans in colonial Louisiana. The second part of the book focuses on the challenge of incorporating New Orleans into the United States. As Paul F. LaChance points out, the French immigrants who arrived after the Louisiana Purchase slowed the Americanization process by preserving the city’s creole culture. Joseph Tregle then presents a clear, concise account of the clash that occurred between white creoles and the many white Americans who during the 1800s migrated to the city. His analysis demonstrates how race finally brought an accommodation between the white creole and American leaders. The third section centers on the evolution of the city’s race relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cosse Bell begin by tracing the ethno-cultural fault line that divided black Americans and creoles through Reconstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow.

    Kmen, Henry A. 1966. Music in New Orleans: The Formative Years, 1791-1841. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

    Sidney Bechet

    Alongside such greats as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, clarinetist/soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet stands out as a premier soloist of traditional New Orleans jazz. Bechet continues to exert considerable, multi-generational influence on the traditional jazz scene both in New Orleans and worldwide – especially in his late-in-life home of France. He is acclaimed for his lyrical phrasing, bluesy sensibility, idiosyncratic use of vibrato, and ineffable sense of swing.

    Bechet’s middle-class black Creole family far… read more

    Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton

    A nimble pianist, skilled composer and arranger, an evocative soulful singer and a classic New Orleans flamboyant character – Jelly Roll Morton embodied all these estimable traits. Morton (1885 – 1941) was a second-generation New Orleans jazz musician, and the genre’s first important composer/arranger, as heard on such intricate, infectious songs as “Black Bottom Stomp.” Despite his seminal contributions, Morton enjoyed little of the commercial success he deserved because of the dubious machinations of the… read more

  • 4 Traditional Jazz

    Traditional Jazz

    About This Chapter:

    By the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, New Orleans was already a music city, offering bals masqués, opera and…

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    Chapter 4 Traditional Jazz

    By the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, New Orleans was already a music city, offering bals masqués, opera and ballet, military parades with brass bands, choral masses, and virtually nonstop street serenading-all of which coalesced to give birth to jazz. Most people think of New Orleans jazz as a single original jazz idiom, or musical style, when in fact it retains distinctive stylistic features tied to festival traditions within a discrete, regional culture. Even today, the musical practices rooted in neighborhood and family affiliations often influence musical styles and trends among traditional and modern jazz musicians more than national market trends.

    In the Antebellum period, weekly “ring shouts” at Place Congo in New Orleans (municipally sanctioned from 1817 to 1856) highlighted the pervasive presence of African and Afro-Caribbean musical sensibilities, also apparent in performances by the black street crier Signor Cornmeal at the St. Charles Theater in 1837, where he alternated with French and Italian opera. Over the course of the nineteenth century in New Orleans, the diversity arising from French, Spanish, and African cultures in the colonial period grew to include European, Caribbean, Latin American, and Asian immigrants, presenting local musicians with a vast array of raw materials from which to draw in making music.

    Beginning in the late nineteenth century, styles of dance underwent a dramatic shift away from polite, measured, and hierarchical nineteenth-century fare (i.e., quadrille, schottische, waltz, mazurka) to more suggestive, all-purpose steps such as the slow drag, two-step, one-step, and foxtrot, which suited the new musical genres of ragtime, blues, Tin Pan Alley popular tunes, and jazz that were coalescing in the early twentieth century.

    Despite the pall of racial segregation instituted by the state legislature in the 1890s and validated by the U.S. Supreme Court with the “separate but equal” doctrine in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, music provided opportunities for people of diverse backgrounds to get together. Much of this activity was made possible by neighborhood settlement patterns that predated segregation. Tremé, the lower French Quarter, and the Seventh Ward (clustered in the downtown area below Canal Street); Central City and the Irish Channel (uptown, above Canal Street); and Algiers (on the West Bank) were all characterized by crazy-quilt settlement patterns, interspersing Creoles, blacks, whites, Jews, Hispanics, and Latinos next door to each other within blocks.

    In the period from 1895 to 1925, most jazz musicians came from these neighborhoods, where the outdoor music was taking place. The “hotter” and more expressive dance music that came to be known as jazz catalyzed the attraction of young people. Thus, this musical style, rooted in the good-time practices of the uptown African American community, spread rapidly throughout the metropolitan area, into the rural hinterland, and across the nation.

    Traditional New Orleans jazz is band music characterized by a front line usually consisting of cornet (or trumpet), clarinet, and trombone engaging in polyphony with varying degrees of improvisation (without distorting the melody) and driven by a rhythm section consisting of piano (although rarely before 1915), guitar (or, later, banjo), bass (or tuba), and drums delivering syncopated rhythms for dancing (usually, but not always, in common or 4/4 time).

    Jazz transformed leadership roles within the older tradition of New Orleans dance bands: In 1900 violinists led the ensemble, but by 1917 their numbers and influence had diminished as volume levels rose and the lead melody role fell to the cornet, then to the trumpet. Within the early jazz ensemble, the clarinet plays obbligato to the lead (primarily with arpeggiated runs), and the trombone engages in various rhythmic pops, growls, and slurs, while also adding harmonic variations and occasionally covering bass lines.

    Guitar/banjo and piano reinforce the chord progression and rhythm, while also adding fills during breaks and pickups. The string bass accentuates the first and third beats, sometimes shifting to percussive slap-style eighth-note patterns, especially in the “out chorus,” the final measures of the piece, which were performed with extra energy. The introduction of “trap” drum sets in the 1890s was a major technological leap that enabled intensification and consolidation of rhythmic functions. In a traditional rhythm section, the drummer combines syncopated “press rolls”-even, recurring double-beats, 32 to 64 beats to the measure-and backbeats on snare with ground beats on bass drum. Cymbals are used sparingly, generally for crashes on the upbeat during out choruses or choked accents in stop-time breaks.

    In 1913 the Six and Seven-Eighths String Band of New Orleans engaged in collectively improvised polyphony without brass, reeds, and drums. Gilbert Frank was leader of the Peerless Orchestra in 1905, where he played “hot” piccolo, while his brother Alcide, a violinist, led the Golden Rule Orchestra, which contemporaries characterized as “hotter” than the band led by Buddy Bolden, the first cornet king of jazz. Eventually, saxophones entered the New Orleans front line, as seen in photographs of the Fischbein-Williams Syncopators (1923), Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band (1925), Celestin’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra (1928), and the Jones & Collins Astoria Hot Eight (1929). Marching bands that played for second-line dancers in the street, like the Onward Brass Band (a “reading” band that adapted to “faking” around 1905 when jazz became popular) and the Eureka (organized in 1920 as a jazz brass band), usually consisted of ten to 12 instruments: three trumpets, two reeds (originally clarinets; after World War II more likely saxophones), two trombones, brass bass, and snare and bass drummers.

    What all these bands shared was a style of playing “hot” dance music that suited the demands of a diverse, music-loving clientele, whether in cabarets, at dance halls, on riverboats, or in the streets. Solo improvisation was not common in New Orleans jazz bands until the mid-1920s, as documented on the recordings of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Clarence Williams’s Blue Five, and Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five.

    Traditional New Orleans jazz entered the American entertainment mainstream in two ways between 1907 and 1917-through touring and phonograph records. Prior to the first jazz recordings by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in New York in February 1917, New Orleans musicians had already traveled widely throughout North America. For example, the Creole pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton left the city in 1907 and remained itinerant for most of his life; the Original Creole Orchestra worked the Pantages vaudeville circuit from 1914 to 1918, including Canada; and Tom Brown’s Band from Dixieland played cabarets and theaters in Chicago and New York in 1915.

    In 1922, Kid Ory’s Sunshine Band made the first recording by a black New Orleans jazz band in Santa Monica, California, for the obscure Nordskog label. It was the recordings made by New Orleans musicians in the Chicago region from 1923 to 1928 that became the basis for widespread recognition of jazz as an American art form. Continuing the pragmatism that had characterized their musical experiments back home, these musicians employed diverse strategies, while also remaining true to the community cultures on which New Orleans-style jazz was based.

    In 1923, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band (featuring Louis Armstrong) relied exclusively on “head” arrangements (tunes worked out in advance and learned by rote) to prepare for its recording sessions, including titles like “Canal Street Blues,” “Snake Rag,” and “New Orleans Stomp.” Beginning in 1925, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five supplemented the occasional use of sheet music with head arrangements and spontaneous ideas generated in the studio to achieve an identifiable sound, leading to recordings like “Heebie Jeebies” (1926), “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” (1927), and especially “West End Blues” (1928), which were acclaimed as jazz masterpieces.

    By 1930, the multiplicity of musical possibilities inherent in traditional New Orleans jazz as an idiomatic playing style had amply demonstrated the genre’s potential for open-ended artistic expression. Yet, several coinciding factors spelled the end of the line for traditional New Orleans jazz as a force in the entertainment market: the rise of radio and implosion of the phonograph record boom that had sustained many jazz artists throughout the 1920s; the onset of the Great Depression; and the shifting musical fashion apparent in the rise of big bands whose highly arranged scores left no place for the small-band collective improvisation associated with New Orleans.Only Louis Armstrong continued, fronting a big band that bore little resemblance to the New Orleans-style recording units that had made him famous in the previous decade.

    Despite the trends associated with the swing era (represented by clarinetist Benny Goodman’s rise to stardom in 1935), some New Orleans jazz bands persevered and even flourished during the 1930s. Beginning in 1934, New Orleans trumpeter Louis Prima inaugurated a show business career that included jazz, swing combos, big band, Italian ethnic, and rock-and-roll phases, keeping him in the vanguard of American popular entertainment for nearly four decades. Perhaps the most surprising development of all, however, was the “New Orleans Revival” that attended the publication of the early history Jazzmen (1939) by Frederic Ramsey and Charles Edward Smith. This book sparked a highly publicized resurrection of the careers of cornetist Bunk Johnson and trombonist Kid Ory in the 1940s, conceived as an antidote to the rise of bebop and modern jazz in the World War II period. The revival brought previously unknown musicians (particularly the clarinetist George Lewis) to public attention and led directly to the establishment of Preservation Hall in 1961, based on the belief that traditional New Orleans jazz was noncommercial, community-based music that should be protected from the machinations of the music industry.

    Although New Orleans jazz came very close to extinction during the 1930s, it found ways to survive through experimentation and reinvention. After World War II, a new generation of local musicians interested in modern jazz, including drummers Earl Palmer, Ed Blackwell, and James Black; pianists Ellis Marsalis and Ed Frank; and saxophonists Alvin “Red” Tyler, Nat Perriliat, Harold Battiste, and Edward “Kidd” Jordan, showed that there was room for multiple styles within the New Orleans jazz continuum. This trend continues as the tradition finds new ways to reinvent itself. More recently, the most vital segment of the jazz community has been the new wave of brass bands emerging in the wake of guitarist/banjoist Danny Barker’s Fairview Baptist Church Christian Band experiments in the 1970s, including the Dirty Dozen, the ReBirth, the Hot Eight, and the Pinettes (an all-female group), whose imaginative inclusion of bebop and hip-hop into street repertoire enhances the tradition.

    Traditional Jazz

    Edward “Kid” Ory

    King Oliver

    A pioneering jazz trumpet and cornet player, bandleader Joe “King” Oliver played an instrumental role in the popularization of jazz outside of New Orleans. Though born in Louisiana, Oliver spent much of his career in Chicago, where he established his legendary King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Initially, the band included Louis Armstrong, formerly Oliver’s student in New Orleans. Ironically, Armstrong’s success ultimately overshadowed his mentor’s reputation as a jazz pioneer. As both a teacher and a musician, however, Oliver played an important role in the early history of jazz.

    Louis Armstrong

    Louis Armstrong is renowned as both a seminal figure in the evolution of jazz and, more broadly, as one of the major artistic figures of the twentieth century. One of several important second-generation jazz musicians to emerge from New Orleans in the 1920s, he helped introduce jazz to the global cultural mainstream. Armstrong’s formidable technique and imaginative improvisations dramatically raised the level of musicianship among jazz soloists and vocalists alike. In later years, Armstrong also became a pop-music hero and beloved entertainer far beyond the somewhat limited audience for jazz.

    • Louis Armstrong
    Louis Armstrong "Satchmo" 4
    Louis Armstrong “Satchmo”

    Trumpeter, cornetist and singer Louis Armstrong is often erroneously regarded as the sole inventor of jazz. This honorific is intrinsically impossible, because the evolution of any musical genre is a complex and gradual socio-cultural process. It is quite appropriate, however, to state that Armstrong made vital, indispensable contributions to the emergence of jazz, in New Orleans, which was one of such music’s prime points of origin. (It is similarly erroneous — although equally prevalent —… read more

    Charles "Buddy" Bolden
    Charles “Buddy” Bolden

    By Ben Sandmel

    The first documented practitioner of the music now known as New Orleans jazz was cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden (1877-1931). Legend has it that Bolden’s playing could be heard for miles around town when he would “call [his] children home.” Such anecdotes, combined with a relative dearth of solid information, combined to make Bolden a mythic figure. His musical innovations and tragic life story have inspired fictional works including David Fulmer’s Chasing The… read more

    King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
    Joe King Oliver

    Trumpeter/cornetist and bandleader Joseph Oliver was among the first New Orleans jazz musicians to make records and tour nationally. As such he played a pivotal roll in bringing national/global attention and popularity to music that previously had a limited, regional audience. Oliver’s 1923 recordings with his Creole Jazz Band, including the then up-and-coming Louis Armstrong are brilliant, definitive performances that also serve as an historic document of jazz’s development.

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    Edward ʻKidʼ Ory, Between 1946-1947; Courtesy of Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University
    Edward “Kid” Ory

    A native of LaPlace in St. John the Baptist Parish, Ory was the first important trombonist on the New Orleans jazz scebe and the first African-American bandleader to record New Orleans jazz material. He also recorded with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, and Jelly Roll Morton. By the 1930s, interest in traditional New Orleans jazz dwindled and so did Ory’s career, temporarily. But a traditional jazz revival brought Ory roaring back in the 1940s, and he… read more

  • 5 Church

    Church

    About This Chapter:

    New Orleans was founded by Catholics but has a long tradition of black Protestantism that dates back to Emancipation, when tens…

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    Chapter 5 Church

    New Orleans was founded by Catholics but has a long tradition of black Protestantism that dates back to Emancipation, when tens of thousands of freed slaves and their offspring moved off of rural plantations and into the urban center of New Orleans. The famed Jazz Funeral tradition begins with the brass band playing slow sacred dirges followed by up-tempo hymns. And there is a long tradition of black gospel coming out of the city’s numerous Baptist, Sanctified, Cogic and other churches. Mahalia Jackson was born and raised in Uptown New Orleans and became the most prominent gospel singer starting in the 1940s after moving to Chicago. In the late twentieth century, Bishop Paul S. Morton performed and recorded extensively with the Greater St. Stephens Baptist Church and Full Gospel Baptist Fellowship choirs

    Black Gospel

    African American gospel music incorporates elements of both black vernacular and sacred music, including blues, hymnody, spirituals, the folk church, and even popular song. Though usually defined as songs with religious lyrics, gospel also describes a performance style. Vocalists use improvisations and embellishments of text, timbre (tone), and pitch to express emotions ranging from sorrow to joy, lament to hope. For instrumentalists, the aesthetic and practical approaches are essentially the same. Gospel instrumentation has expanded over time, with an early preference for piano and guitar making way for more contemporary renderings that include Hammond organs, keyboards, amplified instruments, drums, and auxiliary percussion. The tradition now includes the subgenres of contemporary gospel, urban contemporary gospel, and traditional gospel.

    Brothers, Thomas. 2006. “Chapter 2: The Saints,” In Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans. New York: WW Norton.

    Mahalia Jackson

    Mahalia Jackson (October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) is renowned as one of the most powerful singers in African-American gospel music. Extremely popular and influential, Jackson was a pioneer in performing gospel on the national stage, where it was heard far beyond its African-American community of origin. Jackson has profoundly affected generations of sacred and secular singers alike, Aretha Franklin being one notable example.

    Jackson grew up in New Orleans’ Carrollton neighborhood, and was… read more

  • 6 Mardi Gras Indians

    Mardi Gras Indians

    About This Chapter:

    Mardi Gras Indians are African Americans who form “tribes” or “gangs” that hold weekly practices in bars throughout New Orleans and…

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    Chapter 6 Mardi Gras Indians

    Mardi Gras Indians are African Americans who form “tribes” or “gangs” that hold weekly practices in bars throughout New Orleans and then march through the streets on Mardi Gras day and other recurring dates. In these public ceremonies, Indians dress in elaborate hand-sewn costumes, or “suits,” and sing chants as they travel in search of rival tribes. When two tribes meet, the chiefs compete with one another by shouting boasts and insults and by displaying their feathered and beaded suits. The fierce Mardi Gras Indian, his suits, and his songs have all become recognizable symbols of New Orleans’ unique local culture, and yet they have remained more closely tied to communities and neighborhoods than other, more accessible, local traditions such as jazz and Creole cuisine.

    The precise origins of Mardi Gras Indians are not known and remain hotly contested. Some Indians and researchers claim that the history begins with the intermixture of blacks and American Indians during slavery times, when many escaped slaves sought shelter with Houma, Chitimacha, and other Indian tribes living in the swamplands surrounding the city (Martinez 1989; Lewis and Breunlin 2009). Others have linked the first accounts of blacks masking as Indians to the visit of Buffalo Bill’s West Show to New Orleans in 1884-5 (Smith 1994). It is also unclear whether there is a direct relationship between the Mardi Gras Indian tradition and other ceremonial and musical masquerading traditions among African diasporic communities, such as the junkanoo parades throughout the Caribbean. However Mardi Gras Indians emerged, the significance of the Indian warrior fighting domination clearly had a powerful resonance among former slaves and their descendents who were subject to Jim Crow law.
    Membership in a Mardi Gras Indian tribe is voluntary and based on social networking rather than birthright. Tribes are organized with very specific roles for each member, following a system begun by early tribes such as the Creole Wild West and Yellow Pocahontas. The big chief is the tribal leader, often assisted by second chiefs and queens. The spy boy marches several blocks in front of the chiefs and queens, seeking out other gangs. He relays directions to the flag boy, who notifies the presence of another tribe to the chief by waving a flag or stick. When tribes meet, the wild man clears a path among the onlookers so the chiefs can face-off. Though these positions are frequently refilled according to the changing membership of a tribe, the hierarchy of the tribal organization – akin to a military unit – is strictly adhered to, and matters of any significance fall under the authority of the chief.

    Mardi Gras Indian culture is characterized by fraternity within the tribe and competitiveness with other tribes. The Indian embodies fierceness, and a particularly masculine representation of fierceness that has historically relegated women to supporting roles; there are few queens and the other ranks are virtually always filled by men. In this way, the big chief and other tribe members correspond both to the figure of the American Indian who “won’t bow, won’t kneel” in the face of adversity, as well as the protagonists of African-American songs and stories of “big men” such as John Henry and “bad men” such as Stagger Lee.

    Historically, the fierceness of the Mardi Gras Indian was tested through violent encounters between rival tribes from the uptown and downtown districts at a location referred to as “the battlefield.” These clashes, called “humbugs,” dissipated greatly during the latter half of the twentieth century, partly because of increasing pressure by local police and partly because certain chiefs, most notably Allison “Tootie” Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas, redirected the competitive nature of Indian showdowns away from violent confrontation and towards pageantry (i.e. the suits, language, and songs of the Indians).

    The suits of the Mardi Gras Indians are the most celebrated aspect of the culture. Every Indian sews a new suit to be unveiled on Mardi Gras morning, which requires a staggering investment of time and money, as well as the creative ability to sew feathers and beads in unique patterns and distinctive color schemes in a way that expresses the individuality of the chief and his tribe. As Indian suits have become increasingly elaborate, they have also become identifiable according to two dominant styles: the uptown style uses beaded panels to tell a story with images (such as an Indian using a tomahawk to break a slave’s chains) while the downtown style uses three-dimensional geometric designs (such as the headdress of an Egyptian pharaoh). These and other styles are prevalent among tribes located throughout the city; they are not bound to strict rules because the central aspect of the tradition is to reinvent itself in the form of a new and innovative suit every year.

    The language of the Mardi Gras Indians is the most elusive and mysterious aspect of the culture. Made up of English and French as well as invented words, the speaking and singing of the Indians is a form of verbal art that resists precise translation but is widely understood by Indians. In many Indian songs, “hoo na nae” is substituted with the phrase “let’s go get ‘em” while “tuway pockyway” is heard so frequently that it’s meaning is entirely dependent on the situation.

    The songs of the Mardi Gras Indians are the most popular and accessible aspect of the culture. At Indian gatherings, songs are arranged in call-and-response fashion, with the chief improvising a solo vocal and the gang responding with a repeated chant (“shallow water oh mama!”; “big chief got a golden crown!”). A “second line” of percussionists accompanies the chants with tambourines, cowbells, and “found objects” such as beer bottles. Popular chants have also become the basis for rhythm & blues, soul, funk, and hip-hop recordings, including James “Sugarboy” Crawford’s 1954 rhythm & blues recording of “Jock-A-Mo,” which became a national hit as “Iko Iko” 11 years later in a girl-group arrangement by the Dixie Cups. The music and spectacle of the Indians has also spawned tribute songs, such as Earl King’s “Big Chief,” popularized by pianist Professor Longhair in a 1964 recording.

    In 1971, Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias were the first Indians to make a commercial recording of their own music, using a group of funk musicians to arrange Dollis’ “Handa Wanda.” Under the musical direction of pianist, composer, and arranger Wilson Turbinton (“Willie Tee”), the Wild Magnolias recorded two LPs in the early 1970s and toured the U.S. and France. Indian funk was given a sizeable boost in 1976, when the Wild Tchoupitoulas tribe recorded an album with arrangements by the city’s most acclaimed funk group, The Meters. On the record and in performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, lead vocalist Joseph Landry (“Chief Jolly”) was accompanied by his nephews the Neville Brothers (Art, Charles, Aaron, and Cyril) who, like Willie Tee, had grown up following the Indians on Mardi Gras day. Music composed for these recordings, such as the Magnolias’ “New Suit” (1975) and the Tchoupitoulas’ “Meet De Boys on the Battlefront” (1976), now reside alongside “Big Chief” and “Iko, Iko” as the most prominent and durable signs of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition.

    Musical recordings and staged performances brought extraordinary recognition to what had been a relatively obscure and even secretive community practice, alerting a much larger public to the tradition of masking and chanting. The increased attendance of Indian parades on Mardi Gras day and especially the proliferation of official cultural exhibitions – museum shows of costumes, Indian parades at local festivals, concert performances of traditional chanting, etc. – owe much to the ongoing popularity of Indian music.

    Mardi Gras Indians are a prominent and vital thread in the tapestry of local culture. Once only seen on Mardi Gras day and St. Joseph’s night by a select few, today the Indian has become a fixture at events all over the city and throughout the year. Super Sunday has become a popular springtime outing for a diverse crowd of spectators who come to see the tribes in three neighborhoods, uptown, downtown, and the West Bank. At the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, tribes are hired to parade through the fairgrounds and appear onstage. Chiefs such as musician Donald Harrison Jr. and the late plasterer Tootie Montana became respected public figures and voices of the community through their Indian-related activities. And new tribes have continued to form even after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, demonstrating the fierceness and vitality of this cherished local tradition.

    – Matt Sakakeeny

    House of Dance and Feathers

    Lewis, Ronald and Rachel Breunlin. 2009. The House of Dance and Feathers: A Museum. New Orleans: UNO Press.

    In the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Ronald W. Lewis has assembled a museum to the various worlds he inhabits. Built in 2003, the House of Dance & Feathers represents many New Orleans societies: Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Bone Gangs, and Parade Krewes. More than just a catalogue of the artifacts in the museum, this full-color book is a detailed map of these worlds as experienced by Ronald W. Lewis.

    Sakakeeny, Matt. 2002. Indian Rulers: Mardi Gras Indians and New Orleans Funk. The Jazz Archivist 16: 9-24.

    “Smith, Michael P. 1990. “New Orleans’ Hidden Carnival.” Cultural Vistas 1(3): 5-22.”

    Alison ‘Tootie’ Montana

    • Mardi Gras Indians, New Orleans Music; Image Credit: americanfestivalsproject.net
    Donald Harrison

    Donald Harrison, Jr. (born June 23, 1960) is an American jazz saxophonist from New Orleans, Louisiana.

    Harrison studied at the Southern University and Berklee College of Music. He played with Roy Haynes, Jack McDuff, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Terence Blanchard and Don Pullen in the 1980s. He also played with the re-formed Headhunters band in the 1990s. In 1991 he recorded “Indian Blues,” which captured the sound and culture of Congo Square in a jazz… read more

    The Wild Tchoupitoulas

    The Wild Tchoupitoulas were originally a group of Mardi Gras Indians formed in the early 1970s by George Landry. With help from local New Orleans musicians — The Meters — The Wild Tchoupitoulas recorded an eponymous album, which featured the “call-and-response” style chants typical of Mardi Gras Indians. Vocals were provided by Landry, as “Big Chief Jolly,” as well as other members of his Mardi Gras tribe. Instrumentation was provided in part by members of… read more

  • 7 Rhythm & Blues

    Rhythm & Blues

    About This Chapter:

    New Orleans rhythm and blues refers to a type of R&B music from the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana, characterized…

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    Chapter 7 Rhythm & Blues

    New Orleans rhythm and blues refers to a type of R&B music from the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana, characterized by extensive use of piano and horn sections, complex syncopated “second line” rhythms, and lyrics that reflect New Orleans life.

    Distinct innovation and creativity, in combination with a musicality unique to the New Orleans area distinguish this sub-genre. It was also a major influence on ska and reggae, the former being a local variation on New Orleans R&B and jazz, such as the Fats Domino song Be My Guest.

    KnowLA “Rhythm & Blues” (Hahn)

    KnowLA “Dave Bartholomew” (Sandmel)

    Cosimo Matassa

    Italian-American businessman, studio owner, and recording engineer Cosimo Matassa is one of the seminal figures of popular recorded music. Virtually every New Orleans rhythm-and-blues (R&B) record that made the charts between the late-1940s and the early-1970s was recorded at one of his four studios. Matassa’s engineering talent and ear for a good tune led to an amazing string of national hits spanning those decades. Matassa was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during its 27th annual ceremony at the historic Public House in Cleveland, Ohio on April 14, 2012.

    Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry

    Louisiana singer and pianist Clarence “Frogman” Henry Jr., will forever be identified with the 1956 novelty rhythm & blues (R&B) classic “Ain’t Got No Home.” In that song, Henry sings in a normal voice, then in a girlish falsetto, and finally in a froglike croak. Henry had two other major hits and a few minor ones during his long musical career. In February 2003, the Rhythm and Blues Foundation awarded him its Pioneer Award, and he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in April 2007.

    Berry, Jason, Jonathan Foose, Tad Jones. 1986. Up From the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music Since WW II. Athens: University of Georgia.

    “Up from the Cradle of Jazz” is an intimate history of New Orleans music during the last 45 years. It describes the piano playing of Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Huey “Piano” Smith and Dr John; the singing of Irma Thomas, Little Richard, Aaron Neville and Lee Dorsey; the compositions and performances of Allen Toussaint, Guitar Slim, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, The Meters and The Neville Brothers. From smoky bars and nightclubs to the open air revelry of Mardi Gras, this work aims to be the definitive story of the music of contemporary New Orleans.

    Scherman, Tony. 1999. Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

    Offers a first-person account of Earl Palmer’s life and career that probes some little-explored regions of the American cultural landscapes

    • Rhythm & Blues, New Orleans Music, Clarence Frogman Henry; Image Credit: holidayclubrecordings.co.uk
    Dave Bartholomew

    Trumpeter, songwriter/arranger and vocalist Dave Bartholomew is one of the major architects of New Orleans rhythm & blues. He played a critical role in the career of singer/pianist Fats Domino, and had hits of his own including “The Monkey (Speaks His Mind.”)

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    Henry "Professor Longhair" Roeland Byrd
    Henry “Professor Longhair” Roeland Byrd

    Henry Roeland Byrd (December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980), known professionally as Professor Longhair – and in New Orleans street-lore simply as Fess – was an R&B pianist whose style drew heavily on Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Byrd’s career started in the late 1940s, and from then through the early ‘60s he recorded several of the city’s perennially favorite celebratory anthems, including “Tipitina,” “Big Chief,” and “Mardi Gras In New Orleans.”

    Byrd first performed in public as a… read more

    Fats Domino
    Fats Domino

    If Mount Rushmore ever adds on a “Founding Fathers of Rock Music,” section, look for New Orleans pianist and singer Fats Domino to be prominently featured. Domino has profoundly influenced the popular music of the past 60 years, ever since his first hit, “The Fat Man,” scaled the national R&B charts in 1950. Domino differed distinctly from his seminal rock colleagues – including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis in one important sense.… read more

    Clarence “Frogman” Henry

    Know as “Frogman” for his vocal impersonation of said amphibians, Henry is one of the great figures of the “Golden Age of New Orleans Rhythm & Blues.” Henry’s hits, which mainly featured his normal voice, include “Ain’t Got No Home,” “You Always Hurt The One You Love,” and “I Don’t Know Why I Love You But I Do.”

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    Cosimo Matassa
    Cosimo Matassa

    Cosimo Matassa (born in 1926; died 2014) was the pre-eminent audio engineer of the intense period of creativity and commercial success known as the Golden Age of New Orleans rhythm & blues, circa 1947 – 1969. Without Matassa’s technical expertise and intuitive knowledge of music, the Golden Age might never have occurred, and without the national success of local musicians who recorded with Matassa – including Fats Domino and Lloyd Price – national-level stars would… read more

    Dew Drop Inn

    Located on Lasalle Street in Uptown New Orleans, the Dew Drop was a music club, hotel, barber shop, and restaurant owned and frequented primarily by African Americans. The club remained open from the 1940s until the late 1970s under the ownership of the legendary Frank Pania. All the local musicians and entertainment people would play there and hang out there. Any national musician touring the country or the South would stay there or perform there.… read more

    Cosimo Matassa's Studio
    Cosimo Matassa’s Studio

    At the age of 18, Matassa opened the J&M Recording Studio at the back of his family’s shop on Rampart Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1945. In 1955, he moved to the larger Cosimo Recording Studio. As an engineer and proprietor, he was crucial to the development of the R&B, rock and soul sound of the 1950s and 1960s (often working with producers Dave Bartholomew and Allen Toussaint), and recorded many… read more

  • 8 Piano Professors

    Piano Professors

    About This Chapter:

    New Orleans has a long, unbroken tradition of “Piano Professors” that stretched back to the ragtime era with Tony Jackson and…

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    Chapter 8 Piano Professors

    New Orleans has a long, unbroken tradition of “Piano Professors” that stretched back to the ragtime era with Tony Jackson and his disciple Jelly Roll Morton, peaked in the R&B era with Fats Domino and Professor Longhair, and continues today with pianists including Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, and John Cleary. In a musical city associated most with horns and drums, the piano is a unique instrument. Because it covers the full musical range on its 88 keys, one musician can entertain an audience, as Jelly Roll did in the famed bordellos of Storyville at the turn of the 20th century.

    Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino

    New Orleans pianist and singer Antoine “Fats” Domino is revered as a founding father of rock and roll, alongside Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. As such, he has profoundly influenced the popular music of the past half-century. Domino differed distinctly from his seminal rock colleagues in one important sense. Although some observers disagree (including Domino biographer Rick Coleman), Domino maintained an almost asexual persona and stage presence that made him appear less rebellious and threatening than his peers. In addition, Domino’s repertoire included adaptations of Tin Pan Alley songs including “Blueberry Hill” and “Red Sails in the Sunset.” Domino put his own stamp on these numbers with his trademark pattern of piano triplet-figures and warm crooning. The former instrumental touch influenced both Jamaican ska music and swamp pop. As for his vocals, Domino’s thick New Orleans accent further distinguished his recordings.

    Henry Roeland ‘Professor Longhair Byrd

    Henry Roeland Byrd, also known as Professor Longhair, was a New Orleans rhythm & blues pianist whose career started in the late 1940s and who came to personify the city’s cultural renaissance of the 1970s. Affectionately known in New Orleans as “Fess,” Longhair had a unique style that incorporated the Afro-Caribbean influences that Jelly Roll Morton described as “the Spanish tinge.” In addition, Longhair played in an idiosyncratic manner that differed from conventional structure, dropping or adding beats at will. This approach is known as “jumping time.”

    James Booker

    Malcolm John ‘Mac’ Rebennack, Jr. ‘Doctor John’

    Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, Jr., is a musician, singer, and composer from New Orleans, best known by the stage name “Dr. John.” He has been recording and performing for close to five decades, drawing on a wide range of musical styles but remaining rooted in the traditions and idiosyncrasies of New Orleans. When segregation was at its height, he was one of the few white musicians to play a role in the city’s “golden age of R&B,” supporting legends like Huey “Piano” Smith, Allen Toussaint, and Earl King at venues including the famous Dew Drop Inn. His own recording life began in 1959, and since that time he has enjoyed a prolific career. Beginning in the late 1960s, his recording and stage persona of “Dr. John the Night Tripper” incorporates elements from New Orleans’s Voudou and carnival traditions into a mystical, shaman-like figure.

    Coleman, Rick. 2006. Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock’n’Roll. New York, NY: Da Capo Press.

    While many think of Elvis Presley as rock ’n’ roll’s driving force, the truth is that Fats Domino, whose records have sold more than 100 million copies, was the first to put it on the map with such hits as “Ain’t That a Shame” and “Blueberry Hill.” In Blue Monday, acclaimed R&B scholar Rick Coleman draws on a multitude of new interviews with Fats Domino and many other early musical legends to create a definitive biography of not just an extraordinary man but also a unique time and place: New Orleans at the birth of rock ’n’ roll. Coleman’s groundbreaking research makes for an immense cultural biography, and is the first to convey the full scope of Fats Domino’s impact on the popular music of the twentieth century.

    Dr. John (Mac Rebennack). 1994. Under a Hoodoo Moon. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

    Under a Hoodoo Moon is one of rock’s most original and infectious autobiographies. In its pages, Dr. John, the alchemist of New Orleans psychedelic funk, tells his story, and what a story it is: of four decades on the road, on the charts, in and out of trouble, but always steeped in the piano-based soulful grind of New Orleans rhythmn & blues of which he is the acknolwedged high guru. From childhood as a prodigal prodigy among 1950s legends from Little Richard and Fats Domino to sesssions with the Rolling Stones and the Band; from recording studio to juke joint to penitentiary to world tours; from Mac Rebennack to Dr. John the Night Tripper, this is the testament of our funkiest rock storyteller. Full of wit and wordplay, tales of hoodoo saints and high-living sinners, Under a Hoodoo Moon casts a spell as hard to resist as Mardi Gras itself.

    • Professor Longhair, Image Credit: theperlichpost.blogspot.com
    James Booker

    James Booker (1939 – 1983) is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and inventive pianists to ever emerge from New Orleans during the city’s four-decade history. Known variously as the “Piano Prince of New Orleans,” the “Bayou Maharajah,” and the “Black Liberace,” Booker’s style suggests a uniquely Louisiana hybrid of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, plus contemporary material from his own lifetime. Beyond his pianistic prowess, James Booker sang with sly,… read more

    Henry "Professor Longhair" Roeland Byrd
    Henry “Professor Longhair” Roeland Byrd

    Henry Roeland Byrd (December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980), known professionally as Professor Longhair – and in New Orleans street-lore simply as Fess – was an R&B pianist whose style drew heavily on Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Byrd’s career started in the late 1940s, and from then through the early ‘60s he recorded several of the city’s perennially favorite celebratory anthems, including “Tipitina,” “Big Chief,” and “Mardi Gras In New Orleans.”

    Byrd first performed in public as a… read more

    Fats Domino
    Fats Domino

    If Mount Rushmore ever adds on a “Founding Fathers of Rock Music,” section, look for New Orleans pianist and singer Fats Domino to be prominently featured. Domino has profoundly influenced the popular music of the past 60 years, ever since his first hit, “The Fat Man,” scaled the national R&B charts in 1950. Domino differed distinctly from his seminal rock colleagues – including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis in one important sense.… read more

    Louis Moreau Gottschalk

    Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829 – 1869) was the first American classical composer and performer to win international acclaim during an age when many Europeans perceived America as an untamed, uncouth wilderness. Gottschalk rose to Presley-esque levels of stardom, while his prodigious, sophisticated technique garnered praise from such classical masters as Frédéric Chopin.

    Gottschalk was a native New Orleanian, and a significant amount of his original material drew on the indigenous Afro-Caribbean and African-American sounds that… read more

    Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton

    A nimble pianist, skilled composer and arranger, an evocative soulful singer and a classic New Orleans flamboyant character – Jelly Roll Morton embodied all these estimable traits. Morton (1885 – 1941) was a second-generation New Orleans jazz musician, and the genre’s first important composer/arranger, as heard on such intricate, infectious songs as “Black Bottom Stomp.” Despite his seminal contributions, Morton enjoyed little of the commercial success he deserved because of the dubious machinations of the… read more

    Malcolm “Dr. John” Rebennack

    Mac Rebennack, better known by his stage name, Dr. John, is an acclaimed New Orleans R&B pianist, guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer. He is equally renowned as a flamboyant cultural icon who speaks in a self-invented quasi-beatnik/New Orleans language, based on the concept of “trickonology,” and summed up in the statement “Life is always gonna be off the chain, and you can’t never hang no jacket on it.”

    Born in 1940, Rebennack was exposed to… read more

    Piano

    The piano is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. It is widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world’s most familiar musical instruments.

    The piano usually has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. The metal strings are… read more

  • 9 Soul & Funk

    Soul & Funk

    About This Chapter:

    Funk has its roots in the syncopated rhythms of New Orleans drummers, who influenced James Brown and other international stars of…

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    Chapter 9 Soul & Funk

    Funk has its roots in the syncopated rhythms of New Orleans drummers, who influenced James Brown and other international stars of funk music when the style emerged in the mid-1960s. Producer Allen Toussaint was the local architect for many funk recordings in New Orleans, ranging from Lee Dorsey’s “Working in the Coal Mine” to Dr. John’s album “Gumbo.” The house band on Toussaint’s sessions included Art Neville on keyboards, Zigaboo Modeliste on drums, George Porter on bass, and Leo Nocentelli on guitar. Known as The Meters, the band recorded several albums of mostly funk instrumentals which only increased in popularity after they disbanded in the late 1970s, and were heavily sampled in hip-hop recordings. Long after funk disappeared from the pop music charts, the style has remained a signature sound of New Orleans, and many of the city’s current bands play funk (Galactic, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, Dupstafunk, etc.), as do the most popular brass bands (Rebirth, Hot 8, Soul Rebels, etc.).

    Allen Toussaint

    Based in New Orleans, Allen Toussaint composed, produced, arranged, and played piano on scores of classic rhythm and blues (R&B) hits from the late 1950s through the 1970s and recorded several solo albums. In many respects, Toussaint’s productions epitomize the sound of 1960s New Orleans R&B. His songs, featuring funky yet sophisticated arrangements and intelligent lyrics, have been recorded by artists in many different musical styles. Now considered one of the elder statesmen of New Orleans R&B, Toussaint was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and continues to tour and record.

    Irma Thomas

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    Eddie Bo’ (Bateman)

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

    The Meters

    The Meters, a funk and soul group from New Orleans, originally included drummer Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste, keyboardist Art Neville, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, and bassist George Porter, Jr. Percussionist Cyril Neville joined the band in 1974. The group recorded for the Josie and Reprise labels, and placed ten singles in the Billboard rhythm and blues (R&B) charts between 1969 and 1971. Celebrated for their New Orleans-inflected, danceable instrumentals, The Meters helped define the funk genre in the early 1970s. More recently, their compositions have enjoyed popularity as “samples” used by rap music producers.

    The Neville Brothers

    Art, Aaron, Charles, and Cyril Neville comprise one of the most successful groups to emerge from New Orleans in recent decades; among many other projects, this family of musicians has performed and recorded as “The Neville Brothers” since 1977.The Nevilles have made substantial contributions across several genres of U.S. popular music, including R&B, jazz, and soul. Drawing inspiration from the music of New Orleans carnival and parade traditions, they played an instrumental role in defining the funk sound from the 1970s onward.

    Neville, Art and Aaron Neville, Charles Neville, Cyril Neville, and David Ritz. 2000. The Brothers: An Autobiography. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

    Born to a music-loving family, the Neville brothers grew up immersed in the sounds and culture of New Orleans, and the blended rhythms of the city are reflected in their wide range of musical styles. The result, like their native city, is a rich gumbo of flavors: Art, with his keyboard wizardry; Aaron, with his angelic voice; Charles, a spiritual seeker and jazz devotee; and Cyril, whose passion for music matches the intensity of his politics. In The Brothers, each tells his story candidly, recounting the early hits, the problems with drugs and the law, and the circuitous route to success. Along the way, the brothers tell the story of the New Orleans culture as well—the birth of rhythm and blues, the folklore behind the fabulous Mardi Gras Indians, the painful racial climate, and the family whose legacy is now a part of our musical history.

    Stewart, Alexander. 2000. ‘Funky Drummer’: New Orleans, James Brown and the Rhythmic Transformation of American Popular Music. Popular Music 19 (3): 293-318

    The singular style of rhythm & blues (R&B) that emerged from New Orleans in the years after World War II played an important role in the development of funk. In a related development, the underlying rhythms of American popular music underwent a basic, yet generally unacknowledged transition from triplet or shuffle feel (12/8) to even or straight eighth notes (8/8). Many jazz historians have shown interest in the process whereby jazz musicians learned to swing (for example, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra through Louis Armstrong’s 1924 arrival in New York), but there has been little analysis of the reverse development – the change back to ‘straighter’ rhythms. The earliest forms of rock ‘n’ roll, such as the R&B songs that first acquired this label and styles like rockabilly that soon followed, continued to be predominantly in shuffle rhythms. By the 1960s, division of the beat into equal halves had become common practice in the new driving style of rock, and the occurrence of 12/8 metre relatively scarce. Although the move from triplets to even eighths might be seen as a simplification of metre, this shift supported further subdivision to sixteenth-note rhythms that were exploited in New Orleans R&B and funk.

    • The Meters
    The Meters 1
    The Meters

    The Meters, during their dozen or so years of existence (circa 1965 – 1977), helped define both the New Orleans R&B sound of that era and the nascent national trend that would come to be known as funk. The group was founded by keyboardist and singer Art Neville, who already had an impressive resumé. In 1954, Neville sang lead on the Hawketts’ “Mardi Gras Mambo” – an Afro-Caribbean romp in the Professor Longhair tradition that… read more

    The Neville Brothers; Photo Credit: Syndey Byrd
    The Neville Brothers

    From 1977 to 2013, the Neville brothers banded together to form one of the best-known and most musically adventurous groups to ever emerge from the New Orleans R&B scene. In addition to rhythm & blues, the music made by Art (born 1937), Charles (born 1938), Aaron (born 1941) and Cyril (born 1948) seamlessly overlapped, to a considerable degree, with Mardi Gras Indian chants and funk. Jazz, gospel, pop/rock and doo-wop factored in as well.

    The… read more

    Aaron Neville

    Aaron Neville (born January 24, 1941, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States) is an American R&B and soul singer and musician. He has had four top-20 hits in the United States (including three that went to number one on Billboard’s adult contemporary chart and one that went to number one on the R&B chart) along with four platinum-certified albums. He has also recorded with his brothers Art, Charles and Cyril as The Neville Brothers and is… read more

    Art Neville

    Arthur Lannon “Art” Neville (born December 17, 1937) is an American singer and keyboardist from New Orleans.

    Neville is a part of one of the most famous musical families of New Orleans, the Neville Brothers. He was also a founding member of The Meters, and also continues to play with the spinoff group the The Funky Meters.

    As a session musician, he has played on recordings by many notable artists from New Orleans and elsewhere,… read more

    Cyril Neville

    Cyril Garrett Neville (born in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 10, 1948), is a percussionist and vocalist who first came to prominence as a member of his brother Art Neville’s funky New Orleans-based band, The Meters. He joined Art in the Neville Brothers band upon the dissolution of the Meters.

    He has appeared on recordings by Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Edie Brickell, Willie Nelson, Dr. John and The New Orleans Social Club among others.

    Neville wrote… read more

    Allen Toussaint
    Allen Toussaint

    Allen Toussaint (born 1938) is a pianist, songwriter, producer, arranger, vocalist and performer who is renowned as a renaissance man of New Orleans rhythm & blues and a major second-generation architect of the genre’s development. Toussaint attained national/global prominence in the mid-1970s as a leading figure in contemporary popular music. Toussaint remains in peak form, maintaining an active schedule of touring and recording and receiving a steady stream of prestigious awards and accolades.

    Toussaint was… read more

  • 10 Hip-Hop

    Hip-Hop

    About This Chapter:

    Hip-hop holds a tenuous place in New Orleans culture. On the one hand, the city is associated with traditional styles of…

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    Chapter 10 Hip-Hop

    Hip-hop holds a tenuous place in New Orleans culture. On the one hand, the city is associated with traditional styles of jazz and brass band that are challenged by the aggressive sounds and themes associated with hip-hop. On the other hand, hip-hop can be viewed as simply the latest in a long lineage of musical styles that derived from African approaches to music making in New Orleans dating back to the slave dances at Congo Square.

    The region’s most distinctive genre is Bounce, which emerged out of the clubs and housing projects in the late 1980s and features a distinctive drum “track” known as the “Triggerman” beat. In the 1990s, several transgender rappers entered the Bounce scene, and that movement was later dubbed “Sissy Bounce.”

    New Orleans also boasts two internationally famous hip-hop record labels: Master P’s No Limit and the Williams brother’s Cash Money. Many local rappers recorded for these labels and received global attention, including Mannie Fresh, Juvenile, Mystikal, and Lil Wayne.

    Rap, Hip-Hop, and Bounce Music

    Percy ‘Master P’ Miller and No Limit Records

    Percy “Master P” Miller, a well-known rapper from New Orleans, founded No Limit Records, an independent label. Between 1991 and 2001, No Limit proved an enormous commercial success, selling more than fifty million gangsta rap albums by artists and producers, many of whom were also Louisiana natives. Miller has also produced, directed, written, and acted in a number of films and owns a cable television network, Better Black Television.

    Mystikal” (Miller)

    Michael “Mystikal” Tyler is one of the best-known rappers from New Orleans. While his early recordings featured agile, rapid-fire vocal performances, his work in the 1990s moved closer to the conventions of the local bounce style, a dance-oriented genre. Bounce often relies on references to local neighborhoods, chanted “hooks” rather than extended narrative raps, and interaction between performer and audience based in call-and-response. Beginning in 1994, Mystikal released albums on the Big Boy, Jive, and No Limit record labels, with his most successful effort, Let’s Get Ready (2000), selling more than two million copies. His career suffered a setback in 2004 when he was sentenced to a six-year prison term for sexual battery; he was released in 2010.

    Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter

    Lil Wayne is one of the best known rappers from New Orleans, having achieved commercial success as a teenager. Though the Crescent City plays a marginal role in the style and lyrical content of his music, he is one of the few artists from the city (alongside Louis Armstrong and Antoine “Fats” Domino) to reach the status of a global celebrity. Lil Wayne began releasing material on the Cash Money Records label as a member of the group Hot Boys in the mid-1990s, and released his first solo album, Tha Block is Hot, in 1999. Since then, he has collaborated with many other artists in the production of “mix tapes,” appeared as a guest performer on numerous songs, and released several highly successful solo albums. Lil Wayne is particularly known for delivering witty wordplay about serious urban issues such as crime, racism, and violence.

    • Lil Wayne
    Lil Wayne
    Dwayne Michael Carter “Lil’ Wayne”

    Known professionally as Lil’ Wayne, songwriter and rapper Dwayne Michael Carter is a national-level star whose success has brought attention to New Orleans’ burgeoning rap/hip-hop/bounce scene. His style also draws on older sounds such as ‘70s R&B.

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    Percy Miller “Master P”

    n the early 1990s Miller became one of the first and most popular rap artists to emerge from New Orleans, and went on to added success as a producer for other artists, and a record company entrepreneur. New Orleans’ current stature as a hotbed of rap, hip-hop and bounce music can be traced, in large part, to Miller’s pioneering work.

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    Michael “Mystikal” Tyler

    Emerging on the New Orleans rap and hip-hop scene in 1994, Mystikal became one of the city’s leading artists and one of the first establish New Orleans’ importance on the national level. Tyler’s multi-million selling career was put on hold due to a six year prison sentence, although he resumed his active role upon releases in 2010.

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  • 11 Modern Jazz

    Modern Jazz

    About This Chapter:

    In the city known as the “birthplace of jazz,” traditional jazz has always found an audience while modern jazz has struggled.…

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    Chapter 11 Modern Jazz

    In the city known as the “birthplace of jazz,” traditional jazz has always found an audience while modern jazz has struggled. Traditional jazz is considered a musical entertainment suitable for dancing, while modern jazz since bebop arrived in the 1940s has developed as a serious music meant for intellectual appreciation. Local New Orleanians seeking social dance music and tourists who are marketing traditional jazz in venues such as Preservation Hall have not been as supportive of modern jazz.

    Despite the challenges, many modern jazz musicians have come from New Orleans. The first generation of musicians, including saxophonist Harold Battiste, pianist Ellis Marsalis, and drummer James Black, formed the “All For One” collective in the late 1950s, one of the first black owned record labels in the US. Drummers Ed Blackwell, Vernel Fournier, and Idris Muhammed all left their hometown to establish international careers with leading musicians. That was also the case for Ellis’ sons Wynton and Branford Marsalis in the early 1980s, along with saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr., trumpeter Terence Blanchard, and trumpeter Nicholas Payton a few years later. That group of musicians studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), as have many younger modern jazz musicians, including Jonathan Batiste, Christian Scott, and Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews.

    Ellis Marsalis

    Modern jazz pianist and leading jazz educator Ellis Marsalis is probably best known as the father of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and saxophonist Branford Marsalis, both internationally acclaimed modern jazz artists. But the elder Marsalis has had a much greater influence on American jazz history in the last quarter of the twentieth century than it might appear. He was, for example, among only a handful of young musicians in New Orleans during the 1950s who chose to pursue careers in modern jazz at a time when rhythm and blues and traditional jazz dominated the local music scene.

    Wynton Marsalis

    New Orleans-born trumpeter, composer, and jazz educator Wynton Marsalis is an accomplished musician, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and internationally acclaimed cultural icon. The son of New Orleans pianist and pioneering jazz educator Ellis Marsalis, he is also the brother of jazz musicians Branford Marsalis, Delfeayo Marsalis, and Jason Marsalis. His impact during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century on the state of jazz, the practice of jazz, and the recognition of America’s jazz heritage would be hard to overstate.

    Battiste, Harold Jr. 2010. Unfinished Blues: Memories of a New Orleans Music Man. New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection.

    Unfinished Blues: Memories of a New Orleans Music Man celebrates New Orleans composer, producer, arranger, educator and jazz ambassador Harold Battiste Jr. Chasing the dream from New Orleans to Los Angeles and back, Battiste thrived in the jazz, blues and pop scenes. The creative force behind a bevy of number-one hits Barbara George s I Know (You Don t Love Me No More), Joe Jones s You Talk Too Much, Sam Cooke s You Send Me and the sage who launched the careers of Dr. John and Sonny & Cher, Battiste worked behind the scenes of the music industry for more than half a century. With Unfinished Blues, his voice is heard, unfiltered, at last. Battiste’s musical sensibilities were formed and his racial consciousness raised in the churches, classrooms and jazz joints of New Orleans. A graduate of Dillard University s music education program, Battiste confronted discrimination as a teacher in Louisiana s segregated public school system. In the early 1950s he founded All for One, the nation s first African American musician-owned and -operated record label. His commitment to education and uplift has never wavered: in recent decades he worked alongside lifelong friend and fellow musician Ellis Marsalis to build the renowned jazz studies program at the University of New Orleans. He can count among his friends and protégés many of today s leading young jazz musicians Nicholas Payton, Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason Marsalis, Victor Goines, Jesse McBride and other members of a next generation keeping the New Orleans sound alive.

    • Branford Marsalis
    Harold Battiste

    Harold Battiste is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter/composer/arranger, producer, music director, educator, and record-industry veteran who has made enormous contributions to rhythm & blues, mainstream pop music and avant-garde jazz. Born in New Orleans in 1931, Battiste started out singing in his church choir. He studied the clarinet in high school, going to on graduate from Dillard University with a degree in music and education in 1953. While in college Batiste began performing in the horn section… read more

    Terence Blanchard

    Terence Blanchard (born March 13, 1962 in New Orleans, LA.) is an accomplished trumpeter, composer, film scorer, and band leader. His start as a sideman for Lionel Hampton and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers led to co-leading his own band with Donald Harrison Jr. and a highly regarded solo career marked by great theme records, extended suites, and excellent sidemen. Blanchard has also had an extensive career scoring films including many Spike Lee films. He also… read more

    Donald Harrison

    Donald Harrison, Jr. (born June 23, 1960) is an American jazz saxophonist from New Orleans, Louisiana.

    Harrison studied at the Southern University and Berklee College of Music. He played with Roy Haynes, Jack McDuff, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Terence Blanchard and Don Pullen in the 1980s. He also played with the re-formed Headhunters band in the 1990s. In 1991 he recorded “Indian Blues,” which captured the sound and culture of Congo Square in a jazz… read more

    Branford Marsalis

    Branford Marsalis (born August 26, 1960) is an American saxophonist, composer and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque.

    Marsalis was born in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, the son of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor. His brothers Jason Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis,… read more

    Wynton Marsalis

    Equally adept at jazz and classical music — he is the first person to win Grammy awards in both categories — the New Orleans-born trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is an accomplished performer, a Pultizer Prize winning composer, a jazz educator, and the Managing/Artistic Director and trumpeter for the prestigious program Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

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    Nicholas Payton

    Nicholas Payton (born September 26, 1973) is an American trumpet and keyboard player from New Orleans, Louisiana. The son of bassist and sousaphonist Walter Payton, he began his musical career at an early age playing alongside his father and with Danny Barker’s Roots of Jazz Brass Band. In 1997 Payton and Doc Cheatham won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo for their playing on “Stardust.”

    Source: Wikipedia

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  • 12 Contemporary New Orleans

    Contemporary New Orleans

    About This Chapter:

    New Orleans music continues to flourish in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, research by Tulane professors Nick Spitzer and…

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    Chapter 12 Contemporary New Orleans

    New Orleans music continues to flourish in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, research by Tulane professors Nick Spitzer and Matt Sakakeeny argue that it was culture – and above all, music – that paved the return for many. This is both because the return of local culture gave many New Orleanians a sense of “home,” and because culture is the basis of the tourism industry, which in turn provides the infrastructure for the local economy. The readings below show how the return of second line parades (Breunlin & Regis), brass bands (Sakakeeny) and a host of other musical styles (Spitzer) give us a sense of the contemporary New Orleans landscape.

    Spitzer, Nick. 2011. Creolization as Cultural Continuity and Creativity in Postdiluvian New Orleans and Beyond,” Southern Spaces (Spitzer)

    Through an examination of expressive forms, musicians, and artisans in post-Katrina New Orleans, this multi-media essay explores creolization as an approach to ethnographic work that seeks to describe and interpret cultural continuity and creativity. Creolization conjoins multiple sources in new identities and expressions, continuously co-mingling and adapting traditions in ways that link the local, regional, and global. In New Orleans and affected areas of the Gulf Coast, recovery in cultural terms can be described in the creative, transformative, and sometimes improvisatory dimensions of creolization. In its broadest sense, creolization is a useful way to address creativity in many variations and places.

    Breunlin, Rachel and Helen Regis. 2006. Putting the Ninth Ward on the Map: Race, Place, and Transformation in Desire, New Orleans. American Anthropologist 108(4): 744-764.

    In this article, we consider how long-term patterns of resistance to structural violence inform citizens’ responses to displacement before and after Katrina. Drawing on Abdou Maliq Simone’s (2004) conceptualization of people as infrastructure, we recenter the discussion about the rebuilding of New Orleans around displaced residents, taking the place-making practices of members of a social club as a lens through which to examine the predicament of the city as a whole. Members have been generating alternative ways of thinking about and dwelling together in a restructuring city. Their perspectives are articulated through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and the embodied practices of club members and their followers as they make claims to the city through massive, participatory street processions known as second lines. These distinctive ways of thinking and being in the city—the subaltern mainstream of the second-line tradition—are now being deployed by exiled New Orleanians reconsidering their relationship to home.

    An Orientation to Soundscapes in New Orleans. Ethnomusicology 54(1). Sakakeeny, Matt. 2010. “Under the Bridge

    This article from the journal *Ethnomusicology* is about jazz funerals and second line parades in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and includes discussions with members of the Rebirth Brass Band.

    • Galactic, Image Credit: buffablog.com
    Galactic, Image Credit: buffablog.com
    Galactic

    The New Orleans band Galactic started out in 1994 as a horn-driven funk band comprised of students from Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans. They became famous for their marathon shows and songs that took long improvisational forays. After parting ways with their mentor and vocalist Theryl DeClouet, they began making records with guest artists with a greater influence of rock, hip-hop, world music, and different New Orleans genres. Their stellar live performances and… read more

    Stanton Moore 2
    Stanton Moore

    Stanton Moore is a rock drummer raised in Metairie, Louisiana. Most widely known as a founding member of Galactic, Moore has also pursued a solo recording career (beginning with his 1998 debut All Kooked Out!) and recorded with bands as diverse as jazz-funk keyboardist Robert Walter and heavy metal act Corrosion of Conformity. He also travels internationally to teach New Orleans drumming, writes a regular column for drumming magazines, and releases instructional books and videos.

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