New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

http://www.offbeat.com/news/big-chief-bo-dollis-memorial-fund-supports-mardi-gras-indians/?utm_source=WB+06+25+15&utm_campaign=WB+06+25+15&utm_medium=email

So much sad tragedy in New Orleans...

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/07/milan_arriola_murder.html

http://www.offbeat.com/news/fund-set-kermit-ruffins-niece-milan-arriola/?utm_source=WB+07+09+15&utm_campaign=WB+07+09+15&utm_medium=email

An online fundraising effort has been set up for Milan Arriola, the 20-year-old niece of trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, who was shot and killed on Friday, July 3.

Ruffins shared the link to the YouCaring.com fundraiser on his Facebook page with the simple note: “Thank you.”

The effort was organized by Imani Ruffins, Arriola’s mother and Ruffins’ sister. Imani Ruffins is also a veteran of the New Orleans Police Department.

http://www.offbeat.com/news/club-desire-downtown-club-uptown-ideas-slated-demolition/?utm_source=WB+07+23+15&utm_campaign=WB+07+23+15&utm_medium=email

slated for destruction

excerpt:

The defunct club, located at 2604 Desire Street, figured hugely into the city’s jazz history and rich African American heritage.

It hasn’t been in operation since the 1970s. Three quarters of a century back, however, Club Desire was buzzing to the tunes jazz and R&B greats. Billie Holiday, Fats Domino, and Dave Bartholomew were just the tip of the iceberg.

Marguerite Doyle Johnston—a longtime neighborhood resident close since childhood with the club’s former owner, Augusta James (Johnston’s late “Ti Gusta” was a niece of club founder Charles Armstead)—spearheaded efforts back in 2008 to try and save the building. The city was ultimately unable to provide funding for the project.

“I’ve tried for years to save the building,” said Johnston. “I wanted to preserve it as a community center, or a museum. Because this is your jazz giants. Where they got their start.”

According to Johnston, the club was originally a cafe. She recounted that African American men working on the tracks of the fabled “Streetcar Named Desire” would go in for breakfast or lunch during the work day, lamenting the fact that there was nowhere downtown where black people could go to hear live music at affordable prices.

“So, what [cafe owner] Armstead did,” Johnston explained, “was he bought some land that was right next door to the coffeeshop and expanded it into the club.”

She fondly remembers Club Desire’s beautiful interior, the tables and chairs in front of a raised stage, and the lofty second-tier balcony.

so much lip service paid to historic and cultural preservation but when it comes time to spend some money in an as-yet ungentrified neighborhood the city punks out. (but you can buy artisanal cocktails and heirloom escarole or whatever in the st roch market now, which also lay abandoned and crumbling for decades, until yuppies took over the hood.) (the city's bizarro appeasement strategy w/r/t the neverending brooklyn carpetbagger influx while ignoring real new orleanians and schools and infrastructure and every other fucking thing is demonstrably not working at all yet it shows no signs of change)

too much depressing shit in this thread man we need jordan to swoop in with some brass band youtubes pls

ha. don't know if this will work because it's from facebook, but click here for bad sound but great dancing.

https://youtu.be/2tQ5LTEpr-c?t=284

thank you. TBC on top of the game still

Turner Classic Movies cable channel(TCM) is showing a bunch of Les Blank movie docs tonight Tuesday the 28th through the wee hours of Wednesday morning. They are starting at 8 EST with

8 pm Les Blank 1 hour doc Always for Pleasure from 1978 New Orleans that includes Professor Longhair, Irma Thomas , the Wild Tchoupitoulas and more

http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/

The Les Blank movies are available on TCM on Demand until August 5th

You have to have a cable tv provider for that to work (and in US)

if you have hulu plus they're on there too: http://www.hulu.com/search?q=les+blank

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/why-new-orleans-black-residents-are-still-under-water-after-katrina.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-3&action=click&contentCollection=Magazine®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

A mostly downer article, although African-American New Orleans banker Alden McDonald is inspiring

http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/bussing_in_the_band_will_new_o.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202#incart_m-rpt-2

Another mostly downer article

I saw this excerpt in the Washington Post. I think you need to register or something to read the WSJ article

Wall Street Journal: Katrina evacuees have made their mark on Houston. They include barbers, brass-band players and bankers. They have opened eateries with names like Big Easy Express and established congregations including the local branch of New Orleans’s Franklin Avenue Baptist Church.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/members-of-hurricane-katrina-diaspora-in-houston-look-back-at-the-past-10-years-1440696835?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202

Obama mentioned Rebirth Brass Band in New Orleans

The president then headed for lunch at Willie Mae’s Scotch House with Landrieu and other officials before continuing on to the Sanchez Center.

His speech was full of New Orleans references and, in many cases, clichés. He suggested still-displaced residents “live the words sung by Louis Armstrong: ‘Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?’ ”

He referred to the city as a gumbo and a place where “the jazz makes you cry and the funerals make you dance.”

He gave shout-outs to restaurateur Leah Chase, whom he spoke with earlier in Treme, and a member of the Marsalis family.

And he promised that, after he leaves office, he’ll come down to hear the Rebirth Brass Band at the Maple Leaf and, paraphrasing Dr. John, “see the Mardi Gras and somebody will tell me what’s Carnival for.”

“But for right now, I just go to meetings,” Obama said.

http://theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/13292001-148/you-inspired-all-of-america

god i hope obama has to take a piss in the bathroom at the maple leaf, that shit is gnarly

Ha. Meanwhile

Shamarr Allen teaches kids how to play music for free at his parents house in the 9th Ward

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/where-the-levee-broke-in-new-orleans-now-the-sound-of-music/2015/08/27/738f2daa-4aad-11e5-9f53-d1e3ddfd0cda_video.html

http://www.khou.com/story/news/features/2015/08/21/hurricane-katrina-evacuee-shows-new-orleans-pride-in-houston/32147889/

The Hustlers Brass Band in Houston includes 7 folks who left New Orleans when Katrina hit

on their album, it's all members of the Soul Rebels with Dwayne from the Stooges BB/Trombone Shorty on bass drum. i think they started it after Katrina, must have transitioned the band off to dudes who stayed in Houston.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qHM2rbRmRw

May be a mixture of Soul Rebels and folks who are staying in Houston

Wisconsin second line, it's not the same but we get it where & when we can:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U1FrDDCLJw

trombone goes in at the end, love it

thanks man.

so this is one of the weirder Mardi Gras Records comps i've come across, all kinds of Indian jams here that are more interesting and raw than the usual funk band stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J6xx-yeYuE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqSkzJpJ-1c

101 Runners are awesome. Their bass drummer, Lionel Batiste, Jr., is the son of the legendary Uncle Lionel Batiste, and is himself a former member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. I interviewed him a couple weeks ago for a research project I'm doing on New Orleans drummers. The instrumental stuff that 101 plays before the Mardi Gras Indian singers come onstage kinda reminds me of good 70s Miles Davis. And when Big Chief Juan Pardo shows up, their sound is closer to an actual Mardi Gras Indian rehearsal than anything I've seen the Wild Magnolias or Wild Tchoupitoulas do.

If you ever publish your research work, let us know...

A couple of things from two years ago, when I was just starting this work, are online already:

http://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/content/second-lining-new-orleans-floor-and-streets

http://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/18/piece/699

And thanks for your interest.

Thanks, will check those out

Good stuff man. A couple thoughts:

-It's funny, but all the brass band drummers I know count & think of the rhythms you're talking about as half as fast. Meaning that the 'big 4' is actually the '& of 4'. But many of the horn players think in cut time, i.e. how you're notating the music. It makes it hard to even talk about music within the band using regular old Western terminology (but it also doesn't matter, because it's not meant to be written down).

One example to prove my point of view is to imagine the drummer putting a backbeat on 'Hey Pocky Way'. That would turn it into a normal funk beat with the snare on 2 & 4 (quarter notes). I guess you could argue that the snare is on 3 in that case, but I just find that everything grooves harder to think of the quarter note like this.

-Also I've never seen anyone write about the 'other' New Orleans clave, which if you think of quarter notes like I'm talking about, is five dotted 8th notes starting on the & of 1 (and ending on the & of 4). To me, that interlocks with all the bass drum patterns/claves, and it's really what all the snare patterns & fills are based on, as well as most of the horn lines. If you're not playing it, you're playing off of it or implying it.

Thanks for the pointers, Jordan. I should mention, somewhat abashedly, that I'm coming at this not as a drummer or even as a horn player - I'm a singer and guitarist studying drummers in New Orleans because, in New Orleans funk and brass band music, the beats are what make my ears perk up. That's probably why I transcribed the drums the way I did, but I'll definitely keep your suggestion in mind in the way I think about and transcribe these beats in the future. Ditto the "other" clave - that's a great way of conceptualizing the underlying feel.

By the way, Sean King of the Hot 8 name-checked Mama Digdown in an interview I did with him last week. Just thought I'd mention.

i have nothing to add but i find this sort of talk extremely interesting, thanks guys

Ha, nice. I don't know Sean, is he newer?

Speaking of which, Hot 8 links to this documentary from their site and I hadn't seen it: https://vimeo.com/94576449

Must have been shot in the late '90s, it's the original lineup and they're all so young (including little Travis Hill), lots of footage from Donna's. They were so killing back then.

Sean joined on snare drum about two years back after their previous snare drummer, Sammy Cyrus, went to jail. Thanks for the doc link.

Just previewed a bit of that documentary, it looks wonderful. Thanks for linking. Yeah, old school Donna's before they built the stage, Fred Kemp's, Cafe Brasil...

Ah ok, then I heard him at Howlin' Wolf a few months ago, sounded great.

So uh, would it be hard to get a cab back from seeing TBC Wednesday night at Celebration Hall, 1701 st. Bernard . I'm finally going to Ponderosa Stomp for the first time; and am arriving Wednesday night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYconhC57Ts

I would do Uber instead. Cabs from Celebration Hall are a dicey proposition. See you there!

I'd offer you a ride, but I don't have a car :(

Second-lines on Saturday and Sunday

please don't use uber in new orleans, call united cab at 504 522 9771, fuck uber forever

Will TBC start before 11?

TBC usually goes on sometime between 11:15 and 11:30. 11:10 at the absolute earliest.

Alas people I was meeting wanted to see Wolfman Washington @ DBA so I just did that. I kinda wish I had seen Janet Jackson who was here last night. Might have been pricey to score a ticket

Haha, you know what's crazy though? Win and Regine from Arcade Fire showed up at the TBC show. I shit you not. Maybe they're gonna appropriate second line rhythms on their next album?

I also thought about the Janet Jackson show for a minute, but I am really low on funds at the moment.

The Original Pinettes are playing at a free show in Armstrong Park around 5 this afternoon, by the way.

heh, i'd like to see them try.

oh look, that old n'dea davenport track where she's just messing around on top of a full Rebirth song is on youtube now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG0f3EnNOL8

please don't use uber in new orleans, call united cab at 504 522 9771, fuck uber forever

― adam, Tuesday, September 29, 2015 10:01 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah you right