New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

http://s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2WX72H6TOE43V34S22C0V2F6NC

GONE...BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Hurricane Katrina has taken more from us than our homes, neighborhoods and businesses. We’re profoundly sorry to report that these wonderful members of our music community have passed on within the last week.

Brian O’Neill
1955-2005
Composer, arranger, vocalist, pianist and Bonerama trombonist, Brian O’Neill passed away suddenly after suffering an apparent heart attack while on a solo gig in New Orleans O’Neill was noted for his work with Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders in the ’70s as well as being a mainstay of the popular New Orleans R&B vocalist Luther Kent’s band “Trick Bag” for the past 25 years. As a freelance trombonist O’Neill was one of the most frequently-called trombonists in New Orleans. O’Neill penned the most recent “Bone Up” from the Bonerama’s Live From New York. O’Neill appeared in countless sit-ins with the Bonerama horns including appearances with Gov’t Mule and the Radiators. Fellow Bonerama trombonist Mark Mullins recalls, “I met Brian on a gig at a Mardi Gras parade 21 years ago and after the first song I realized that is what I wanted to sound like. To have him in the Bonerama band was just a constant inspiration on both a personal and musical level. There was so much he had not had a chance to say yet.”

Stevenson Palfi
1952-2005
The director of Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together, a documentary that presented New Orleans legends Allen Toussaint, Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair playing together in the studio, was found dead of a gunshot wound in in New Orleans. Palfi had lost much in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; his Mid-City home was severely flooded, and reportedly was very depressed over the loss of his home and life's work. Palfi was staying with his ex- wife at the time. Reportedly he left a suicide note. Palfi is survived by his daughter, Nell.
“His seminal work was non-pareil as a rare, timely and brilliant piece of documentary film-making. Henry Roeland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair, died during the filming of this work. Stevenson had the foresight to capture the entire second line celebration of Fess’ life and death.” said Justin Zitler, attorney for SongByrd Inc., the Professor Longhair estate. Informed of Palfi’s death, Allen Toussaint said, “My friend Stevenson Palfi’s life’s work was immortalizing others and in so doing, he has immortalized himself. His work will outlast all of us.”

Stevenson Palfi will be honored with a tribute this year at OffBeat's Best of The Beat Awards on January 21 at the House of Blues.

The New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund is
proud to sponsor the Social Aid & Pleasure Club All-
Star Second Line on Sunday January 15, 2006. For
the first time ever, a coalition of 27 Social Aid &
Pleasure Clubs will march together through the
streets of New Orleans to call attention to their
needs and role in renewing the city. The Second Line
begins at the Backstreet Cultural Museum at 1116 St.
Claude Avenue in Treme at 11:30 a.m. and ends
uptown at Washington Avenue and South Saratoga
at about 4 p.m.

My band will be going down around Mardi Gras, and just before that playing a concert for NOLA relocatees in Chicago.

By GARY RIVLIN
Published: January 11, 2006
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 10 - The commission devising a blueprint to reconstruct the city will propose on Wednesday . . . the creation of a new jazz district downtown. . . . The jazz district would be in the old Storyville section, north of the French Quarter, an idea championed by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a member of the commission and the co-chairman of its culture committee."

The New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity covers Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and is in the "embryonic" stages of adding Plaquemines Parish. Pate said it hopes to build 250 to 500 houses in the four parishes, and possibly as many as 200 in the musicians' village."

Is this the "musician's village"?

Here's an excerpt from the L.A. Times re Wynton's project:

"To accelerate the process, Nagin's commission is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release updated floodplain maps which effectively could make the decision for many homeowners by raising home insurance rates and setting other new financial barriers to redevelopment.

A subcommittee is proposing a new jazz district near the French Quarter at the former location of Storyville, a fabled district of musicians and houses of ill-repute at the turn of the last century.

It later fell into disrepair and was demolished. The idea to re-create a cleaned-up version of Storyville, which gave rise to musical legends including Jelly Roll Morton, is being championed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz virtuoso Wynton Marsalis."

Cleaned up and recreated early 20th century bordellos in WyntonMarsalis-land! Ugh. Putting Wynton on the committee may help kill New Orleans music rather then help it.

Btw, I'm going to be down for four days during the last weekend of Mardi Gras, for a gig at Donna's and just to check things out.

"On Saturday, January 21, 2006, OffBeat
presents “The Best of the Beat Awards,”
its annual celebration of the best of New
Orleans’ music at the House of Blues, 225 Decatur
Street. The Best of
The Beat starts at 6 p.m. and ends at 2 a.m.

This year, OffBeat recognizes R&B legends
Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas
with Lifetime Achievement in Music awards.
Toussaint is the influential songwriter and producer of
some of the city’s signature records, as well as a
performer in his own right. Thomas is the voice of
such classics as “Wish Someone Would Care,” “It’s
Raining” and “Breakaway.” Also honored are
Wanda Rouzan for Lifetime Achievement in
Music Education, “Uncle” Lionel Battiste of
the Treme Brass Band, who receives this year’s
Heartbeat Award, and George and Nina Buck
(GHB Records and the Palm Court Jazz Café), for the
Lifetime Achievement Award in Business.

The Best of The Beat will also include a tribute to the
late music documentarian, Stevenson Palfi.

HOB STAGE

7:00: John Autin

7:45: Morning 40 Federation

8:30: Awards with Stevenson Palfi Tribute

9:15: Papa Grows Funk with Anders Osborne and Tim
Green

10:00: Davis Rogan

10:30: Fred LeBlanc and Paul Sanchez of Cowboy
Mouth

11:15: Theresa Andersson with members of World
Leader Pretend

12:00: James Andrews with Shannon Powell

12:45: Walter “Wolfman” Washington

1:30: New Orleans Live Animals

PARISH STAGE

7:15: Coco Robicheaux

8:00: New Orleans Jazz Vipers

9:30: Quintron with C.C. Adcock

10:15: Ingrid Lucia

11:00: Michael Hurtt & His Haunted Hearts

11:45: White Bitch

12:30: Shannon McNally

1:15: Ghost"

http://citypages.com/databank/27/1313/article14090.asp

I'm heading down too, in time for the night of Feb. 23.

After Katrina, the Jazzman Plays On

By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 30, 2006; A02

NEW ORLEANS -- Peter Badie is in the kitchen, rummaging around in a drawer for a spoon. This isn't his kitchen. His kitchen was filled with 10 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina and likely awaits the wrecking ball. The 80-year-old jazz musician is homeless and temporarily living in a spare bedroom of a Creole cottage here in the Faubourg Marigny section of town. This is Sue Hall's kitchen.

"Sue Hall, where is that big pan?" Badie calls out.

"Peter, it's where you left it," says the voice from the other room.

Horns and clarinets drift from speakers above. Badie catches sight of his black sunglasses on the counter. He snatches them up and slips them into his shirt pocket, mindful of being a neat houseguest. "Sue Hall, I've got some fish cakes out here."

The hurricane has forced all sorts of unexpected arrangements, and Badie and Hall are just one unlikely Odd Couple living in the aftermath. Badie is an accomplished acoustic bass player who has toured with Lionel Hampton. Hall booked bands at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe. When she heard that Badie lost his home in the Lower Ninth Ward, she offered him a place to stay.

Hall has red hair and pearly skin. She was born in Kankakee, Ill. Chili pepper lights hang in her kitchen; Southern folk art and pink flamingos abound. In the middle of this bright whimsy is Badie, an austere modern jazzman, as cool as midnight itself, dealing with his homelessness, anger and unsure future.

This is life in New Orleans now: tenuous, with strange forgings and new beginnings. No one is saying how long the arrangement will last.

Badie -- known as "Chuck" -- has a salt-and-pepper soul patch. He is a widower and devout Catholic. His routine is simple. He rises mid-morning, says his prayers and then emerges from his borrowed room and makes a pot of grits. He is immensely proud, almost to the point of defiance. He recently returned a $4,000 check that the musicians union sent him by mistake.

At Hall's kitchen table, he reads the New Orleans Times-Picayune from cover to cover. "They say New Orleans will be back," Badie says. "Not for me it won't. I'm 80 years old."

Badie was born in 1925 in the Black Pearl section of Uptown in New Orleans. His father was a jazz saxophonist with the Eureka and Olympia brass bands. Badie didn't pick up music until he got out of the Navy in 1945 and used the GI Bill to enroll at the Grunewald School of Music in New Orleans, a beacon of progressivism in a city cleaved by race. "Whites were on the first floor and blacks were on the second floor; to me, that's integrated," Badie says.

Zoot Sims, Dizzy Gillespie -- Badie played with the best of them. Along with other black musicians, he helped found the A.F.O. (All For One) record label in 1961. But musicians were paid so little that Badie worked as a lunch waiter at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in the French Quarter for 15 years, making $500 a week, five times what he earned playing music.

Before the hurricane, he had a standing gig at the Palm Court, and he rolled up in style: punctual, a pressed shirt and a 1979 black Cadillac roomy enough to carry his bass in the back seat. He lived alone at his house on North Johnson Street. Other musicians die in rental apartments, but Badie had his house.

Now he sits in Hall's kitchen, holding a letter from his homeowner's insurance company, typed with the words "No Compensation."

"Not one quarter," he says, smoldering.

Five months after the storm, Badie still drives to his house every day and stares at it. The mysteries of his losses plague him. "I had six suits," he says. "I'm talking about suits. Not that mix-'n'-match jive. Six suits. Now, where did they go?"

He was wise enough to store his two basses on the second floor of the Palm Court before the storm, saving them from ruin. He momentarily forgets his troubles when describing his 1946 Epiphone. "It's got a sound, baby, you can hear around the corner," he says. "People said, 'Chuck, don't ever sell it.' Cats would snap it up in a second. I did a lot of records with that." "The Man I Love," "A Change Is Gonna Come." One of the basses is stretched out across Hall's living room. Who knows where it will finally rest. Badie has been looking into the Habitat for Humanity "musicians' village" that singer Harry Connick Jr. and saxophone player Branford Marsalis are trying to create for Louisiana musicians left homeless by the storm.

For now, this pink cottage is home. Badie shows his appreciation by cooking: breaded pork chops, cabbage, neck bones, turnips and carrots, and oyster dressing. "Oyster dressing?" Badie says. "Oh, that will kick you. See, I re-boil them crawfish heads and get that stock ."

The phone rings again, and Hall comes into the kitchen. She's been trying to find a trombonist for a gig. The hurricane scattered New Orleans jazz musicians across the country; two-thirds have still not returned. "I must have called 10 trombone players," Hall says.

Badie frets over what to wear to the gig. His suits are gone. He goes into his bedroom to make a call about finding a new white shirt.

Hall drops her voice and whispers, "He's old school, the last of a generation. A man of integrity."

When Badie takes his place on stage at the Palm Court the next night, he reveals nothing of his troubles. The club owner introduces the musicians. "Mr. Chuck Badie has lost his home," she tells the crowd. Badie's eyes are hidden behind his dark shades. Someone counts off a beat, and the band sets off, with Badie plucking fiercely to the end.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060129/ENTERTAINMENT05/601290321/1005/MTCN0303

http://homeofthegroove.blogspot.com/

Oh, here's an article from Billboard--

Sad reality sinks in for New Orleans music scene

By Todd Martens Sun Feb 5, 5:44 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Like nearly every house in New Orleans, Bethany
Bultman's home has holes in its roof. Buckets to catch rainwater surround
her desk, and she is hesitant to go out at night. Much of her neighborhood
is still completely without power.

She is one of the lucky ones. Leaky roof aside, her house suffered little
damage, and she has a second one in Massachusetts, a world away from the
devastation Hurricane Katrina inflicted last August. Bultman admits to
missing her Cape Cod getaway, but she cannot bring herself to abandon New
Orleans. There would be the guilt of leaving behind the city and those who
are suffering, but more important, there are checks to write.

Bultman inscribes upwards of 70 per week, each for $100, each given to a New
Orleans musician. To date, her efforts have been funded largely by donations
from Pearl Jam and nonprofit organization Jazz Aspen Snowmass; she recently
was promised $250,000 from MusiCares, the Recording Academy's charitable
arm.

The checks Bultman writes are allocated only to those who work, which these
days in New Orleans can mean performing at a club in front of a handful of
FEMA workers.

On many nights, money from the door is minimal or nonexistent. Bultman hopes
her $100 subsidy is enough to dissuade someone from taking a gig in another
city. If instruments and artifacts from the city's musical heritage were
washed away, then New Orleans' soul -- the musicians who define it -- must
stay.

"As the time wore on," Bultman says, "more and more musicians who were
dumped all over the country wanted to come back. We soon realized that this
is really about giving people instruments and giving people hope, and that's
when we started paying the gig fees."

Two months ago, Bultman, a writer/historian and the co-founder of the New
Orleans Musicians' Clinic, was urging displaced musicians to return to the
city. She started the clinic with her husband in 1998 with the assistance of
Dr. Jack B. McConnell, the developer of Tylenol tablets whose son, Page,
played keyboards for the band Phish. With a mix of pride and a dedication to
preserving a music culture that she says "percolates out of the ground,"
Bultman hoped all New Orleans' evacuees would soon be returning.

'NEW ORLEANS IS NOT A HEALTHY PLACE'

Reality, however, soon sunk in, and now she is not so sure. "The goal was to
get everyone we could get back to New Orleans," she says. "Now that we're
back, we've moved away from that. We've moved away from the fantasy that
everything would go back to the way it was. New Orleans is just not a
healthy place for everyone to come to."

Eight of the city's ZIP codes are still without full power, according to the
January 24 status report from the mayor's office. The area affected most by
Katrina -- the Ninth Ward -- remains under curfew, and 911 emergency
availability is scattered. Few hospitals are open, and the New Orleans
Musicians' Clinic, which had free use of the Louisiana State University
School of Medicine in New Orleans, has lost such privileges, as much of the
facility needs extensive repairs.

And for many, life was not all that great before Katrina. One in four of the
city's residents lived below the poverty line, and a great number of its
working musicians relied on a steady influx of tourists.

Bultman stays in touch with the national organizations providing relief to
New Orleans musicians, including MusiCares, which announced its pledge in
support of her efforts January 25.

She is heartened by the outpouring of generosity of her top donors and has
nothing but praise for MusiCares. But five months after Katrina, Bultman
feels that little has been accomplished. Nearly all of the 200 musicians she
helps lack a place to live. She worries the situation will only get worse
with a dearth of health care and tries to communicate to the national
associations that the effort to restore the music community in New Orleans
is one that will take years -- and one that will happen one saxophone at a
time.

RETURN TO SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Pianist Joe Krown was playing 12 gigs per week prior to Katrina. His wife,
who worked at Tulane University Hospital, was laid off after the hurricane.
He filled out the paperwork for nearly every charity dedicated to helping
musicians.

"I have a mortgage and a rent and no income, and before I said anything more
to a couple of them, there was a check in the mail," Krown says. "That
happened with MusiCares and the Musicians' Clinic and the Jazz Foundation."

He also benefited from the New Orleans Musicians' Relief Fund, which was
started by one-time dB's member Jeff Beninato and his wife, Karen. Along
with Chicago rock group Wilco, the couple brought Krown and such musicians
as Leroy Jones, George French, Craig Klein and Cranston Clements to Chicago
for a benefit show that raised more than $100,000.

Beninato says he started the charity two days after Katrina hit New Orleans,
and a few days after that he heard from MusiCares. He began working with the
national organization, providing names of musicians he knew were still in
New Orleans.

Beninato is re-outfitting the New Wave Brass Band, hoping to get the big
band in marching form for Mardi Gras. Providing instruments for working New
Orleans musicians has become a group effort, and MusiCares is at the
forefront. Wick says the charity has helped more than 600 musicians get new
instruments, and he says MusiCares receives between 30 and 80 applications
per day.

MusiCares has partnered with Gibson and the Guitar Center chain and launched
its Music Rising replacement initiative in New Orleans with U2's the Edge.
While an unknown number of musicians still need a place to live, they need
the instruments to make a living.

Krown, for one, says he was able to replace some equipment thanks to
MusiCares, and the program has made it easier for him to be self-sufficient.
"It was starting to feel like I was begging, and I have too much pride for
that," Krown says.

Reuters/Billboard

http://www.nojazzfest.com/schedule/index04.html

Actually, I'm happy just to see the names of all those locals returning to the Fest, but yeah, the headliners: could Quint be any more lame than re-booking Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffett?

And Mama Digdown's at Donna's warms my heart. God, I love that place.

But at least the crowds won't be so overwhelming this year.

Way back when they also used to bring in some out-of-town jazz, and have more local jazz. I wonder if the Essence Fest is going to come back to New Orleans? It was never that imaginatively booked--smooth jazz, big name old-school funk, soul and rap for buppies; but I always thought that Quint should at least try to reach a little of that audience as well (but with cleverly chosen acts that would appeal to that demographic).

Quint doesn't care about the obscurities who play Ponderosa Stomp; Guitar Gable on the roster isn't gonna bring in very many additional people, while Buffett still attracts HORDES of Parrotheads. Phil Phillips singing "Sea of Love" last year brought tears to my eyes, partly because I couldn't believe it was the first time he's been asked to perform there. Authentic stuff like that is a blip on the JF schedule, and I feel like every time a soul legend like Johnnie Taylor passes away without playing Jazzfest, while Little Feat does AGAIN, it's just another thing Quint's gonna have to answer for at the pearly gates.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/1140077747113660.xml

The local musicians who are involved are stuck with playing up to Quint--since he's the only game in town. It's frightening that until a corporate sponsor stepped in, there was nearly gonna be no brass bands --check out this quote from Keith Spera'a article:

"Jazzfest also announced a partnership with American Express. The company will promote various local acts and sponsor the Jazz & Heritage Stage, which debuted at the 2005 festival with a lineup of brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians. Budget constraints would have forced the festival to drop the stage had AmEx not stepped in, Davis said."

Anyone who's down the week before should check out the French Quarter Festival which is in many ways what JF should be. Free, all-local on a couple stages spread throughout the French Quarter. The food from the many stands (run by local restaurants etc) maxes out at $4. When I worked at the Aquarium lunch was the greatest thing in the world during the FQF: walk outside, get some food and a beer and watch the Nightcrawlers or Rebirth for an hour.

Ha ha. Funny how "shit" transposed to "hits."

Tanio and Fat Man have been in Germany for the past few weeks. Glen David got in some mess here and had to leave town -- something about a woman, I was told.

Last night's line-up was a kit drummer (who did a pretty good job by the way), Kenny Terry, Corey Henry, Kerwin and a trombonist I didn't recognize. And the McNeil NewsHour had a crew there -- they shot footage all night long. The reporter told me he was working on a documentary about Reggie Houston, who was living in Portland pre-Katrina and will be returning to NOLA for the first time during JazzFest.

Also, there are strong, believable rumors that a New Orleans bar/social club will be opening near downtown here. A famous NOLA musician is involved, but I can't say who right now. I should be going public with it in a week or two.

Meanwhile, the tension between the exiles and the locals is growing. New Orleanians are now the boogie man here -- they're getting blamed for everything scary about Houston. It would be funny if it weren't so sad -- after all, we've been Murder Capital USA for several years running in the not too distant past, but people here are acting like "those people" have come in here and despoiled Eden.

Things reached fever pitch a couple of weeks ago when a teenaged girl claimed she was snatched off the street in broad daylight and gangraped for 12 hours by three guys who she said had New Orleans accents. Houston's Third Ward was aboil for about 72 hours, until the girl finally confessed she made the whole thing up. In fact, she had run off and had consensual sex with a guy she met on myspace.

Fifth Annual Ponderosa Stomp
May 8th, 9th and 10th, 2006, at the Gibson Factory, Memphis Tennessee
THREE-DAY MUSIC FESTIVAL WILL BENEFIT NEW ORLEANS MUSICIANS VICTIMIZED BY HURRICANE KATRINA

From 5 P.M. till 2 A.M Nightly, Admission $40 per Night
Celebrating the Unsung Heroes of the Blues, Soul, Rockabilly, Swamp Pop and New Orleans R&B

Artists
Arch Hall, JR, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Joe Clay, Jay Chevalier, Rebirth Brass Band, Willie Tee, Eddie Bo, Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, Rockie Charles, Tammy Lynn, Alvis Wayne, Warren Storm, Lazy Lester, The Bad Roads, Barbara Lynn, Roy Head, Lil Buck Sinegal, Archie Bell, Scotty Moore, DJ Fontana, Sonny Burgess, Hayden Thompson, Ace Cannon, Hi Rhythm Section, Travis Wammack, Willie Cobbs, Kenny Brown, The Bo Keys, The Nightcaps, Kenny & the Kasuals, ? & the Mysterians, Lady Bo, Billy Boy Arnold, Jody Williams, Deke Dickerson & the Eccofonics, Johnny Jones, Chick Willis, Little Freddie King, James Blood Ulmer, Betty Harris, Dale Hawkins, Dennis Coffey, William Bell, Fillmore Slim, The Tennessee Three featuting W.S. Holland and Bob Wootten, Wiley and the Checkmates, Syl Johnson, Herb Remington, The Fabulous Wailers, Bobby Patterson, The Climates, Carl Mann, Rayburn Anthony, Big George Brock, Henry Gray, Matt Lucas, The Rockabilly Country Band, Sleepy Labeef and Jumpin Gene Simmons.
more to come . . . .

Oh, here's what they posted back in December on their message board--

12-07-2005

Posted by: senor chubba
This is a temporary move strictly for this one gig. We are producing other shows in New Orleans now for 05 and 06. Keep in mind final plans for the stomp happen in August and September -and the hotel and travel situation in New Orleans is not so good. Residents who were flooded cannot find rooms to stay while they repair their homes. The stomp happens during jazzfest week- what little rooms are beginning to be available will probably be gobbled up. Flights are scarce. Most of the stomps audience comes in from out of town- we have to have rooms available. This year's stomp is a benefit for New Orleans musicians - we feel we can have the greatest impact in terms of helping by producing the show elsewhere for this year. This was not an easy decision. Please check our show schedule as we will be adding shows for New Orleans in early 2005. We live and work in New Orleans - and we are committed to doing everything we can- however, the stomp is first and foremost about the helping musicians."

They're doing a one night thing at the South by Southwest Fest in Austin shortly as well I see--"Ponderosa Stomp Gulf Coast Revue at SXSW
Friday, March 17, 2006
Continental Club in Austin, Texas

The luck of the irish will be needed as Mystic Knights of the Mau Mau invade SXSW. the Knights will be bringing a special Ponderosa Stomp Gulf Coast Revue to the Continental Club in Austin, Texas. Featured performers will include, Eddie Bo, Al Carnival Time Johnson, Tommmy McClain, Roy Head, Barbara Lynn, Warren Storm, Classie Ballou, Archie Bell, Lil Buck Sinegal, Lil Band O'Gold, The Bad Roads and Zakary Thaks will appear. Lastly, special guest will be Shreveport native DJ Fontana."

February 27, 2006
Critic's Notebook
In the Music of New Orleans, Katrina Leaves Angry Edge
By JON PARELES, N.Y. Times
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 26 — The beat was crisp New Orleans funk, thumping to keep the crowd dancing at the uptown club Tipitina's. The band onstage, Dumpstaphunk, was led by Ivan Neville, the son of Aaron Neville and a member of New Orleans's first family of rhythm and blues.

Like many top New Orleans musicians, he was back in town for a club date on the weekend before Mardi Gras, when so many local musicians returned to the city's clubs that it almost seemed they had never gone away.

In this city that holds so many roots of American song, music is more than entertainment. It's a ritual and a lifeline.

On the surface of the music scene here, much was familiar. More than 80 nightclubs offered live music, perhaps two-thirds the number before Hurricane Katrina. The clubs in the French Quarter and uptown, in neighborhoods spared major flood damage, were booked with New Orleans all-stars: funk bands like the Radiators and Galactic, brass bands like the Rebirth Brass Band and the Soul Rebels, jazz musicians like Kermit Ruffins and Trombone Shorty.

They're still playing New Orleans standards as the drinks flow. But there's a changed spirit: the tenacity of holding together bands whose members have been scattered and the determination to maintain the New Orleans style. And in new songs, an open anger coexists with the old good-time New Orleans tone. Over a funk beat, Mr. Neville had something to say.

"Talkin' to the powers that be!" he declaimed like a preacher. "A lot of people got disenfranchised, displaced, and now we got a lot of distrust." He moved into a song built on the local greeting "Where y'at?" But one verse listed whereabouts of displaced New Orleanians: "Where y'at? Texas! Mississippi!" Another asked the federal government: "Where y'at, when we really needed you?"

In the 21st century, the most commercial New Orleans music has been hip-hop. Juvenile, a New Orleans rapper, has spent most of his career doing gangta boasts. But he has just released the single "Get Ya Hustle On," with a video clip shot in the ruins of the Ninth Ward.

It shows children in masks of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the city's mayor, C. Ray Nagin, wandering through the wreckage as Juvenile raps lyrics like "We starving, we living like Haiti with no government" and "I'm trying to live, I lost it all in Katrina." A house he had just built was destroyed in the hurricane.

There has always been more to New Orleans music than its nonchalant facade. The city has repeatedly catalyzed American music, as sounds that started in the streets of New Orleans reached the world as jazz, put the roll into rock 'n' roll and taught new syncopations to rhythm and blues. Within the songs is the tension and fascination between classes and cultures: African, European, French, Spanish, Caribbean, Native American, rich and poor.

"They don't all get along," said Nick Spitzer, the host of the Public Radio International program "American Routes" and one of the authors of "Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America's Creole Soul" (Penn Press). "But they've created an amazing shared culture." New Orleans musicians have long been able deliver troubled thoughts with a smile, as Louis Armstrong did in "Black and Blue" and Fats Domino did in "Ain't That a Shame."

When New Orleans musicians play the old songs, what once came across as easygoing now carries a streak of bravado.

Like other New Orleanians, many musicians have lost their homes, possessions and sometimes family members, and they are traveling long distances to play in their old local haunts.

A song like "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" now echoes with the knowledge that some natives of the city will never return. And there are new, bleaker resonances when a Mardi Gras Indian group like the Wild Magnolias sings the traditional song "Shallow Water Oh Mama," or when a brass band picks up the bouncy "It Ain't My Fault."

Vaughan's, a club in the Upper Ninth Ward, is too small for a stage. Mr. Ruffins, a trumpeter, has returned to his regular Thursday gig there after a long hiatus imposed by the storm, and he and his band were nearly backed against the club's wall by the dancing crowd. He was playing and singing old New Orleans songs like "Mardi Gras Mambo," with a jovial Louis Armstrong growl.

Yet no one, onstage or off, has forgotten that the Lower Ninth Ward, still in ruins, is only a few blocks away.

Mr. Ruffins finished one set with a pop standard once sung by Bing Crosby, "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams." Halfway through, in casual New Orleans style, he handed the microphone to an audience member, who belted the song — with a line about castles tumbling — and then held on to the microphone long enough to add, "That's for all the people that lost their houses."

Later, Mr. Ruffins agreed. "Those tunes take a whole different meaning now," he said. "At one time in the club, we would just be singing them. Now, I listen to the words."

I missed Hot 8 on Saturday, but Rebirth killlled it from 1 am - 3 am without a break.

Mardi Gras Dawns With Some Traditions in Jeopardy
By JON PARELES, N.Y. Times
Excerpts from his article:

For longtime New Orleanians, Mardi Gras isn't a frivolous diversion from deep problems; it's a symbol of continuity and identity. "It's not that we're going to celebrate and party and forget our rough times," said Irvin Mayfield, a jazz trumpeter whose father drowned during the flooding after Hurricane Katrina. "We're going to celebrate and party and make that about our rough times."

Bands whose members have been scattered to various states have driven and flown in to play New Orleans dates. Mardi Gras Indian practice sessions have been held as far away as Texas. Coolbone, a brass band that played a jazz-funeral tribute to Clarence (Gatemouth) Brown on Saturday afternoon, now has members in Texas and Alabama; a saxophonist for the Rebirth Brass Band now lives in New York City. But the groups are staying together.

Musicians who are synonymous with New Orleans, like the trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, have moved back and reclaimed their regular local dates. "I couldn't wait to get back," said Mr. Ruffins, who established himself so quickly in Houston after the storm that he's lending his name to a barbecue restaurant there. "All my life I grew up in the little nightclubs, and I couldn't wait to go back to just the old hole-in-the-walls."

For musicians, as for hundreds of thousands of other displaced New Orleanians, housing is the main problem. Real estate prices have skyrocketed because so much of the city is uninhabitable. Mr. Ruffins said that musicians who could make comfortable livings as New Orleans expatriates would still be eager to return. "If they had thousands of homes for people to stay in, I know that every musician who left would be right back," he said.

No upheaval would make Mr. Boudreaux change his Mardi Gras ritual. "You gotta do this," he said. "If that spirit is in you, it has to come out."

The Mardi Gras Indians represent one of New Orleans's endangered neighborhood traditions. So do the brass bands that play for jazz funerals and other neighborhood parades. Parades in New Orleans aren't complete without a "second line" of strutting, dancing, clapping spectators turned paraders — a street-level, neighborhood celebration. Now, in places like the Lower Ninth Ward, there are no neighbors.

A foundation associated with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (which starts April 28) bought and distributed 900 strings of marabou feathers and 175 pounds of custom-dyed large African ostrich plumes — two pounds per Indian, with 75 to 100 feathers per pound. The festival has also been paying the cost of police permits for second-line neighborhood parades — which was raised, in January, to $3,605 — and fees for the brass bands. "This is all that is left of this jazz culture in the world," said Quint Davis, the director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Tipitina's, a club devoted to New Orleans music, is now a nonprofit foundation. It has been distributing instruments, including a shiny new brass sousaphone for the leader of the Rebirth Brass Band, which had New Orleans gigs all through the weekend. It also turned its upstairs offices into a community center for musicians, where they can use computers, get free legal help and meet one another: a kind of substitute for neighborhood hangouts that are now gone. And in November 2005, it began holding Mardi Gras Indian practices, which used to take place in neighborhood bars. The practice sessions doubled in size each time until they outgrew the club.

Long-term questions remain about what will happen to New Orleans traditions. High school bands in African-American neighborhoods were a vital training ground and source of instruments for young New Orleans musicians; with far fewer students in the city, many schools are closed down or consolidated, and music instruction is unlikely to be the most pressing priority for those that reopen. But on Carnival weekend, the clubs were full of familiar New Orleans names and sounds: brass bands like the Hot 8 and the Soul Rebels, funk bands like Galactic and the Radiators, the bluesman Walter Wolfman Washington and jazz musicians like the New Orleans Vipers and Trombone Shorty.

In the aftermath of the storm, there has been a huge surge of interest in New Orleans music. "Since Katrina, the culture in this city is being recognized more," said Bo Dollis, chief of the Wild Magnolias, another parading tribe. "And without the music, I don't know how this city will survive."

Then, flanked by tribe members in feathers and beads, he took to the stage of the Rock 'n' Bowl in the Mid-City neighborhood — much of it still dark and deserted — to sing the old Indian songs once again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/arts/28fats.html?th&emc=th

Fats Domino article

I see that they announced today that they have added "Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Session" to Jazz Fest. Alas, based on a quick perusal, Quint has not added the TBC Brass band, Ponderosa Stomp type obscure Louisiana artists, New Orleans rap and bounce artists(Juvenile's new cd and video is getting lots of attention elsewhere-- ILMer Jess Harvell has a nice piece in the Baltimore City Paper), or Mississippi blues and soul performers. They added a few token 'world' music acts, but not as many as they have had in previous years.

A Keith Spera article excerpt for the N O Times-Picayune-

Shorty and Lenny: On the Friday before Mardi Gras, local trombonist and trumpeter Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews wrapped up a months-long tour with Lenny Kravitz's band. After that final show in Anaheim, Calif., Kravitz informed Andrews that he planned to hang out with him in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

Little did Andrews know that the trip would result in a role reversal. Normally, Kravitz is the leader, Andrews the side man. But at the House of Blues on Lundi Gras, as Andrews' band, Orleans Avenue, opened for Dr. John, Kravitz joined them as a backing musician. He played three songs on drums -- James Andrews' "New Love Thing," Jessie Hill's "Ooo-Poo-Pa-Doo" and a jam -- then switched to guitar for a final "Big Chief."

Kravitz had rehearsed the other songs at sound check, but not "Big Chief." "That was his first time playing it," Andrews said. "It was spur of the moment. But he was killing it. It was amazing. That was very nice of him."

http://www.nola.com/sounds/t-p/spera/index.ssf

Storied Church May Be Victim of Katrina
St. Augustine, Founded in 1841, Is Called Vital Link to Culture of New
Orleans

By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 19, 2006; A07

NEW ORLEANS -- Parishioners at one of the nation's oldest African American
Catholic churches may have celebrated their last Mass as a parish last
Sunday, even as they continued their efforts this week to keep the doors
open at St. Augustine.

The church, in the Treme neighborhood near the French Quarter, is a center
of racial harmony and great jazz, playing a central role in New Orleans
history and culture. With so much of the city devastated by Hurricane
Katrina, local residents are rallying behind the church and hoping the
parish can be saved.

"The people of New Orleans have lost so much; we don't want to lose this,"
said Sandra Gordon, 52, a church volunteer who has been coming to St.
Augustine since 1965, when Hurricane Betsy destroyed her former church.

In the face of a much-reduced city population and physical damage to many
churches post-Katrina, the Archdiocese of New Orleans is closing seven
parishes and delaying the reopening of 23 churches. Attendance at St.
Augustine, down to fewer than 200 people pre-Katrina, increased
significantly afterward. But archdiocese officials said current attendance
is not enough. ....

It was one of the first churches where slaves, free blacks and whites
worshiped together. After a period as a segregated white church and then a
black church, it has had an interracial congregation and services that blend
elements of Catholicism with African spirituality and homegrown New Orleans
culture. Portraits of the African American "Mardi Gras Indians" are
displayed side by side with saints on the walls, and the church is known for
popular jazz masses and jazz funerals, including an annual "Louis Armstrong
Jazz Mass."