New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

The Backstreet Cultural Museum has found a new home on the grounds of the New Orleans African American Museum in the Treme neighborhood. After Hurricane Ida wrought extensive damage upon the museum’s longtime location in the former Blandin Funeral Home, executive director Dominique Dilling-Francis was forced to find temporary storage to safeguard the extensive collection of artifacts that tell the story of Black traditions in New Orleans, including Mardi Gras Indian suits, Baby Doll outfits, second line attire from social aid and pleasure clubs, photographs and related ephemera.

The Backstreet Cultural Museum has signed a one-year lease for a small, blue house at 1114 North Villere Street while it continues to search for a larger, permanent location.

https://www.offbeat.com/news/backstreet-cultural-museum-secures-new-location-with-plans-to-host-mardi-gras-events/

Mardi Gras is coming

https://www.offbeat.com/news/black-masking-indians-skull-and-bone-gang-plan-appearances-for-mardi-gras/

Historic Dew Drop Inn is reopening in March. Some traditional jazz bands announced but no brass groups yet.

https://www.offbeat.com/news/dew-drop-inn-announces-spring-concert-series-in-mandeville/

That tornado looked nasty

ALthough I did see in an email-

Feed The Second Line checked on culture bearers that we know live in the area (NO East, Lower 9, Chalmette) and luckily everyone is ok!

https://www.offbeat.com/news/big-chief-black-hawk-debuts-at-american-black-film-fest/#:~:text=Jonathan%20Isaac%20Jackson%20is%20a,from%20a%20Black%20local%20perspective.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13021608/

An exploration into effects of gentrification, COVID -19, and other issues The Culture faces in New Orleans, through the eyes of the youngest Black Masking Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief in the city.

I think Big Chief, Black Hawk movie doc just debuted last night

Brooklyn Writer John Swenson who contributed to late 70s rock guidebooks and later got a 2nd home in 1999 in New Orleans and wrote about New Orleans music has died of cancer. His 2011 book “New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans” chronicled the role that some musicians played in the city’s recovery after Hurricane Katrina.

Some of us had some issues with his New Orleans and Louisiana music coverage ; but thee was plenty to praise as well

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/keith_spera/article_6876e6ca-b508-11ec-9fb7-6749aa6e6cf3.html

https://www.jazzandheritage.org/the-new-orleans-jazz-heritage-foundation-announces-class-got-brass-2022-competition-winners-and-school-music-education-grant-recipients/

New Orleans middle and high school brass band contest

Not gonna make it to Jazz Fest or French Quarter Fest, but at least (as I think I mentioned above) I follow Sporty's Brass Band on IG and see some good video clips there.

It's Jazzfest, everybody. I'm not there this year either, but WWOZ is playing some highlights of past fests until they go live at the fairgrounds at 11:00. Great mix of mostly local jazz, brass band, blues, gospel and Latin so far. I sometimes bitch about what this fest has become over the years, but just hearing Snooks Eaglin's voice pop up made me happy.

Those were the good ol days when I saw Snooks at Jazzfest.

The late music writer John Swenson, a former editor and frequent contributor to OffBeat, will be memorialized with a concert The Broadside on Saturday, May 14, as a benefit for The New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic.

The memorial will be held from 6-10 p.m. and features a stellar lineup of New Orleans musicians, including James Andrews & The Crescent City All-Stars, Ed Volker, Debbie Davis, Davis Rogan, Helen Gillet, 101 Runners featuring Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Joe Cabral, Andy J. Forest, Michael Skinkus, Dayna Kurtz, Don Bartholomew and the Bartholomew Boyz and others.

https://www.offbeat.com/articles/elvis-costello-talks-back/

Elvis Costello re New Orleans and Dave Bartholomew tribute with Dirty Dozen Brass Band that he's doing at Jazz Fest

Cool set going on right now with Stanton Moore, David Torkanowski, James Singleton, and Jason Marsalis (joined later by Skerik.) I'm trying to place their opening number, it sounded like maybe Vince Guaraldi (if anyone's inclined to check it out on the WWOZ archive.)

https://www.nola.com/gambit/events/article_85bd8f68-fe37-11ec-8837-474605d5734c.html

Polo Silk Terrell the pictureman exhibit opens July 16 @ New Orleans Museum of Art. Plus he'll be part of another exhibit in September. He's on IG @ PolaNolaphotography

}For more than 30 years, Terrell has taken photos at night clubs, hip-hop and bounce shows, block parties, second lines and Super Sundays, capturing Black New Orleans life in an unparalleled way through countless Polaroids and film shots.

Saw a nice video clip on IG of Big 6 Brass Band early Monday evening gig in DC with go-go bands, that I unfortunately missed.

I've been in a big summer brass band mode

I've been going deep into my NOLA second line youtube holes, to get in the mood for the La Fete de Marquette gigs this weekend. Here's a short thread of the fire I've been injecting directly into my veins:https://t.co/n4isgn8CHY

— CHANTS (@ChantsWI) July 14, 2022

nice 2011 footage there

“You fall into it” is how the choreographer and educator Michelle N. Gibson, who grew up in New Orleans, put it in a recent interview. “Nobody teaches second line.”

Except that Gibson does teach it, or her take on it. She teaches some of the history in her one-woman show, “Takin’ It to the Roots,” which she is bringing to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires, on July 29-30. For the past few years, she has also been giving second line classes: workshops called New Orleans Original BuckShop in which she presents what she dubs her “second line aesthetic.”

Gibson is careful to specify that what she teaches is her own second line aesthetic, “based on my training and how I want to share it,” not second line as New Orleans natives like herself experience it. “You can’t expect to have that,” she said. “You have to live it.” She said that she sees herself as an intermediary between her New Orleans community and academia, inserting herself into conversations about New Orleans culture and insisting on “reverence to the origins and the people it actually belongs to.”

For the Jacob’s Pillow performances, Gibson is converting “Takin’ It to the Roots,” originally designed for theaters, into processional form: Audience members will follow her to sites around the campus that represent Congo Square and the Black church. The second line at the performance’s end is standard, though. “I always take people out of the theater into the streets,” she said. “There’s not going to be a show that you attend with Mz. G that we’re not going to eventually go outside.”

There will of course be a brass band with her, the NOJO 7, drawn from the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/arts/dance/michelle-gibson-second-line-jacobs-pillow.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20220723&instance_id=67495&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=37355772&segment_id=99428&user_id=062566bcd9872d3bfa0c4b1ac1e046b4

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/keith_spera/article_4cceb0b6-1e3e-11ed-ba03-57a0d74e293c.html

Music industry vets buy Chickie Wah Wah, embark on extensive renovation of Canal St. venue
They hope to reopen the club by October. Say they will book roots music and jazz

Will they book New Orleans brass bands

https://www.offbeat.com/night-time-economy/

Offbeat editor on changes New Orleans should make to improve the city for bands and the public

This was a solid Hot 8 lineup and set (with great sound, as far as filmed brass band sets go)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlpjRV4cwBk

Really vibing on this Rebirth show from 2013 too, when Kabuki and Derrick Tabb were still in the lineup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKx54uxFX-o

I'll be playing a brass band festival in Asheville NC next weekend, looking forward hearing sets from Da Truth BB and Big Sam.

Cool.

September 24 in New Orleans Red Bull Brass band competition w/

The four competing brass bands are Kings of Brass, Big 6 Brass Band, Sporty’s, and Young Pinstripe Brass Band.
Southern hip hop artists Treety, Alfred Banks, Stone Cold Jzzle, and $leazyEZ will also perform with the brass bands.

here are a few highlights from Feed The Second Line. This year we were able to cover over $65,000 worth of groceries for elder culture bearers - ensuring food security amidst rising prices . . . This has been part of the safety-net since COVID began…. We also helped with a few situations: such as funerals, medical costs, and even a lighting-strike on Charmaine’s house…. The value of a safety-net in action!

Wolfman' Washington's funeral was a celebration: 'You’ve got to do it up for Walter'
Irma Thomas, Deacon John sang; second-line briefly closed blocks of Canal and N. Carrollton

the celebrations here used to happen organically: the trombone player trotting out of his house to join a second-line brass; the masking Mardi Gras Indians readying their feathers in back rooms and backyards; the ladies pulling out their parasols to join in the processions.

As a kid, Amy Stelly would watch revelers zigzag from one Black-owned bar to the next, up and down the streets of Tremé. It was the unofficial, year-round parade route. A community’s well-worn path for celebrating all types of joys and losses.

“Now there aren’t enough left to do that,” Stelly, 65, said as she surveyed the remains of a once-bustling commercial corridor.

The bars have nearly all vanished. Families who for generations could trace their lineage to the same streets have sold their homes. Others were evicted.

“Once upon a time, that was Tremé Market,” Stelly said, pointing. She turned, squinted, then pointed up again. “That used to be a lounge. Black-owned, of course. Now ….” She paused, her voice trailing off.

Today when a second line gathers to mourn the loss of a community member, it takes effort and planning for the musicians and artists, families and friends to make their way back to the old neighborhood. Parked cars crowd under the interstate overpass as people pour out of their vehicles instead of their homes. Many of the families Stelly used to know, she said, have left New Orleans for the suburbs, exurbs or another state altogether.

Spurred on by climate catastrophes, new development and a booming short-term rental industry, gentrification has remade the Big Easy and displaced thousands of Black families, a population that has been shrinking for more than 20 years.

In a city where the very culture is bound to African American tradition, the threat of erasure extends beyond the physical.

“Cultural annihilation is very real here,” said Cheryl Robichaux Austin, 68, executive director of the Greater Tremé Consortium, a neighborhood-based advocacy and community equity nonprofit. “It’s slowly decaying, and we see it … every day in the neighborhood. We see it when the city has special events and we don’t see Black bands, how there are all these White folks playing in the second line now. Things you never used to see before.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2023/us-city-white-population-increase/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F390d53e%2F63e135bb1b79c61f877e7a15%2F5977ec549bbc0f6826c7a143%2F25%2F74%2F63e135bb1b79c61f877e7a15&wp_cu=d9f43e4379b7ee197738c3d4698832e7%7C9575ce4e-105e-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

Any good recent brass band footage for Mardi Gras that’s not in an IG story or Tik Tok?

A history of second lines at Jazz Fest article

https://www.hnoc.org/publications/first-draft/streets-fairgrounds-social-aid-and-pleasure-clubs-carry-second-line

The state of schools and marching bands and changes since New Orleans got so many charter schools rather than going to neighborhood ones

https://www.hnoc.org/publications/first-draft/keeping-beat-past-glories-and-present-challenges-new-orleans-marching-bands

Sporty's Brass Band IG live clips continue to wow me

I was at one of those nights at Bullet's bar and the energy was insane.

Hearing that Jeffrey Hills (tuba player on Lil Rascals 'Buck It Like a Horse', frequent sub for Rebirth and everyone else) passed away???

Yeah just saw that on Facebook. So sad

They rolled today for Mr. Jeffery Hills pic.twitter.com/DhVjmBpgZv

— Shawniece👑🐝 (@ShawnieceQB) April 11, 2023

Come out tomorrow y’all pic.twitter.com/DLP5oVOsK6

— Shawniece👑🐝 (@ShawnieceQB) April 13, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLx4dxurbdQ

Truly some all-stars out there - Derrick Tabb, Corey Henry, Eric Gordon, Chad Honore, Terrence Andrews, Stafford Agee, etc

Great to hear all those Lil' Rascals tunes done with the original drummers & Corey Henry in the lineup. Damn.

Did I spot Donna Poniatowski, or just someone who looks like her?

Yep, that was her! Got some pics of the second line from her too.

Cool! Good to see her.

Seeing on Facebook that 97 year old Peter Chuck Badie who played bass with a who's who of r'n'b greats has passed away.

Here's a 2017 article that touches on some of his accomplishments

https://louisarmstrongjazzcamp.com/news-events/events/scholarship-fundraiser/peter-chuck-badie-receives-the-jazz-pioneer-award-at-the-noachc-2017-scholarship-fundraiser/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugOhN0YObr4

https://www.offbeat.com/music/new-breed-brass-band-made-in-new-orleans-525-worldwide/

A review of album by New Breed Brass Band

Old-school me was hoping to see website news obits for New Orleans music greats Jeffrey Hills , Sr and for Peter Chuck Badie. But I never did.

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/music/drumming-for-treme-brass-band-or-driving-his-famous-orange-truck-benny-jones-sr-is/article_cec1bfe2-e9da-11ed-ac1c-db40cc19cc0e.html

Long profile of percussionist Benny Jones Sr

So Nola.com gave New Orleans bass player legend Peter Chuck Badie this standard obit. He played with Dave Bartholomew r’n’b sessions in the 50s and on Sam Cooke “A Change is Gonna Come” plus with Lionel Hampton, and more.

https://obits.nola.com/us/obituaries/nola/name/peter-badie-obituary?id=51734149

Heard some Alabama brass band on that American Routes show that sounded good