New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

I can't go without mentioned the (however unlikely) on the level Wisconsin brass band scene, Mama Digdown's and Youngblood. I'm sure I've hyped up Youngblood on other threads, but they really are something these days, the new Def Jux album will be tight. It wasn't until after I started listening to a lot of other brass band music that I realized how unique their sound is, clean and precise instead of greasy and raucous (both are great in their way of course).

Speaking of which, what about brass bands from neither New Orleans nor Wisconsin?

The parallel in Minneapolis (where I live) is the Jack Brass Band. I'm all for this kind of thing, but these groups are to Rebirth what Antibalas is to Fela.

I lived in New Orleans for a year and my favorite Rebirth album is still Take It To the Street. Ex-Rebirth member Kermit Ruffins has his own band which is pretty great, too. I find Dirty Dozen boring on CD and in concert, sorry.

My favorite Rebirth story was seeing the guys perform in the bywater one night when members of the Afghan Whigs were in the audience, then seeing the band again in the Zulu parade the next morning. Turns out Rebirth had literally performed all night and went straight to the parade without rest. A float got stuck on a tree, and Rebirth were still energetic enough to challenge a high school band to a battle while the parade stood still. Guess who won.

I still listen to 'New Orleans Album' quite regularly, but it's the only one I've got.

I don't suppose anyone's heard the new one (Medicated Magic)?

I've been listening non-stop to the New Birth Brass Band record, it is HOT SHIT. Totally on Rebirth's level or more so, and it's probably the most spontaneous, live sounding studio album I've ever heard.

or was it not so brass band-y?

Recommend me some New Orleans funeral jazz, please!

And I know this is rockist of me, but the older and more authentic, the better..

thanx

Other than that, just go to Louisiana Music Factory and check out anything by Treme Brass Band (the most well-known band playing in a really trad style that's still around) or Dejan's Olympia Brass Band.

I'll send you a mix if you want to e-mail me, I'm always happy to spread the gospel. Also my brass band should be playing at the Green Mill again in the next couple months.

I really hope their 20th anniversary show dvd comes out, the show was sort of a mess but Cheeky Blakk came out and did Pop That Pussy for 15 minutes, humping trombone cases, Kabuki riding on her back, etc. :>

Yeah, remind me! I've missed you guys a few times now!

New Birth Brass Band, D-Boy
Rebirth Brass Band, Hot Venom
Stooges Brass Band, It's About Time
Soul Rebels Brass Band, No More Parades
Lil' Rascals Brass Band, Buck It Like a Horse

Also a word about Derrick 'Kabuki' Shezbie - he's the main trumpet player for Rebirth, and he was in New Birth as a teenager (he's all over D-Boy). He's SO MUCH LOUDER than any trumpet player I've ever heard, not to mention the fire. His sound is completely wide-open and really sums up the brass band sound for me (he takes the solo on the Rebirth tune I posted above).

HOWEVER, yeah, they take marching band pretty seriously down south and a lot of those kids have incredible chops. We were standing outside of Tipatina's during a parade last Mardi Gras and this high school trumpet line came by blowing high F's and we were like WHAT?! I think that a huge majority of New Orleans brass band musicians came up in those bands and always check them out during parade season, etc.

I am also interested in Jordan's mix.

But still go to Donna's and the Maple Leaf and Le Bon Temps and Cafe Brasil!

most of which are hosting jam bands anyway)

Oh god this is so horribly OTM.

I am also interested in Jordan's mix.

Send me your address.

In Tower Records I noticed in the new Downbeat magazine a nice article on New Orleans brass bands and more. The Stooges Brass band, Hot 8, and Soul Rebels are all here. I haven't checked to see if the article is online.

As a contributing supporter of afropop.org I get a weekly e-mail thing from them. This week they have a nice photo-essay by Ned Sublette(musician, musicologist and author of that immense book on Cuban music) on New Orleans. Sublette is living there for awhile and studying the Caribbean roots of New Orleans. He's got an interview with Donald Harrison and some others. I think you can check it all out at afropop.org

I think one was called Yarl River Blues Band.

I'll be going down to Jazzfest the first weekend to play with Mama Digdown's and see brass bands, can't wait.

From the April issue excerpt on Downbeat's website:

Next Generation New Orleans Brass Bands
Brass Beyond The Streets

By Jennifer Odell

Philip Frazier honks his sousaphone on a chilly January Sunday on the corner of Daneel and 3rd streets. Musicians start to shuffle away from the crowd milling outside the Bean Brothers Bar and strap on horns and snare drums, ready to get their roll on. Dancers for the Undefeated Dicas Social Aid and Pleasure Club come around the corner and tubas, sousaphones, saxophones and bass drums fall in line as the Divas belt out The Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There.”

Winding past Mary’s Nightowl Bar, Candlelight Bar, Sandpiper and The New Look, the parading community group hits all of the Uptown neighborhood’s brass band stops. Ostrich plumes fan the air above the Divas in time with Frazier’s non-stop vamps. When the dancers slow down and form a circle, trading moves with kids, the band plays even harder, echoing braay swueals off the projects across the street. This is how brass band music was born.

But it’s growing up. And while playing the second lines and funerals remains important, many of today’s hottest brass players are concentrating more on polishing their CDs and getting national recognition than on stealing the show on Sunday afternoons. The current generation is following the successful business model created by the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth brass bands; updating a traditional sound to make the music relevant to a larger audience. And with each step forward, another cross-breed of the brass band sound is born. Mardi Gras Indian bands like Big Sam’s Funky Nation are based in funk, the Soul Rebels are purveyors of hip-hop and the Hot 8, New Birth and the Stooges hold down the street scene with their bebop-heavy takes on the traditional style.

MARDI GRAS 2005: a photo essay by Ned Sublette
Also Check out Interviews with Joseph Roach, Donald Harrison, and Vicki Mayer by Ned Sublette

Read that DJ Brice Nice lost his huge vinyl collection in the flooding that just hit New Orleans. Also, the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club has suffered damage too. For others its been even worse

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/it-wasnt-even-a-hurricane-but-heavy-rains-flooded-new-orleans-as-pumps-faltered/2017/08/09/b3b7506a-7d37-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_neworleans-745pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.14743ab4c43e

RIP Arian Macklin, sousaphone player for the Stooges, Free Agents, and Youngblood Brass Band over the years. Also Herlin Riley's nephew.

YBB put up some live tracks, proceeds go to the family: https://youngbloodbrassbandofficial.bandcamp.com/album/rip-arian-macklin

Hot 8 video for St James Infirmary. Good stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=273&v=wg43MWpLP7g

Not exactly brass band related, but well...

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/12/irvin_mayfield_indicted_by_fed.html

WWL first reported in 2015 that federal authorities were looking into Mayfield. He's said to have steered more than $1.1 million from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation's Board to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra over two years, while serving in leadership roles on both organization's boards and taking home a six-figure paycheck from the jazz orchestra.

He's also reported to have spent thousands in donations on travel expenses the library foundation says were not connected with library business, including $18,000 in hotel expenses in New York.

According to the station, the indictment against Mayfield and his longtime artistic partner Ronald Markham included four counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering and one count of obstruction of justice, among other charges.

https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2016/01/12/jermaine-bossier-79rs-gang-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/

I've been snoozing on this Mardi Gras group the 79rs Gang

An album from 2015 and a 2017 single . On Bandcamp

https://79rsgang.bandcamp.com/track/dead-and-gone

Some friends are heading to New Orleans this coming weekend. Any second lines or great gigs on the 3rd and 4th? Not seeing any second lines listed yet on that WWOZ Taking it to the Streets calendar.

I'm selecting some favorite brass band recordings for a little piece, and uploading a few that aren't on Youtube. Here's a cut from what is imo the best TBC record, which is not available online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO8whcNlPII

good choice

http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2018/03/edna_karr_marching_band_oscars_t-mobile.html

http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/entertainment_life/movies_tv/article_13caeb3e-202a-11e8-8fb8-93aadbf824ff.html

The Edna Karr High School Marching band from Algiers was featured in a new T-mobile commercial during the Oscars

Here's that piece w/some of my brass band picks & blurbs: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/8-tracks/8-tracks-of-new-orleans-brass-bands-with-chants/

Great!

Will be in New Orleans this weekend -- Charlie Sims memorial, French Quarter Fest, playing at the Blue Nile on Saturday, second line on Sunday.

Jealous. Where is Donna these days, didn't she relocate to FL?

She's been back in New Orleans

Oh no, a Mother's Day incident

The Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club's annual Mother's Day second-line had recently passed through the area, and one of the club's members, who declined to give his name, said the parade was ending when he heard gunshots.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2018/05/mothers_day_shooting_new_orlea.html

A man died and a 15-year-old girl was injured in a shooting on Mother's Day (May 13) in New Orleans, according to a news alert from the New Orleans Police Department. The shooting took place near the corner of Duplessis and Lafreniere streets, which is in the Gentilly neighborhood near Interstate 610, between Dillard University and City Park.

Police said the man, 35, died at the scene, and the girl, who suffered a graze wound to the leg, was taken to Children's Hospital where she was in good condition Sunday evening.

again?! :(

So sad . Brings back memories of that other one

I saw New Orleans writer/professor/director Jason Berry speak some years back when the EMP Pop Conference had a New Orleans session. Dude was impressive. He's now raising funds for a movie he's making

Why do we dance for the dead? This documentary explores the complex roots of the New Orleans jazz funeral, using burial traditions as a viewfinder on the evolution of the city. Writer-director Jason Berry, a distinguished cultural historian and director of an award-winning film on the Vatican, Vows of Silence, has been researching and filming brass band funerals and musicians’ interviews, since the 1990s....Our protagonist is Original Liberty Jazz Band leader Michael White, ...As the film unfolds, we meet an array of cultural torch-bearers, like Fred Johnson of Black Men of Labor. The galvanizing Deb “Big Red“ Cotton, a Gambit Weekly blogger chronicling the second line, emerges as a powerful voice the people. Cotton throws a focus on gun violence that has beleaguered some of the parades for Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, spawned by the old benevolent society funerals. When Deb is one of the people wounded in a gang crossfire at a 2013 Mother’s Day parade, her public forgiveness of the assailants -- visiting her shooter in prison – takes the story in a powerful meditation on mercy and redemption....

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/363373377/city-of-a-million-dreams

Was in Houston where I saw a brass band playing on the corner outside the Houston Astros stadium. I immediately thought they might be all refugees from New Orleans. I was wrong. The Pink Sand Brass Band is predominantly made up of music majors from the Bahamas that attend Prairie View A & M, a historically Black university in Prairie View , Texas

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/obituaries/henry-butler-dead.html

New Orleans pianist who died from cancer. He also photographed Mardi Gras celebrants, street scenes and the wreckage of his Mason & Hamlin piano after Katrina; his photographs were in the traveling exhibition “Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists.”

I like this video of the Big 6 Brass Band at a Popeyes in New Orleans. They get the employees to dance. Am following the band now on twitter, where they have tweeted and retweeted some good New Orleans stuff

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Miu90sh_9yM

They're the second line band to beat rn, the two sousaphone players in particular just rip.

love it

Just saw a review of movie doc One Note at a Time, that includes Uncle Lionel B and Hot 8 and Irma Thomas and more. Some of it is about how the Louisiana Musicians Clinic helps New Orleans musicians. Was apparently first show in 2016 there, but is getting wider distribution now.

https://neworleansmusiciansclinic.org/2017/05/23/one-note-time-film-trailer/

There's a documentary on Leroy Jones coming out too:
http://www.theleroyjonesstory.com/
https://youtu.be/iw4BKbn6k0M

New Youngblood covers EP too:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5ICLCgbh6VBwO1VOnA7GZG?si=Zg59RI2TQaq6U_hoP8sxVg

That Youngblood Brass cover of Rihanna “Umbrella “ is nice if a tad too relaxed.

Hmmm, wonder if Jordan has some fave New Orleans releases for 2018?

Man, I wish I did, but there's been a dearth of (good) brass band albums lately. The older bands either haven't been putting out much or I haven't been feeling it, like a certain band with a UK label (sorry).

The younger bands sound amazing on the street but aren't translating that to records for the most part. Big 6 put out a mixtape, but they sounded so much better at the second line: https://soundcloud.com/user-60647372/micheal-jackson-black-or-white

TBC posted a couple of nice singles (with Kabuki on trumpet, nice to hear him again), hopefully they'll put out a record next year:
https://soundcloud.com/tbc-brass-band/mbk-we-at-celebration-hall-every-wednesday-night

https://soundcloud.com/tbc-brass-band/tbc-fire-water-feat-spyboy-juwan-bordreaux

On the traditional side, I like this Mark Braud album with Herlin Riley on drums, especially this cut. None of his stuff is on streaming services but this one is on Soundcloud for some reason.
https://soundcloud.com/user-618715822/trouble?in=user-618715822/sets/living-the-tradition

Oh and Youngblood Brass Band's new EP of covers that I posted above.

Thanks

I'm playing at this in a few weeks, apparently the first brass band-focused festival in New Orleans (can that be true?):
http://https%3A//scontent.feau1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/53057849_350201285583500_8500506784417447936_n.jpg%3F_nc_cat%3D105%26_nc_ht%3Dscontent.feau1-1.fna%26oh%3Da97824dbbda4e22de657c9373a76b097%26oe%3D5D28D511

TBC, Stooges, Hot 8, Cheeky Blakk, DJ Jubilee, second line dance-off, it sounds like heaven.

Oh well, it's this, but they haven't posted the full flyer/lineup on the site yet (just on facebook) -- http://nolabrassfest.com/

that is a highly new orleanian website

haha

Amazing weekend, from playing at the brass band fest and seeing all the bands in one spot (+ Phil Frazier getting honored, that was emotional because he's not in the best of health), to playing a party with the Stooges BB, to the second line on Sunday.

Put some little bits up on instagram, there's a lot more on facebook etc.

Hallelujah, a new TBC Brass Band studio album --
https://open.spotify.com/album/52NjIcq4D5sNpzwPIUpV4G?si=OPC3hr1ETLyVFMNnBhe1LA

Only tangentially related, and I'm not sure if this stuff is your thing at all, but Jordan have you caught Naughty Professor? One of my favorite discoveries at Jazzfest this year. Super talented musicians, and tight arrangements that go a lot of different places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thiK3Psi1zE

ooooh, got to check out that new TBC album. ALso, Everytime I delve into Instagram posts, the 2nd line parade ones make me wanna get back back there

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/12/new-orleans-brass-band-arrest-police-book-store/

Friday September 20 at Gateway Pavilion in Washington DC it’s New Orleans vs DC— Featuring Big Six Brass Band of New Orleans, and DC’s own Proper Utensils feat. Jas Funk, Black Alley, and DJ Supa Dan. Plus New Orleans and Washington cuisine.

Oooh, I love a good battle

It was fun.

Brass and International band fest coming up in New Orleans looks good.

http://www.offbeat.com/news/congo-square-rhythms/

who won

No declared winner, and different styles , but I might give Big 6 a slight edge ( shhhh, don’t tell any DC locals I said that)

Just saw the 2018 video of Hot 8 Brass doing Joy Division “Love Will Tear Us Apart (again)”. It’s also on their 2019 Take Cover ep that appears to be available from bandcamp but not on Spotify
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fBuTK-E0gxo

RIP bounce rap artist 5th Ward Weebie. I think there’s a second line for him tonight

Oh damn, really?

https://b97.radio.com/blogs/speedy/rip-to-nola-legend-5th-ward-weebie

Had been in the hospital for a bit. Not sure what happened. Twitter was showing scheduled nightly vigils for him in the hope that he would recover