I don't know which way to go speculating re: the return of the city's population. Living in Maryland for the past two months has awoken a very strong FUCK THIS MUST RETURN instinct in me. So I hope everyone else is like that.
― adam (adam), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― don, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 05:45 (eighteen years ago) link
David Byrne wrote on his blog around the time he was playing a benefit for Katrina survivors that some New Orleans musicians might actually benefit from being out of the insular Crescent city world and interacting with musicians from elsewhere. That's of course easy for him to say...
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 13:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― Rick Massimo (Rick Massimo), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 16:18 (eighteen years ago) link
Right. On one level I'm selfishly happy to be able to see more of the N.O. musicians I love on tour, but on the other hand I'm (also selfishly) afraid of what's going to happen to the culture and the music.
― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 16:31 (eighteen years ago) link
"My friend Dicky Landry in Lafayette LA says that the influx of refugee New Orleans musicians into Cajun country may actually have a good effect on the music. New Orleans musicians are famously insular. Their city loves them, they’re appreciated and they work pretty steadily — the food is great, the music has deep roots — why bust your ass for little money taking your music elsewhere? Stay home, make them come to you. And they did.
But this meant that so many great musicians went unheard and unappreciated outside of the NO community that was and is familiar with the New Orleans sound. They had little incentive to spread their music and culture out to the rest of the world — it was always easier to simply stay where you were loved. And why not? Sometimes the world just didn’t get it.
I toured once with Coolbone, a brass hip-hop band from New Orleans. Jesus, what a feel these guys had! Live hip-hop, a concept that is only now becoming accepted. Their record, though pretty good, couldn’t capture the gut (and other parts) moving sound of the tuba playing the bass lines through a sub-harmonic synthesizer, which added extra bottom. Thump. It had to be experienced live. You couldn’t download the experience either.
Anyway, I could see that my audience, though appreciative, just wasn’t as taken by these guys as I was. Open any indie or alt-rock mag and you’ll see what an insular world it is — and it has opened up in the last decade! So, no surprise there.
But now, as Landry hints, this forced exodus, this sudden diaspora, may sprinkle a little funky seasoning on music from St. Louis to Austin, and the world might be better for it. In a perfect world, those dispersed musicians might flourish and be appreciated in those far-flung cites too. They’ll be homesick, but maybe some of them can cook as well."
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 17:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 17:09 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.granta.com/extracts/1439
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 8 November 2005 18:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 19:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― don, Wednesday, 9 November 2005 03:37 (eighteen years ago) link
Too late.
― Fetchboy (Felcher), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 04:56 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm halfway through and undecided. the book's pitched uneasily between self-deprecation and self-aggrandisement and as much about his history of self-mythologising as it is on bounce/NO rap, but his love of the music does pour thru. purple prose a bit hard to take at times tho...
― barbarian cities (jaybob3005), Friday, 20 January 2006 10:41 (eighteen years ago) link
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