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.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:32 (eighteen years ago) link
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
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Monday, 20 March 2006 16:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 20 March 2006 16:55 (eighteen years ago) link
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."
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Monday, 20 March 2006 19:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 17:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 19:48 (eighteen years ago) link
I think they added rapper Juvenile to the Fest (he has/had the #1 selling cd on the Billboard charts recently) and he is apparently going to be backed by jam band Galactic, who also backed him on the Jimmy Kimmel show. On the jazzfest website chatboard some of the jambanders and other aging hippies were whining about a rapper being added. Ugh to those complainers.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 20:56 (eighteen years ago) link
Juvee + Galactic? Weird.
― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 20:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 22 March 2006 21:00 (eighteen years ago) link
http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0ERYNF7VPXIO61B86JAU78GUAH
― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 23 March 2006 02:28 (eighteen years ago) link
"...on Christmas Day the Times-Picayune--declaring that "before a community can rebuild, it must dream"--published a vision of what a smaller-but-better New Orleans might look like: "Tourists and schoolchildren tour a living museum that includes the former home of Fats Domino and Holy Cross High School, a multiblock memorial to Katrina that spans the devastated neighborhood." "Living museum" (or "holocaust museum," as a black friend bitterly observed) sounds like a bad joke, but it is the elite view of what African-American New Orleans should become. In the brave New Urbanist world of Canizaro and Kabacoff, blacks (along with that other colorful minority group, Cajuns) will reign only as entertainers and self-caricatures. The high-voltage energy that once rocked juke joints, housing projects and second-line parades will now be safely embalmed for tourists in a proposed Louisiana Music Experience in the Central Business District.
But this minstrel-show version of the future must first defeat a remarkable local history of grassroots organization. The Crescent City's best-kept secret--in the mainstream press, at least--has been the resurgence of trade-union and community organizing since the mid-1990s. Indeed, New Orleans, the only Southern city in which labor was ever powerful enough to call a general strike, has become an important crucible of new social movements. In particular, it has become the home base of ACORN, a national organization of working-class homeowners and tenants that counts more than 9,000 New Orleans member-families, mostly in triage-threatened black neighborhoods."
Not sure I agree with everything Davis asserts, but I thought I'd put it out there for discussion.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Friday, 24 March 2006 20:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Friday, 24 March 2006 22:14 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6301342.html
What are your thoughts on the future of New Orleans rap and New Orleans cultural life in general?
NC: Unless the black neighborhoods are restored, there can be no real future for rap in New Orleans. The authorities seem bent on portraying all young black males as looters and gangstas. This is nonsense, as my book makes clear. The city can have no genuine life without its youth. If the Mardi Gras Indian tribes and second-line parades are reduced to tourist attractions, as seems to be the plan, everything that has made the city so alive and ever-evolving will wither. Even those who dislike rap should understand that it's the music of the streets today. Banish it, and New Orleans becomes a museum.
Have you had any contact with the artists and personalities so vividly described in Triksta, such as Choppa, Junie B, Earl Mackie, and Supa Dave, since the book went to print? How are they doing?
NC: I'm in contact with the great majority of people in the book, except those I'd already parted ways with pre-Katrina. They all survived the hurricane but lost everything: homes, jobs, possessions. They are scattered around the South, some in Houston, some in Atlanta, and others in Dallas, San Antonio, and Florida. Only Seventh Ward Snoop and Wild Wayne are back in New Orleans. Most of the others want to return but, as I've explained, they're being kept out."
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Saturday, 25 March 2006 21:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Saturday, 25 March 2006 21:25 (eighteen years ago) link
I posted this over on ILX, but it's obvious this thread is the place for it:
The Mardi Gras Index: New Orleans by the numbers 6 months after Katrina:http://www.reconstructionwatch.org/MardiGrasReport6.pdf
We need a solidarity movement with evacuees around the country to deal with these issues on a massive-protest scale. Anyone game? Or should we just joing ACORN? What should we do?
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Monday, 27 March 2006 23:17 (eighteen years ago) link
What should we do?
I don't know, but if you figure it out, tell me.
― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 00:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― adam (adam), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 00:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 00:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 01:03 (eighteen years ago) link
I wish I could be as positive about ACORN as Mike Davis but I am not.Bush and the Republics seem uninterested in building the levees to category 5 level or to restoring the wetlands. FEMA won't even draw up the flood insurance maps that have been promised (and there's still no new permanent head of FEMA). It's all well and good to say you want 9th Warders to return, but to what--unless you can protect the folks from flooding, you're sentencing them to another Katrina or worse. And of course pre-Katrina New Orleans had its problems that still need to be dealt with--good luck in getting the Republicans (actually any politicians of either party) to propose anything creative regarding education, job-training, crime, etc.
Musically, Without the school system and young African-Americans in brass bands learning from their elders in brass bands, it's not clear how vital this culture can remain. Certain brass bands and related Mardi Gras Indian troups will hold on, but they'll be more isolated. But these musicians, be they now stuck in a Disney museum city or not, deserve support and not dismissal as minstrels. And folks of all races shouldn't be ashamed to see them and support them.
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 28 March 2006 05:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 15:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 16:15 (eighteen years ago) link
http://newyorknighttrain.com/zine/issues/3/orleans.html
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 19:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― adam (adam), Tuesday, 28 March 2006 20:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Wednesday, 29 March 2006 11:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Wednesday, 29 March 2006 14:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 29 March 2006 14:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Wednesday, 29 March 2006 17:12 (eighteen years ago) link
Juvenile's New Orleans, the ghost town America made http://citypages.com/databank/27/1322/article14261.asp
Here are some Mardi Gras weekend photos, including one of the Hot 8... audio coming Wednesday...
http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2006/04/calling_all_my.asp
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 00:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (Steve K), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 01:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:26 (eighteen years ago) link
Btw, when were you at the Backstreet cultural museum? I played there on Saturday of that weekend.
― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes (Pete Scholtes), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:27 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/arts/music/09kun.html?pagewanted=print
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Sunday, 9 April 2006 20:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Sunday, 9 April 2006 21:11 (eighteen years ago) link
The grid schedule is out and Hot 8 and the Stooges are both playing the 2nd weekend. Sorry. The Stooges are with jam band Galactic at a club show at night somewhere during the first weekend though, but I do not yet see any club gigs for Hot 8 listed at their website or in Offbeat (yet).
The Treme Brass Band are at Donnas the Friday of the first weekend.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Monday, 10 April 2006 14:46 (eighteen years ago) link
I think we're at Donna's on Saturday, but I don't think anything's confirmed yet.
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 10 April 2006 14:53 (eighteen years ago) link
Bo Dollis on the mend?: We also heard Big Chief Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias is in the hospital. He was recently reported to be in intensive care with a diabetes-related illness, but according to his manager, Glenn Gaines, Mr. Dollis has passed a crisis and is doing much better. More on this when we hear...
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Thursday, 20 April 2006 12:01 (eighteen years ago) link
I know the Treme Brass band will be at Donna's on Friday 4-28. I will be gone before the annual Monday night Piano thing.
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Friday, 21 April 2006 12:07 (eighteen years ago) link
My band (Mama D1gd0wn's Brass Band) is at Donna's on Saturday 4/29. Looks like Rebirth has some Rock n' Bowl gigs that weekend. I'll see what Hot 8 are up to.
We're opening for Rebirth tomorrow night, looking forward to it.
― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 21 April 2006 12:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Friday, 21 April 2006 12:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Percy "BLACK" Brown, Friday, 21 April 2006 13:30 (eighteen years ago) link
(just sent you an email curmudgeon)
― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 21 April 2006 13:41 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/arts/music/23sann.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Monday, 24 April 2006 10:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Thursday, 27 April 2006 12:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 11:50 (seventeen years ago) link
"The Mahogany Brass Band was playing for its first time since the storm, and it was the first time all its members — dispersed as far as Phoenix and San Francisco — had seen one another. Brice Miller, its leader, started a strikingly emotional "St. James Infirmary" alone as a tearful solo trumpet dirge; when he sang the lyrics, about seeing a lover's dead body, he interjected, "My baby's New Orleans!" . . . .The good times in the music were more treasured at this Jazzfest, and rightly so. Behind the scenes, each band had to recreate itself after theevacuation: to find its place in New Orleans or to reconstitute it somewhere else. The New Birth Brass Band, originally from New Orleans, wore new T-shirts depicting both Louisiana and Texas.
Still, New Orleans music hasn't stopped putting pleasure first. Jazzfest is, as always, a festival of good-time dance music, whether it's traditional jazz, bayou zydeco, brass-band struts, Mardi Gras Indian chants or fiercely complex electric funk. A superb jazz pianist, Jonathan Batiste, grounded his jubilant, splashy harmonies in Caribbean and New Orleans rhythms. Brass bands like Rebirth, New Birth and the Soul Rebels spanned classic second-line swing and hip-hop-influenced funk, with the Soul Rebels also pushing toward Latin beats. And there was plenty of straightforward funk from New Orleans elders like the Meters [NOTE: I found them jam-band dull-Curmudgeon] and Dr. John [Eh], as well as next-generation funk bands like Galactic [self-indulgent, dull solos]and Papa Grows Funk[skipped them].
The destruction in New Orleans is bound to change the city's culture. (For one thing, an influx of Mexican labor for construction is bound to add yet another ingredient to New Orleans music.) And whether a majority of the city's population can ever return will be decided by large political and economic decisions, not by who's playing in the clubs. But this Jazzfest was a symbol of how eager the city's culture is to rebuild itself, and how resourceful New Orleans' inhabitants — current and former — can be. If the New Orleans of deep local traditions does not renew itself, it won't be for lack of desire.
The triumph of this year's Jazzfest was that on the surface, it was a normal Jazzfest: crowded, sweaty, ebullient and full of homegrown New Orleans spirit. "Normal is an incredible word to use down here," said Quint Davis, the producer and director of Jazzfest. "Normalcy is a nonexistent term."
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 3 May 2006 03:32 (seventeen years ago) link
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 03:38 (seventeen years ago) link
While it wasn't straight-up hip-hop and second-line inflected brass band style, Irvin Mayfield & the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra were booming out the horn power with lots of special guests including Trombone Shorty and Mayfield's colleague in other groups, Bill Summmers. I think that's whom I saw Kirk Joseph(one-time Dirty Dozen member who has his own group now) blowing tuba with. The all-women Pinettes Brass Band were just ok--the Ol Skool Brass Band and the more traditional Paulin Brothers Brass Band were better.
Alan Toussaint and Elvis Costello used a New Orleans horn section to get across old Toussaint songs, and songs they had worked on together for the upcoming River in Reverse cd. Unfortunately Toussaint rushed through his beginning of the set retrospective, doing too many of his songs as a cheesy medley. The new stuff lacks catchy melodies. The horns sounded strong though. Bruce Springsteen used a New Orleans-inspired horn section. He got more attention though for adding a verse about Bush to Blind Alfred Reed's1929 song "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live"-- he called him "President Bystander." Springsteen was taken to the Lower Ninth Ward and spoke about "criminal ineptitude that makes you furious... that's what happens when people play political games with other people's lives." He finished with a slow, funeral tempo take on "When the Saints Go Marching In," done duet-style with Marc Anthony "Chocolate Genius" Thompson. I only saw the beginning and end of Springsteen's long set (I left the huge 20,000 or more mob scene there to go see excellent swamp pop supergroup Lil' Band of Gold in front of 100 people or so). The version of "When the Saints" was impressive, his beginning of the set takes on songs associated with the new Seeger cd were less so.
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 3 May 2006 04:01 (seventeen years ago) link