In New Orleans, It Bubbles Up From The Streets:
Authenticity and Identity in the Post-Katrina Music Scene
Gretchen Caverly
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Special Thanks To:
The Sociology/Anthropology department, especially Dr. Ben Feinberg and Dr. Lara
Vance, for their support and forbearance this year
Candace Anthony, for midnight brainstorming sessions and much more
Jenny Bagert, without whom this project would have been completely impossible
Jonno Frischberg, for opening the door
Family and Friends, who have provided boundless support, inspiration, and love
throughout this process
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Table of Contents
Introduction and Statement of Purpose …………………………………………….4
Methodology………………………………………………………………………..8
Part I: Authenticity and Perceptions………………………………………………..12
Situating the Research ……………………………………………………..13
Authenticity, not purity…………………………………………………….15
Artistic Authenticity and Subcultural Authenticity………………………...20
Identifying New Orleans music: New Orleanians and Americans ………...23
Part II: Hurricane Katrina and music from “That Part of the World” ……………27
Situating the Research ……………………………………………………28
“Celebration and Escape”…………………………………………………30
Lingering Effects on Cultural Microclimates……………………………..37
Alienation and Otherness: “A Zone of Suspended Reality.”……………..41
Some Concluding Thoughts………………………………………………………50
Works Cited………………………………………………………………………51
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Introduction: statement of purpose, significance
In October, my roommate Candace and I went to New Orleans, my hometown, for
spring break. One afternoon, we passed by Café Du Monde, famous for its beignets and
café au lait, and paused to listen to a young brass band play. There were about six or eight
kids, all black, most probably between the ages of twelve and fifteen, and all of them
were wielding instruments: trumpets, slide trombones, drums, tuba. All were wearing
white collared shirts and navy blue pants; they had probably just come from school. They
played a variety of songs, including marching band music (which is most likely the
reason that they had the instruments in the first place), themes from popular rap and R&B
tunes, and traditional jazz tunes. They were quite talented and entertaining. The tourists
eating their powdered sugar doughnuts paid rapt attention, applauded, and dropped
dollars into the trombone case spread open at the band’s feet. Suddenly, creeping down
the street, a second band appeared. There were about five newcomers, dressed similarly,
sporting instruments. They tentatively edged towards the group in front of Café Du
Monde (the group in the “good” spot). The original band started yelling at the
encroachers, waving their instruments disparagingly. As we watched, the two clusters of
musicians eyed each other up and began a sort of play-off. The first trumpet sounded off
a line of notes, and the second trumpet followed. The tubas followed suit, and soon it
became evident that the first band, the original placeholders, were technically superior
and had better stage presence. The second group dejectedly started back down the street,
but suddenly the tuba player from the first group started playing, and the drummer and
trumpet player for the second group both turned and lifted their instruments. For a brief
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moment, the other young musicians lifted their instruments high and waved them up and
down to keep time, oblivious to the small crowd that was gathering around. The trio
played together for a minute or so, and then they stopped, bowed their heads to a last riff
on the drum. Finally, without hostility, the second group retreated to dubious applause
from the patrons of Café Du Monde. Candace and I watched the victorious group for a
couple of songs, and then we walked up to the Riverwalk to see the Mississippi River.
As these young musicians show, two years after Hurricane Katrina days, music in
New Orleans is nearly omnipresent. The music scene is wide and deep, spanning from the
river to the lake. Since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleanian music is poised at a turning
point. Historically, New Orleans has been a hotbed of musical innovation, and that music
has been a hallmark of the city since its conception. Since the devastation following
Hurricane Katrina, the nature of the city’s identity has drawn a great deal attention. The
music scene and the cultural spaces that it creates play important roles in the identity of
the city, and since Hurricane Katrina, live music has grown increasingly significant.
I am drawn to the New Orleanian music scene for many different reasons. First, I
am a native New Orleanian. Second, I play the fiddle and the washboard, and for about a
year, I played a steady gig downtown in a restaurant. Some members of the band I played
with, as well as people that I met through them, graciously consented to help me with this
project. However, the music scene extends beyond the musicians. It includes audience
members, “hardcore” music enthusiasts, and professionals involved in the music scene
through, for example, photography or writing for local publications. The musicians
themselves play a variety of styles of music, including traditional jazz, bebop, soul, funk,
R&B, blues, and more.
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Given the complexity and variation within the music scene, how do people
identify authentic New Orleans music? Do people perceive New Orleans music
differently outside of the city? How does the music scene contribute to the identity of the
city, and have these ways changed since Hurricane Katrina? The storm opened up a
plethora of questions regarding the political and media responses to New Orleans; New
Orleans has been marginalized and alienated from the United States at large. Are the
actions of communities and individuals within the New Orleans music scene influenced
by the dominant paradigm regarding Post-Katrina New Orleans?
This research explores the musical communities of New Orleans. I focus
specifically on the ways in which members of these communities are constructing New
Orleanian identities as they rebuild their lives in post-Katrina New Orleans. In this
research, I show how music is perceived as authentic New Orleans music in two different
ways. First, New Orleans music typically utilizes certain stylistic traits within the music.
These traits have Artistic Authenticity. Outside the city, perceptions of New Orleans
music are often reduced to characteristics corresponding with Artistic Authenticity.
Second, within the city of New Orleans, music (especially live music and performance)
has Subcultural Authenticity, which means that it is natural to ways of life within the city.
I also show in this research ways in which Hurricane Katrina affected the music scene.
Among other things, Hurricane Katrina revealed ways in which New Orleans is perceived
as an Other by the rest of the United States. I show how this problematic discourse
contributes to developments within the music scene since Hurricane Katrina. I identify
some ways in which perceptions of New Orleanian music, a major marker of New
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Orleanian identity, shape views of New Orleans. This in turn influences the relationship
between New Orleans and the United States at large.
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Methodology and Limitations
When I began my research, I originally intended my fieldsite to be Frenchman
Street, which is locally well-known as a place to hear local jazz music. A variety of music
venues line the street, mainly bars and clubs. I chose Frenchman Street because it is a
geographic area in which local, live music—performed by local musicians, largely for
local audiences—happens. However, as I began my research, I realized that I was making
a huge mistake in acting as though I could isolate the jazz scene from the larger context
of New Orleans music. As I’ve mentioned, the music scene is very inclusive within the
city. For my fieldwork, I conducted twelve formal interviews. Mostly, I made
appointments and met my informants in the location of their choice (for example, a
coffee shop, bar, or informant’s home). Some of my interviews are recorded, and I took
detailed notes during each of these sessions, which I transcribed later. In order to respect
the privacy of my informants, I have changed their names in my writing.
I interviewed both men and women, all between the ages of thirty and sixty.
About half of my interviewees were born and raised in New Orleans, but half grew up
elsewhere. However, everyone that I spoke with had been living in New Orleans for at
least fifteen years. Most of my interviews were with professional musicians, but three
were with people who were professionally involved in the music scene in some other
capacity. Only two of my informants were black. It was more difficult to get in touch
with black musicians, despite the fact that many members of the music scene are black,
because many of my preexisting connections were with white people. Due to the
constraints of time and space, I was unable to gain a representative sample with regards
to race. However, it is notable that everyone with whom I spoke, with one exception,
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played regularly with racially mixed bands. Additionally, musicians are often involved in
more than one musical project at a time. Most are in more than one band, or often play
with groups of people who are only loosely affiliated as a band.
I conducted a variety of informal interviews (mainly jotting down things that I
briefly spoke with people about) during my fieldwork. I extended my fieldwork well
beyond Frenchman Street, which is downtown; there are many important venues uptown,
especially in the college areas. Specifically, I spent a lot of time at the Maple Leaf, where
local music is played just about every night and where many music enthusiasts hang out
on a regular basis. I went to lots of music venues: The Maple Leaf, Tipitina’s, D.B.A.,
The Apple Barrel, The Spotted Cat, Checkpoint Charlie’s, The Dragon’s Den, Dos Jefe’s,
Preservation Jazz Hall, and others. I conducted participant observation at musical
performances at the aforementioned venues, especially on the weekends, when more
people frequented the venues. Generally, musicians playing in these venues have a set
consisting of forty-five minutes to an hour, and then a set break of fifteen to thirty
minutes. I did not talk to many informants while they were working (i.e. playing music).
To help me remember specifics of the fieldsite, I jotted down quotes, and conversations
as often as it was appropriate for me to do so. I wrote down brief descriptions of what I
saw, the appearance of the venues, the lighting, the smells, the approximate age and
appearance of the patrons, musicians, and venue employees, the arrangement of the
interior of the venue, the music performed (style, volume, any lyrics that I happened to
catch), the mood, and any other activities. Shortly after leaving the fieldsite, I transcribed
and expanded my field notes as thoroughly and accurately as possible. I recorded the
date, time, place; sensory descriptions; quotations in quotation marks; conversations; and
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descriptions of musical performances, the general series of events (with specific
occurrences), and other description.
For clarification purposes, I am going to explain the differences between Uptown
and Downtown. The venues where I conducted my fieldwork are divided between those
two categories. Physically, Downtown is considered everything to the east of Canal
Street, especially along the river. The French Quarter, the Marigny, the Bywater, the
Ninth Ward, and the Treme are all downtown neighborhoods. Uptown is located to the
west of Canal Street, and includes the Garden District and the University Areas.
Musically speaking, Uptown and Downtown are two poles with different tendencies.
Jerry, an informant who plays keyboards in a funk band, explained some differences
between uptown and downtown:
The music scene is very neighborhood based. Uptown is more rock, R&B, and
funk. There are more college kids there, bringing in outside influences. The
people who go to music there are more relaxed, dressed casual; it’s pretty much
come as you are. Downtown is more jazzy. D.B.A. is the exception to that.
everyone sticks pretty close to traditional New Orleans jazz, or Cuban jazz, or
something. …Black communities such as the Treme tend to produce brass and
rhythm sections. Guitar and keyboards are much more likely to come from
uptown. …People mix around as they get older, [or] when they get gigs
elsewhere.
Some Uptown bands are Papa Grows Funk, Galactic, and Johnny Sketch and the Dirty
Notes. As Jerry mentioned, they tend to be more influenced by rock, R&B, and funk. I
conducted fieldwork in several Uptown venues, most notably The Maple Leaf.
Downtown bands include Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers, The New Orleans
Jazz Vipers, and various Brass Bands, such as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rebirth Brass
Band, The Stooges Brass Band, and more. A lot of nationally and internationally
renowned New Orleanian musicians have emerged from Downtown, such as Fats
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Domino, Louis Armstrong, and Buddy Bolden. Frenchman Street, where I conducted a
lot of research, is downtown.
While Uptown and Downtown certainly have distinct tendencies, they are by no
means separate worlds. As I mentioned, musicians often play in many different bands,
and at any given night a Downtown band might play at an Uptown venue or vice versa.
(For example, Rebirth Brass Band regularly plays at the Maple Leaf, even though they
are a brass band that emerged from the Treme neighborhood, which is Downtown). From
now on, when I refer to Uptown or Downtown, I am talking about the loose bundle of
characteristics that generally tend to delineate the two areas. However, it is important to
keep in mind that the distinctions are not set in stone; often, the influences are blended
together.
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Part I: Authenticity and Perceptions………………………………………………..12
Situating the Research ……………………………………………………..13
Authenticity, not purity…………………………………………………….15
Artistic Authenticity and Subcultural Authenticity………………………...20
Identifying New Orleans music: New Orleanians and Americans ………...23
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Introduction to Section
Tying New Orleans music and New Orleans musicians to any general stereotype
introduces problematic assumptions regarding the nature of both the people and the
music. However, it is easy to be fooled by the advertisements. A brass band comprised of
older black men pumps umbrellas through a misty French Quarter alleyway. Pete
Fountain blows his clarinet against a striped backdrop emblazoned with a Zaterain’s logo
during a commercial for Jambalaya from a box. These men just ooze traditional jazz: the
warm texture of a horn, eyes down at the ground or up to the heavens. The music—
seemingly simple tunes, pumping rhythm, and traditional arrangements—seems to exude
a sense of rightness and order. A casual stroll through the French Quarter, a historic
neighborhood that is noted for its tourist appeal, reveals the degree to which the tourist
industry capitalizes on the appeal of traditional jazz and its connection to the essence
New Orleans. A motley band loosely arranged in front of the St. Louis Cathedral plays
“The Saints Go Marching In;” further down the street, three men in suits play muted jazz
standards for the etouffe-munching patrons of an upscale restaurant. There are often
musicians with saxophones or coronets hovering around Café Du Monde, busking for
change along the Riverwalk, or drawing a casually interested crowd on Royal Street.
Preservation Hall, a forty year old former residence where only traditional jazz is
performed, is nestled in the 700 block of St Peter just a few blocks away. The traditional
jazz scene seems to represent the essence of crescent city music, the distilled element of
all of Uptown and Downtown groove, the purest New Orleanian music. In this section, I
want to unpack some ideas about “purity” and show characteristics of authenticity in
New Orleanian music.
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I use Sarah Thornton (1996)’s definitions of Authenticity (both Artistic and
Subcultural) to examine musical style and interaction in the New Orleans music scene. In
this system, musical genres function as “Chronotopes” (Bakhtin in Aaron Fox 2004)
rather than definitive, separate, hierarchical categories. Beyond a question of genre, live
music engages Robert Cantwell’s “Ethnomimesis,” creating a physical space or arena
where cultural events take place. During music performance, performers use public
symbols, which, being familiar, allow an audience to engage and identify with what is
happening on stage (Firth 1973).
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Authenticity, not Purity
I don’t think it’d be possible to come up with a comprehensive definition that
covers all New Orleans music, however there are definitely some trends. First, it is
important to establish that New Orleans music, though it definitely exhibits certain
tendencies, doesn’t function as a hierarchy.
Sherry Ortner (1973: 53) writes that purity (and by extension, pollution) “refers to
the human impulse and ability to envision and strive for a more perfect order—the human
ability[…] to ‘understand’ sin and virtue, and to work for one's own salvation. At the
cosmic level, the spiritual dimension is culture… The spiritual is the super-organic.” In
other words, there is a hierarchy ranging from purest and most virtuous forms of culture
and music to the most polluted, most impure. The spiritual aspects of “pure” culture are
more static. For New Orleans, the jazzman represents “purity” in the New Orleanian
music scene. He is seemingly oblivious to the world around him. However, that’s all
right, because he is in his proper place, remaining safely in the “virtuous” world of pure
culture.
In this system, traditional jazz music would most fully embody New Orleansness—the music is the most pure. Furthermore, music that contains elements of
traditional jazz falls along a continuum ranging from the purest of the pure (possibly
represented by Louis Armstrong or Fats Domino) to deep impurity (rock music or
extremely experimental funk). If traditional jazz is at the top of the cultural hierarchy,
then it represents New Orleanian musical purity—music at the pinnacle of New
Orleanian musical culture. However, during my field work, it became clear that though
the traditional jazz scene is quite important, it is far from the embodiment of the essential
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nature of New Orleanian music. The musicians themselves explore many different genres
and styles and perform in ever-shifting permutations, so much so that Johnny, a musician
and long-time friend of mine once referred to the music scene in New Orleans as “one
band on a bunch of different stages.” Traditional jazz inhabits space and time as a
chronotope rather than a representation of purity. Mikhail Bakhtin (Bakhtin, “Forms of
Time and Chronotope in the Novel” in Fox 2004: 81) writes that chronotopes are “the
intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed
in literature… it expresses the inseparability of space and time.” Chronotopes represent
and even embody characteristics of genres; “abstract elements—philosophical and social
generalizations, ideas, analyses of cause and effect—gravitate toward the chronotope and
through it take on flesh and blood, permitting the imaging power of art to so its work”
(Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel” in Fox 2004: 81). As an
abstract concept, traditional jazz helps give flesh and texture to ideas of New Orleansness
and New Orleans music. In this way, the music scene is in many ways shaped by
Traditional Jazz, people who identify with the music scene are free to explore other
genres or styles.
For example, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is a well known traditional jazz
band. Holding their instruments, members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band flash
sparkling smiles; for the camera, they are pure and traditional. They exude timeless
perfection; they could be posing for this photograph twenty, thirty, even forty years ago.
They seem to be sunk deeply into the world of traditional jazz, the world of Louis
Armstrong, but they inhabit many other worlds, too. As Jeremy told me:
[there is an] irreverent attitude to the culture… a musician will go and do a gig at
the preservation hall one night, and play traditional jazz for jazz purists, and then
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the next night he might be playing a bebop gig at snug harbor, and then might
have a gig playing with a brass band or a funk band, and to people here it’s all
music. You either play it with some feeling and do it well or you don’t, that’s
good music and bad music. One or two, couple times over the years there are jazz
purists, who visited New Orleans, made the pilgrimage…. And they come here
and they’re shattered, a lifetime of studying old imported 78’s and reading books
and going to clubs and going to gigs and discussing solos and they come here and
they can’t find any of it. Or they find a guy doing it, but how can he possibly have
any heart because the next night, they see the same guy playing in an R&B band.
Clearly, we have to be very careful not to portray New Orleanian music as essentially
traditional jazz, because it is made by people, each of who
contains or ‘encloses’ many cultures and personalities to varying degrees—global,
regional, local; blood ancestors, land ancestors, spiritual ancestors; the traditions
of our parents and grandparents and neighbors; what we learned from other kids
at school…. We can identify/participate in these processes at will. (Keil 2002: 38)
Many of my informants, while self-identifying as New Orleans musicians, cite their
sounds and influences as funk, R&B, soul, rock’n roll, or more. Traditional jazz is a
chronotope or a persona that a musician might wear for a few hours before donning a
funk persona, or a brass band persona, or a bebop persona. These musicians are black and
white, local and transplanted; they come from diverse economic and educational
backgrounds, and they inhabit different genres of music, yet they self-identify, and are
identified by others, as New Orleanian musicians playing New Orleans music.
When I began my initial research, I made the mistake of assuming the existence
of a musical hierarchy. Despite having played a steady gig in the city for a year or so, and
having personal connections to musicians and those intimately involved in the New
Orleanian music scene, I made the additional mistake of assuming that I would be able to
distinguish Jazz musicians from other musicians, and that these jazz musicians embodied
the heart of New Orleans music. Furthermore, my confusion deepened when, as I asked
my informants to describe the sound of New Orleans, they told me that quintessential
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New Orleans sound was brass, and traditional jazz, “like Louis Armstrong.” Annie, a
fiddle player who was raised in Tennessee but has lived in New Orleans for at least
twenty years, described the sound of New Orleans as:
…lots of Brass. I used to work at this coop in the French Quarter, so I was there
twice a month…. It was pretty near [Jackson] Square, so I could—it’s kind of
cheating—I would see at least three trombones a day! … If you start adding up
brass and strings I mean, there are plenty strings, but there’s way more brass so
the sound is heavy on brass.
Though Annie definitely inhabits the identity of New Orleanian musician, she rarely
plays anything that could even loosely be considered traditional jazz.
Annie’s observation seems to clash with her music and work as a New Orleans
musician. If the purity hierarchy doesn’t accurately encompass the character of the New
Orleans music scene, then how do musicians maintain New Orleanian authenticity in
their work? Writing about British dance culture, Sarah Thornton (1996: 30) observes:
Two kinds of authenticity are at play. The first sort of authenticity involves issues
or originality and aura; this value is held most strongly by DJs. The second kind
of authenticity is about being natural to the community or organic to subculture;
this is the more widespread ideal. These two kinds of authenticity can be related
to two basic definitions of culture: the first draws upon definitions of culture as
art, the second relates to culture in the anthropological sense of a ‘whole way of
life.’ With live music ideologies, the artistic and subcultural authenticities collide
(and are often confused) at the point of authorship. Artistic authenticity is
anchored by the performing author in so far as s/he is assumed to be the unique
origin of the sound, while subcultural authenticity is grounded in the performer in
so far as s/he represents the community.
When musicians include these aspects of Artistic Authenticity in their music (such as
syncopated percussion, complex harmonic arrangement, jazz or blues chord progression,
or ambiguity between minor and major chords), they are making decisions regarding the
technical makeup of their sound that align them with New Orleanian Artistic
Authenticity. Artistic Authenticity is present in Annie’s description of New Orleans
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music as “brass.” However, Annie can still fall into the category of New Orleanian
musician because she doesn’t need Artistic Authenticity; even music that, stylistically,
does not sound like New Orleans music can be performed in a context that is “organic to
the culture,” and thus achieve Subcultural Authenticity. In New Orleans, live music
performance creates spaces of Subcultural Authenticity. Musicians like Annie can use
Artistic Authenticity in her music if they so choose, but they are by no means obligated to
do so.
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Artistic Authenticity and Subcultural Authenticity
Artistic Authenticity treats culture as art. In order to identify Artistic Authenticity,
we can examine stylistic or technical details for congruity. In music, those details can be
specific rhythms, song structures, arrangements, and the general style of a genre. There
are lots of trends of Artistic Authenticity in “New Orleans” music. Some of them are
perhaps best summed up by Jeremy, who plays the piano and guitar in a band that he
describes as “southern soul with a heavy New Orleans influence”:
When you listen to the music you can look at two things, percussion and melody.
Or harmony rather. Percussion is syncopated, and they have a particular pulse, the
Hey Pocky Way groove or whatever you want to call it. …then harmonically you
have this thing that is true of blues music all over the south, where they mess with
the minor third and the major third, make them very ambiguous… if you make it
ambiguous you make it a certain kind of feeling that no one can really explain and
that’s what sums up the blues. And then you can get to flatted fifths and minor
sevenths and other stuff too but essentially New Orleans has all that stuff but it
also has a very strong tradition of very complex, sophisticated harmonic
arrangement. A lot of the Creole musicians play classics and had to in order to get
work. So it’s a world removed from the blues you’d hear in Mississippi or Texas.
Old New Orleans music was very very sophisticated and the players were very
good. Also it’s predominately a horn town, so most of the songs are in the flat
keys, unlike Mississippi or Texas or Chicago, which were dominated by guitars.
As is evident in this quotation, some aspects of Artistic Authenticity in New Orleans
music are heavy brass influence; syncopated, pulsing percussion; ambiguous minor-major
third chords; and complex harmonic arrangement. These are stylistic tendencies, things
that one can hear in New Orleans on the street or floating out of the windows of cars or
the doors of clubs. Musicians can use these as tools, and often do, but they still have a lot
of creative flexibility and freedom. Some musicians, however, can find these traits
frustratingly constricting. The evening that I interviewed Annie, we were at the home of
one of my informants. We sat with several other musicians talking and playing music. As
we sat talking with Elise, another fiddle player who has played for years with Traditional
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Jazz groups such as the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, she complained that she had “forgotten
more tunes playing trad jazz!” For Elise, a fiddle player, the ‘loss’ of tunes through
increased focus on loosely arranged Traditional Jazz, where there are fewer tunes but
greater possibilities for originality (Keil 1987: 275-283), is a frustrating compromise
between her identity as a New Orleans musician and her identity as a flexible fiddle
player with a vast repertoire of tunes. These identities, however, are not necessarily
mutually exclusive; in Elise’s work life, she plays jazz standards, but she also devotes her
time and energy to producing CDs of eclectic fiddle music. Stylistically, Elise juggles
technical qualities of traditional New Orleans jazz music (which definitely has traits of
Artistic Authenticity) and other styles. Despite experiencing some mental incongruity,
she manages to swing back and forth without too much difficulty.
How do local musicians such as Annie and Elise, whose music often does not
contain traits of Artistic Authenticity, relate to this kind of authentic New Orleans music?
Rather than circumventing or denying the label, some have reinvented the category.
Jeremy, who identified his music as “heavily funk, R & B, and Rock,” confided that his
definition of jazz was, “an improvised version of musical communication… [because]
music is communication, just like other languages, It starts off simple, like ‘see Jane run,’
and grows into more complex sentences, or even simple sentences that express complex
thought.” Jeremy’s music does not sound like the musicians who play jazz in
Preservation Hall, but he is comfortable situating himself in their world, and they are
equally comfortable with him.
If artists performing a variety of musical styles can claim to all be playing New
Orleans music, how do these vastly different styles and attitudes coexist without
21
clashing? There’s more than just an anarchist miracle at work here. Even if music itself
lacks Artistic Authenticity, the performance of live music, and the interactions that occur
within the broader landscape of the music scene, can have Subcultural Authenticity.
Music can have Subcultural Authenticity if its occurrence is “Natural to the Community,”
or if it fits into a holistic way of life. In the New Orleans music scene, you can find
subcultural authenticity in live music performance. Live music in New Orleans is an
event, which means that it has a physical space, definite times, and a musical
performance which engages the attention and participation of a crowd. Here’s a quotation
from Ron, a music enthusiast and the author of a regular music column for a local paper,
that illustrates the way this happens in the city:
They [Astral Project] played at Rock n’ Bowl. Which is very dancing and zydeco,
R&B type place. And people got right up front, like they normally do, whoever’s
playing, George Porter, Snooks [Eaglin], whoever it is, and they started swaying
to the music and before long Astral Project, who are all world class musicians and
can play any style, their music was changing in reaction to the fact that people
were participating. So the more their music changed, the more people began to
participate, and by the end of the set, the dance floor was as crowded as if it was
the Neville Brothers, and everyone was rocking out saying, little did they know,
without really realizing they were listening to a band that usually plays in a sit
down setting, nobody talking, nobody smoking, and the people nursing their
beers! So you know countless examples of that.
In this situation, the crowd is interacting with the musicians in a sort of feedback loop.
The crowd, too, is part of the performance. People participate by dancing and pushing the
band, which then pushes the audience, and so on and so forth. The performance creates a
physical and psychological space where music and performance are naturally part of life
and part of the culture.
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Identifying New Orleans Music: New Orleanians and Americans
Live music performances, and the musician/audience interactive performances
therein, fit easily into everyday life, especially in music areas. Even during week nights,
the music scene is in full swing. On a Wednesday night, Frenchman Street is hopping.
Walter Wolfman Washington is playing in D.B.A.; he sits on a tall stool with his guitar,
wearing a red polyester suit and matching beret. Washington plays some funky rock and
roll, some Meters covers, and some songs that I couldn’t define in any category. He’s
playing with a bass guitar, a saxophone player, and a drummer. They are too cool and
they know it. The whole time, the audience, which is made up of blacks, whites,
Hispanics, and Asians, is dancing, hopping, shaking a tail feather. Even between songs,
people are still vibrating, toe-tapping, hungry for more music. I am snug in a chair by the
stage, but the temptation to get up and dance is almost irresistible; the energy of the
crowd is totally infectious. As personalities, the band only interacts with the crowd in the
most minimal of ways, barely addressing us, and giving very little eye contact. However,
the audience seems to know that the band is playing “cool,” clearly enjoying what they
are playing what everyone knows is good music. As the crowd gets more and more
rowdy, Washington sinks deeper and deeper behind his hat. He seems to be channeling
the energy of the crowd into his music, letting it move through him like air through the
bell of the saxophone. The music itself gets wilder, the rhythm thicker and faster, and the
melody more experimental and raw. Walter Wolfman Washington periodically lifts his
voice and howls, “Aaoooooooh!” They begin to play a Meters song, “Hey Pocky Way.”
23
The audience cheers, sings, wiggles, dances, joins in on the chorus. One man is dancing
by shaking as though possessed. The whole joint is jumping.
Audience Participation is an integral part of musical performance in New Orleans.
When I asked Ron, he told me,
There’s definitely that, that is a big part of it. And I think that the musicians feed off
of that too, the audience is involved and they’re interacting with the musicians on
another level, and they’re interacting viscerally and not just purely intellectually or
just by listening so it’s much more of a give and take between [the band and audience
members]. I’ve seen New Orleans bands put on great shows in other places but
because they don’t have that whatever that is, it’s a mysterious thing, of the way the
people interact with the musicians.
The energy of the local audiences is infectious.
Through conscious construction of culture, such as the creation of music or art,
people develop and utilize symbols of identity. New Orleanian musicians and audiences
alike publicly present their New Orleans-ness during performances of live music. Artists
have a symbiotic relationship, for without the energy of the crowd, that “mysterious
thing,” the musicians have to work harder to maintain the energy of their performance. In
New Orleans, live music is especially ethnomimetic. Cantwell’s ethnomimesis occurs in
folk traditions and festive settings, such as Frenchman Street’s clubs, and helps people
who may be socially distant identify groups by means of perceptible signs of identity
(Cantwell 1993). Ethnomimesis is a multi-faceted term. Ethos “has to do with groups and
the forces that constitute them” (Cantwell 1993). The three meanings of mimesis are
imitation, impersonation (when the performer actually takes on a different performance
life through imaginative roles) and a more formal summoning up of artistic cultures in
order to contrive a “popular culture” (Cantwell 1993). Music clubs are one site where
identity and culture can be seen and heard and danced and drank and tasted. They are
24
places where private symbols of the musicians can become symbols of identity. As
Raymond Firth writes:
Creativity in an artist is the display of a personal vision, in which symbolization
may play an important, perhaps vital part. The symbols must be personal,
individual, unique, stamped with the artist’s own imaginative power, if he is to
generate positive reaction in other people… yet if the symbolism remains purely
private, unrecognized, the stimulus of the creative act is lost to the community…
there must somehow be enough communication between artist and public for the
initial recognition of something of the artist’s vision to be caught, absorbed,
generate emotional and intellectual reaction, and stimulate further aesthetic
reaction. (Firth 1973)
Live music interactions are communication between musicians and audiences. Musicians
can use traits of Artistic Authenticity as tools rather than rules because the symbolic
nature of their work is embedded in performance rather than style.
However, for audiences outside the city, the location of Authenticity shifts. For
my informants, the experience of Subcultural Authenticity is distinct to New Orleans.
When bands go on tour, they have to “work harder” because their performances are not
part of “natural life;” on tour, New Orleans music loses subcultural authenticity. Here’s
an example from Ron:
…the Stooges Brass Band, young guys, I’ve been watching them since probably,
shit probably, bet you nobody in the band’s over twenty five. And I’ve been
watching them play since they were, you know, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years
old. And they were in Atlanta, and I saw them yesterday, the guy the leader of the
band, and I asked him, he said, ‘Oh man, Atlanta didn’t know what to do with us!’
They still don’t! They still don’t, you know?’ So when I saw them they actually
came and played in Chicago when I was there and it was the strangest thing, you
know, because here you have this amazing New Orleans brass band, that just
generates such energy when they play for New Orleanians that people just dance,
and everyone was just standing watchin’ em. And you could sense that they were
like, come on people, somebody please shake a tail feather!
Ron’s account echoes the experiences of touring musicians and displaced audience
members. Rather than physically participating in the performance, audiences from other
25
places in the Untied States (New York, Atlanta, Chicago) are much more focused on
intellectually appreciating the exotic music of New Orleans. New Orleanian audiences,
however, are grounded by a preoccupation with dancing and tapping in to the energy of
the performance. Why are shows outside of New Orleans so drastically different? Why
do other Americans, unlike New Orleanian audiences, respond without dancing (a
response that seems, to members of the New Orleans music scene, like no response at
all)?
For the performers, this is an important difference between playing at home, in
the places where their music and performances are natural to life, and going on the road.
When musicians perform on tour, they can’t seem to evoke the same response from their
crowds. The culture outside New Orleans, even in the United States, is too different for
the bands to be able to work with notions of New Orleanian Subcultural Authenticity.
Sometimes, out of town perceptions of New Orleans music can be as upsetting to the
audience as they are jarring to the performer. Jerry, the leading man of his band, told me
that the out of town audience is more reserved, and that it tends to want songs that sound
more like Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino. He said that sometimes, audiences were
actually upset at his music because it didn’t really sound like New Orleans. Mary, who is
a jazz singer who describes her music as “traditional New Orleans Jazz”, has had similar
experiences; as a result, she has struggled to make original music that will accommodate
the tastes and expectations of her out of town audiences.
26
Part II: Hurricane Katrina and music from “That Part of the World” ……………27
Situating the Research ……………………………………………………28
“Celebration and Escape”…………………………………………………30
Lingering Effects on Cultural Microclimates……………………………..37
Alienation and Otherness: “A Zone of Suspended Reality.”……………..41
27
Part II: Disaster and Undercurrents
Disasters have really complex effects on individuals and communities. The results
never really go away; the disaster stays with survivors like a sixth sense. For New
Orleanians, Hurricane Katrina is and always will be a living reality. It creates a new
landscape, both physical and psychological. The effects of the storms of 2005 seem to lie
on top of everything in the gulf coast. In a physical way, Katrina covered the city with
muck and floodwaters. In a metaphorical way, the flood also covered people and places.
We are slowly uncovering our lives from the consequences of Katrina, but we can never
quite restore ourselves to the same positions—physical, mental, psychological—as
before. For the rest of our lives, and for the rest of the foreseeable future, everyone and
everything that is associated with New Orleans will bear the mark of Katrina. .
Directly after disasters, the potential for a lot of change exists because normal
ways of life are disrupted. People use certain cultural symbols to navigate post-disaster
life. In this section, I analyze some effects of Hurricane Katrina. I also discuss some
effects on the New Orleans music scene, which is inextricably connected to the identity
of New Orleanian individuals and communities.
In this section, I am working in the frameworks of Anthropology of Disaster and
Orientalism. In a post-disaster landscape, such as New Orleans post-Katrina,
communities are in very liminal states. According to Sarah Phillips, who writes about the
area of Chernobyl eighteen years after the meltdown, disaster never fully disappears from
the lives of survivors (2004). Though the devastation on the gulf coast is much more
recent, the same concepts apply. Katrina is present in “word, in deed, and in embodied
action” of Katrina survivors. My research develops some specific ways that musicians
28
and members of the music scene are renegotiating their new post-disaster existences.
Post-trauma, survivors search for ways to connect themselves with fellow survivors and
renegotiate the now-unfamiliar landscape of New Orleans. There are a couple of ways
that communities do this. First, Ralph Turner elaborates on the ways in which people
form in-groups when their communities are in liminal states. I think that the music scene
in New Orleans functions as both an in-group and a symbol by which New Orleanians
and non-New Orleanians alike may identify “New Orleans” people. Anthony OliverSmith (2002) says that survivors need symbols by which to form or reform their
identities. They cling to these with great urgency; in New Orleans, musicians and
audience members physically and viscerally engage in the music scene as it returns.
Traits of New Orleans music are perceived as “Black” music as described by
Sarah Thornton (1996), and those traits are being exaggerated in this post-disaster period.
Interestingly, many characteristics of the music scene correlate with characteristics that
Edward Said delineates in his writing on an Oriental Other (1978). The immediate
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina not only raised the intensity of interaction in the music
scene to a higher degree of intensity, but also revealed a problematic overarching
paradigm regarding New Orleans—considering it an “Other” in ways described by Said.
29
The Immediate: “Celebration and Escape”
During my fieldwork, I asked musicians to tell me about their lives after
Hurricane Katrina. Surprisingly, many of them didn’t see the music they made as so very
different. Varying aspects of their work lives had changed (some of which are audience
constituency, frequency or profitability of gigs, and makeup of their bands). However, all
of my interviewees maintained that the style and spirit of the music remained stable.
Moreover, for everyone with whom I spoke, New Orleans music and the swift resurgence
of the music scene gave many people (musicians, local enthusiasts, and relief workers
alike) necessary relief from the haunted house terror of the devastated city. As Jeremy
put it:
Everybody that’s from here, lives here, music features so prominently in their
social lives, it’s probably the soundtrack to your existence down here. So we’re
lucky we have those resources as a way of kind of pulling everybody together. I
think that’s certainly the case after the storm. You’d go to where there were gigs
and get to gigs and see everybody, and see everybody in a context that’s familiar.
Out in the streets you’re walking around looking at devastation. But here at least
in the maple leaf bar you’ve got a beer and you’ve got to exchange stories, and for
a few hours at least, you’re back to the same page, and a good one, not the bad
one.
Because music features so prominently in New Orleanian identity, it became not only a
much needed reprieve from the post-Katrina physical landscape and separated
communities, but also a rallying point around which New Orleanians could safely unite.
Many of my informants told me in great detail how important the music was to the predisaster image, and subsequent reconstruction, of the city. However, I argue that the
impetus lies not only in the sounds of the music itself, but also in the liveness of
performance and physical locations in which it is performed.
30
As ethnomimetic spaces, the bars and clubs played an especially important role in
post-disaster identity construction for musicians and nonmusicians alike. By playing local
music, the venues were broadcasting certain messages: we’re open, we’re local, we’re
New Orleanian, and we’re dedicated to making this place what it was. Symbolically,
authentic New Orleans music represents a New Orleans that many people were afraid
was going to disappear, and a New Orleans that no one could take for granted anymore.
As locals, “we need this” physical experience of music as a symbol to “hold us together”
because:
Symbols are, in the first place, highly pertinent to a people’s reaction to disaster.
Symbols influence shared behavior. Equally important, symbols can be utilized
and manipulated by different factors involved in a disaster, and thus become
political. Disaster spoils pattern, and matters in the state of disruption become less
restricted. The potential for change becomes greater, to the point that disorder
itself can become part of the pattern. Cultural symbols can be also seen as
exclusive systems of coercion and control, and inclusive systems of melioration
and order… as for individuals facing or experiencing catastrophe, they engage the
symbols evoking their predicament in an almost visceral manner. Lakeoff and
Johnson point out that the symbolic process provides a continual feedback system
in which the symbol must be integrated with experience if a deeper understanding
is to be the end result. Human experience can and should be considered under the
scheme of a constructed metaphor, since people start to comprehend experience in
terms of metaphor, which, when they begin to act in terms of it, becomes a deeper
reality. (Oliver-Smith et al., 2002)
The music represents continuity of a reality that is deeper than physical. Musical
performances become symbols of ‘normal’ life in New Orleans. Artists and crowds use
the performances to recreate their identities, by interacting and engaging in “New
Orleans” style performances. The pattern of everyday life, and so all identity markers, got
disrupted after Katrina. There was a big backswing, an explosion of participation once
local music returned to in the city in force again. My informants tended to return to the
city after the storm as soon as possible, and in many ways their accounts speak for
31
themselves. Here are some of their responses and observations about life as musicians
and about the music scene in general in the months directly following Katrina:
I… I dunno, I mean it’s like, you just, everything was desperate all the time.
That’s you know, I didn’t know how good it was, how easy I had it. It went from
that to being… it really… like I wasn’t desperate, my family wasn’t on the street,
we were comfortable. But the whole music scene was not—to me it was—I mean,
I remember not even being able to—I played a gig and I couldn’t even sing
anymore. And then… I dunno, it… it’s… just sorta coming back in a way. It’s
weird. Some aspects of my being a musician. But look at what happened to me,
it’s like, I’m living in another town [Lafayette], coming in to keep my foot in the
door, I’m thinking what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do?
Johnny
After Katrina it was amazing. I mean this place [the Maple Leaf] was ground
zero… They fired up generators, they didn’t have ice, they didn’t have anything!
They powered the band with the generator, you know, and they had to play, I
think the music started at like four in the afternoon because the curfew was like
eight o’clock! And it was the same thing, it was like people going wild, like it was
four in the morning and they were all on acid during Mardi Gras. But it wasn’t. It
was just people with that energy.
Ron
So then there’s still a curfew, and the curfew I think it was 2 am? Or 1:30 or
something. And so we didn’t finish [our gig by curfew], it’s getting pretty close to
the curfew, and nobody seems to care, everyone’s just carrying on.
Annie
People go to see us play for two reasons: to celebrate life and to escape life. After
Katrina, there was a lot more escape—a lot of folks who were gutting houses,
dealing with Hurricane Katrina life, and they came out to the music and thanked
us. I realized about three to five months afterwards that the music was an
important escape, a means of letting go before returning to their normal lives. The
bars were meeting grounds where people went to figure out what was going on.
The music was key in holding the city together at that time.
Jerry
There was a curfew, like I’m involved in a Mardi Gras crew, and we had a
Halloween party in ’05, I mean we have this party every year, and I was having
this party no matter what… and it was the weirdest thing because I had so many
people—not so many—but I had a few, more than a few, several, maybe a half
dozen like key people come up to me and say, ‘you can’t do this, we’re not
ready,’ and I was like… there were a lot of people who came up to me and were
like, ‘you can’t do this,’ and I’m like, ‘What else are we gonna do?’ and we did
32
it… [and] each, to a person, every single person that came up to me earlier and
said you shouldn’t do this, thanked me. ‘We needed that. Thank you.’ I’m not on
the EMS. I’m not a school teacher. This is what I do. I have this crew and we
have this party every year and there’s no way we’re not having this party just
because of some freaking, and at that point, people weren’t even calling it the
flood.
Ron
I got back as soon as I could. I think it was about eight to ten weeks after the
storm… we did do a gig fairly soon, yeah…. I think within a day or two of getting
back we were at the Maple Leaf [Bar] playing. And everyone was still shellshocked, and really no one knew what the long-term implications were, and was
just worn out and weary and tired and beaten up, so it felt pretty good actually to
get up and play some funk, and everyone in the audience was ready for it, it was
good actually. … It was one of those situations where the music is just very
medicinal, you could just tell it was making everybody feel better to have some
music. It was sort of a collective sigh of relief, chugging of beers.
Jeremy
Even at the beginning, even that soon [September 2005], man there was music
everywhere. And somebody told me, just think, in times of war and any kind of
crisis, music is what people turn to. People want it more than like on a regular
night. So I think um, I think it changed, there are different people, different
musicians some, and different venues even. But it just kept going, it just… really
did.
Annie
After the hurricane, New Orleanians picking up the pieces and relief workers alike were
drawn to the clubs and bars to escape life, to experience physical and mental release and
psychological relief, to let go of the terrible reality of the flood, and to meet with friends
and neighbors and exchange information.
Although some musicians, like Johnny, struggled to find work after the hurricane,
many found themselves with more work than they could handle. Aid organizations
played a huge part in the music scene’s sudden resurgence and crystallization. Elise
described the process by which she and the New Orleans Jazz Vipers wound up with
more gigs than they had ever had before. The Musicians’ Clinic, WWOZ (the local
33
independent radio station), and other organizations worked with donors and venues,
giving establishments money designated specifically for hiring musicians. That way, at
least a portion of the musicians returning to the city would be able to get regular work.
Those bars and clubs experienced economic success because they had music, which
represented relative normalcy, and the musicians who played in them experienced some
relief from economic stress. Musicians who weren’t in town and out every night played
shows less frequently because “part of being musical here is being active and social and
on everyone’s mind” (Nate, a drummer). For those who were active and social, especially
well-established bands that had followings before Katrina, like Elise’s New Orleans Jazz
Vipers, gigs were frequent because people realized that they were in town and available.
Live music is important because it is a symbolic representation of “normal” life in
New Orleans. Symbolic interactions, such as partaking in “a dynamic participatory event
in which there is no [or little] distinction between audience and performer” (Regis 2001:
755), such as dynamic music events in clubs or second lines on the streets, help to define
the deeper realities of both individual human identities and community identities.
The “participatory events” that Helen Regis mentions when she speaks of the
second line tradition “produce locality” by opening spaces to participants. To some
degree, Regis’s work on the second line phenomenon can be extended to the entire music
landscape of New Orleans. These open arenas of culture foster a sense of communitas, or
an intense community spirit, which often follows disaster. Usually manifested in a
ritualized manner in a particular space, communitas is not usually part of present-day life
in the United States. However, spaces that facilitate communitas (and the accompanying
stressors) do exist during a disaster, especially if a group of people is physically drawn
34
together. One result of these shared experiences is a feeling of intense bonding among
members of the group (Jencson 2001; Turner 1969). The formation of communitas often
alienates outsiders, or people who do not identify with the group experience of
communitas.
The music venues and performances (by band and crowd alike) create
ethnomimetic spaces where people achieve a heightened sense of communitas. As Ralph
Turner points out, in the aftermath of disasters groups often require “public
demonstrations of uniform sentiment and using these sentiments as the basis for drawing
sharp boundaries between in-group and out-group” (Turner 1967). In New Orleans,
musical events provide these demonstrations of uniform sentiment, and hence often
exemplify arenas of struggle between the in-group and out-group. Ron showed me a
column that he wrote in his Jazz Fest blog:
When you [who bring folding chairs and sit down during music performances]
begin to encroach on our festival, the one that has not changed in 37 years, then
we are in trouble. Here's how it works ... the musicians perform, the crowd
responds, the magic happens. It's that simple. Please don't interfere with the
magic. Ask any musician: We, the crowd, are not passive participants in this. We
are part of it and you should be too. Yesterday at the last set at Congo Square -one of the stages that represents what this whole thing is about: dancing, listening
to music, being part of the blessed communication between artist and fan.
Angelique Kidjo was literally begging you to get up; she was literally asking you
to participate in this holy ritual and many of you declined. Not just an "I'm tired,
it's been a long day" decline, but a smug-in-your-face decline. This is
unacceptable. So I say once again, "FOLD 'EM UP!" I have tried to keep this
letter civil because I know you don't understand us and we don't understand you.
In the wake of disaster, community identities are in flux. Thought the music scene came
together with lightening speed, New Orleans is still loose and fragile, and members of the
in-group—New Orleanians, local and transplanted; musicians and audience members;
35
music and culture enthusiasts—are protectively expressing their concern for the future
and character of the community.
36
Lingering Effects on Cultural Microclimates
Disasters do not disappear. They linger in the air, in the architecture, and in the
bones of the people who live through them. For example, even several years following
the meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the disaster is always present in the
lives of survivors as a kind of ‘sixth sense.’ As Sarah Phillips puts it, “Even eighteen
years after the disaster, Chernobyl is always present—in word, in thought, and in
embodied action” (Phillips 2004). According to Phillips, disasters are symbolic
occurrences in addition to physical events, and the repercussions—both direct, immediate
responses and delayed, symbolic responses—reverberate through creative, religious,
scientific, and social communities. Everything the survivors of Chernobyl do and
experience is through the lens of Chernobyl (Phillips, 2004). Similarly, the effects of
Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans (and many other places in the Gulf Coast) are also
present “in word, in thought, and in embodied action” of each person. The people of New
Orleans are completely tied up in both New Orleans-ness and Katrina-ness. Though many
of my participants perceived the effects of the hurricane as “speeding things up” or
“going to happen anyway,” the distinct lingering effects scream Katrina; “it affected
everything.” To demonstrate, I will discuss three ways in which my fieldwork indicated
that the music scene will change: the loss of youth music culture, creeping
homogenization, and the increased attention towards young brass bands.
The music scene will change because a large percent of the music-makers are
members of populations that were disproportionately affected by the disaster. Ron told
me:
You’ve got a large percentage of the locals, poor income, real cultural standard
bearer musicians, and it’s been in their families, not the rich, not the Marsalises
37
and the Nevilles and the Connicks, the names that you know, but hundreds and
hundreds of young musicians who aren’t back. That is a big problem for us.
Ron is referring to the downtown neighborhood communities like the Treme, from which
spring both nationally and internationally famous musicians (such as Louis Armstrong
and Fats Domino) and huge parts of the local music culture (such as brass bands, second
lines, and then young musicians that I watched performing in front of Café Du Monde).
Jerry echoes Ron’s sentiments:
Katrina will affect the future because kids who learn to play the trumpet in
elementary school and around the corner and in the communities they live in are
scattered now. The Treme, which is where the jazz bands are from, is scattered.
The school music programs where kids started playing their music aren’t there
now. Five, ten, fifteen years in the future will see a big shift in the base of the
musical community.
Where did these people go? Clearly some of them have returned, and several groups from
that area have risen to great acclaim (Rebirth Brass Band, Hot 8 Brass Band, Dirty Dozen
Brass Band, and others). However, after the storm, the predominately African American
communities in those downtown neighborhoods were decimated:
The population of the damaged areas was 45.8 percent African American,
compared to 26.4 percent of the undamaged areas. Once displaced, it is more
difficult to return than it is to repair homes that have been continually occupied.
Second, individuals in this ethnic group were much more likely to be poor and
dependent on institutional evacuations. These efforts settled evacuees farther
away than people who depended on their own resources. Thus, poor African
Americans who resettled at great distances from their home communities have
stronger disincentives to return. (Petterson et. al 2006: 654)
The communities are still dispersed to a large degree; the ninth ward, two years after the
storm, is still nearly empty. Furthermore, the structure of the communities will be
completely different because it would be nearly impossible the culture and economic
38
situations that had evolved due to specific circumstances before the storm to return. Ron
elaborates:
The lower ninth ward was something like fifty eight percent owner occupied. And
the homes were fully paid off. So you don’t have a mortgage, you don’t have to
have insurance. So that’s why a lot of those people didn’t have insurance. And
why a lot of their houses just got completely bulldozed away. But what you gotta
remember is—what that did was it created a situation where people could live and
live well, not high on the hog but live well without having to work. So you don’t
have a mortgage and you own the house that you live in, what are your expenses?
You know, food, your bills, you know, that’s it, so lots of people, specially when,
you know, you’re only talking about a small shotgun house, you gotta pay the air
conditioning, you gotta pay the heat but six months outta the year you’re not, you
probably got a forty dollar electric bill. So there were a lot of people, musicians,
and musicians’ families, that were in the situation… it creates a culture of leisure,
because if you’re not tied to a job, which is paying your car note, paying your
house note, paying off these big bills, paying off your student loan, whatever it is
you gotta pay off, then you can build a lifestyle, and I think that there’s a strong
argument to be made that big, big centers of New Orleans [culture] had that
advantage. Before the flood. There were a lot of kids, and I say kids and I mean
like under thirty, who were still living in the family home with their grandma and
whoever and so they were able to live a different sort of lifestyle, and of course a
lot of them get mixed up with drugs and dealing and all that, you know, that’s
why you had one part of the problem down there, with the drugs and the violence,
but you also have the culture. Mardi Gras Indians, man everyone talks about the
Mardi Gras Indians, how they’re working class guys and they spend five, seven,
then thousand dollars a year making their suit. How the hell can they do that?
Well, if you don’t have a note, then you gotta lot more money. …the one sided
look at the media [said] see, look what happened to the poor people. Nobody
really said, look what happened to their lifestyles. To the poor people’s lifestyles.
These microcircumstances, particularly the owner-occupied housing phenomenon,
created a sort of economic Gulf Stream which created a milder economic climate.
Though individuals may return, they will not be able to slide back into similar economic
situations which would enable the continuation of that particular lifestyle. And as Jeremy
says, “there’s gotta be some kind of critical mass in order for the ideas to get carried
down from one generation to the next.” While it’s impossible to predict the future of the
39
New Orleans music scene, the dispersal of a population so important to the local music
culture signals the strong possibility of future change.
Ron also mentions a “creeping homogenization” that he fears will encroach on the
arenas that are integral to the performance of New Orleans identity. Ron told me that he
was worried that “young kids” from “mainstream America” were coming to New Orleans
oriented towards service and other “lofty ideas,” but “unfortunately their lofty ideas are
part of mainstream America, you know? And someone needs to take them by the hand
and say, this is how we behave here.” While I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Jay is
opposed to the possibility of social change or the reconstruction of society for the greater
good, here he is expressing a very real fear of increasing homogenization.
40
Alienation and Otherness: “A Zone of Suspended Reality.”
Party City, Fat City, the City that Care Forgot, the Big Easy. These are some
nicknames for New Orleans. I grew up hearing these terms casually tossed around in
conversation. They are a source of dubious pride, and refer to the ease with which one
can, in New Orleans, slip into a party, push responsibilities away, consume decadent food
and drink, feel the pulse of music in the air, and just dance. There is some truth to these.
There is usually a festival of some sort happening in the city on any given weekend, and
festival or no festival, there are plenty of great restaurants and bars that are open nearly
round the clock. In many ways, it seems more like a dream than reality: “New Orleans is
much more than a geographical entity. It's a zone of suspended reality, a focus of classy
cuisine and musical magic. For a puritan, it's capital punishment. For a music maven, it's
a 24-hour jukebox of unlimited plays, endless selections, and maximum volume” (Cooper
2004: 259). All these things create an atmosphere of leisure that definitely affects the
dynamics in the music.
New Orleans’s historical development contributes a lot to the development of the
culture and music. When I asked Jeremy about traits of the city itself that found
expression in the music, he told me,
Well, most obviously the makeup of the people. And… the fact that our history
here is inextricably linked to Africa, to Spain and France, and in fact also too that
New Orleans was relatively cut off from the rest of the country. […] All of a
sudden Americans came flooding into the city, but by then the personality of the
city was pretty much established.
When he mentioned Spain and France, Jeremy was referring to the long and
complex history of New Orleans and the Louisiana Purchase. Louisiana didn’t become
part of the United States until 1803. The older buildings in the city have a stately,
41
colonial air; wrought iron balustrades twined with jasmine and honeysuckle hang over
sidewalks still paved with stones that were originally ballast in the bellies of sailing ships,
streets are named “rues” or “calles,” depending on which colonial power built them, and
the St. Louis Cathedral, one of the most easily recognized landmarks of the city, has a
huge mural of Louis, the king of France, painted over the alter. The legal system and the
network of parishes (rather than counties) come from Louisiana’s European heritage;
also, a number of talented Creole musicians (both those French or Spanish speaking,
European Creoles and African American Creoles) emerged from the city’s colonial roots.
As Jeremy mentioned, Creole musicians were often incredibly technically skilled—many
of them played classical music in addition to jazz—and began a tradition of rich, complex
harmonic arrangements that is still carried on today by the brass bands.
The city’s African roots have a much more tragic story. Africans were brought to
Louisiana as slaves, in chains, and carried within them songs from which the blues
developed. In addition to the melodies and chord progressions of the blues, the rhythms
of Congo Square, where many slave owners allowed their human property to attend
dances or worship, still permeate New Orleanian music today. Jeremy told me that the
“stutter-step” beat of New Orleans music was “an originally African syncopated rhythm.”
He was not only clear to draw the distinction between actual African music and New
Orleanian music, but also firm in maintaining the close connection between the two. This
is not surprising, considering that pre-Katrina New Orleans was a majority black city
(Regis 2006: 748). As it is not the topic of my research, I will not explore specific
questions of race in this paper. However, I will say here that we must be cautious about
42
making racist assumptions about the makers of traditionally black musics and their
lifestyles. Kyra Gaunt reminds us:
Too often performances of multiculturalism and diversity in a variety of contexts
permit youth, whites, and others to gloss over the lived incongruities of difference
that blacks experience everyday and even experience in the moment of making
music with others. (Gaunt 2002: 127)
It’s important to remember that New Orleans was—and still is—an incredibly poor city,
and that many of the people who lost their homes, possessions, and communities in
Hurricane Katrina were poor and black, and that quite a few of those people were
musicians. Though I do not address issues of race here, it should be said that the
relationship between poverty and race, and the correlations, both underlying and overt, to
the music scene of New Orleans and the musical history of the United States, are
problematic and deserving of much further exploration.
The lifestyles created by a history of slavery and colonialism, combined with easy
access to music, food, and drink, definitely affect the culture here. Culture becomes
inextricably linked to visceral, embodied experience; people are much more involved
with things that can be experienced with the five senses: eating spicy food, dancing to
funk or jazz, wearing bright or outlandish clothing, catching Mardi Gras beads, drinking.
Hence, real expression of culture is connected to recreational activities, physicality. The
goals of expressing oneself through music shift from creating music that is aligned with
“the aesthetics of perfection attributable to nineteenth-century European culture” (Gaunt
2002: 130) to creating “out-of-sync” music that encourages greater participatory
discrepancies and human interaction (Keil 1987: 275-283). Nate, a drummer, told me that
the style of music that he played was guided by his ultimate goal, which is to create
interactions that make people want to move. He also said that playing music is like
43
harnessing and releasing energy in a very physical way. “People here are sort of loose;
you have to make the right concoction when you play to get the reaction from an
audience, to make people dance. Here there will always be a reaction […] Here, people
grow up around it, with it, they dance,” Nate said. “If people are moving, I’m satisfied.”
The focus is on physical interactions produced by the ‘vibe’ or ‘groove’ rather than
disembodied technological magic. As Sarah Thornton writes about electronic dance
music:
‘Black’ dance music is said to maintain a rhetoric of body and soul despite its use
of sampling and other computer technologies. Whereas ‘white’ or ‘European’
dance music is about a futurist celebration and revelation of technology to the
extent that it minimizes the human among its sonic signifiers. Of course, these
categories often have little to do with the actual colour of the people making the
records; rather they are two discourses about the value of dance music. Both have
their authenticities. For white youth, ‘black’ musical authentication is rooted in
the body, whereas Euro-dance authenticity, like white authenticity, is
disembodied, invisible, and high-tech. (1996: 72)
“Blackness” and “whiteness” are poles; it would be inaccurate to essentialize any specific
music as totally “black” or “white,” but genres certainly have styles and tendencies.
“Black” tradition is preoccupied with textured, grainy, vocals; “funky” instrumentation;
heavy bass; the “romance between body and soul;” full, embodied sound; and verifiable
origins (Thornton 1996: 73). In other words, “black” musical tradition is very much
focused on the body and the physical origins of music, which emerges as a tangible, raw
expression. The music itself originates in a specific location. In the case of New Orleans,
music “bubbles up from the streets,” said Ron, paraphrasing jazz musician Ellis Marsalis.
“In other places culture comes from on high and trickles down.” This sense of bubbling
up from the streets is connected to “blackness,” as well as an idea of a primeval source
from which people gain a strong, visceral connection with music and culture. After
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telling me about his sense of the “vibe” and audience participation, Nate described New
Orleans music as “primitive, primal, palpable, nonverbal yet sensual.” In New Orleans,
my informants told me, people want to move and dance. New Orleans music is
Thornton’s “black” music.
My informants told me that the music of the United States originated in New
Orleans:
It [New Orleans music] was pretty much the beginning of American music. I
mean, there’s um, there’s a musical roots tree …the roots of the tree start here in
New Orleans, the Mississippi, and from there it branches out, spreads out, so
really, the roots of Americana music really started down in this area. (Mary)
However, like Nate, my informants didn’t seem to think that music in other areas of the
country was quite as alive as it was in New Orleans. They didn’t seem to think that the
musical culture in other places was quite as thick or palpable. In New Orleans, as I not
only witnessed during my fieldwork but also was told by nearly all of my informants,
people will get up and dance. The music is in the air, in the legs of people walking down
the street, in the rolled-down windows of cars, and in the stomp of feet on shotgun house
porches in addition to the stages of the clubs. Thus, the music scene is less like a series of
dots represented by the various clubs and more like a thick landscape that gushes up and
flows down streets like viscous liquid. The intense physical nature of New Orleans music
and musical performance has ramifications that extend beyond the doors of the clubs. It is
uncontrollable and exotic, a far cry from the predominant music culture of the United
States. Jeremy told me:
[it] definitely affects the way the music sounds, and the contrast is evident to
people in other parts of the world. When you hear New Orleans music it sounds…
much in the same way if you’re in Dusseldorf and you hear a band from Havana.
That’s pretty spectacular. Or if you’re in… New York and you get to hear a band
45
from Ghana or Nigeria or whatever. It’s stimulating, it’s fun, it’s not something
you’re used to.
Jeremy’s comparisons speak worlds about New Orleans in the broader context of the
United States, or even the west. New Orleans is aligned with Havana, Ghana, and
Nigeria, all places in the third world, and in sharp opposition to Dusseldorf or New York,
which seem to represent Western civilization and culture, or the First World. New
Orleans shares several characteristics with third world countries: poverty; a vibrant,
uncontrollable physical culture; a connection with physical place that is perceived to be
more heightened than places of “higher” culture. Tourists can visit New Orleans to gain a
sense of “a particular ‘folkoric’ space-time,” or “essentialized instances of a ‘local’ or
‘past’ culture clearly distinguish[ed] from the actual contemporary culture of the rest of
the culture or world” (Feinberg 2003: 102). New Orleans, with its vivid festivals and
flamboyant excess, is portrayed to the greater United States and the world at large as an
essentially static, historic site. Furthermore, New Orleans is correlated with movement,
play, sensory interaction, and noise, which characterize “child culture,” as opposed to
“school culture,” which is serious, quite, intellectual, and rational (Keil 2002: 47). New
Orleans, especially as it is characterized though the music culture, is portrayed as
emotional rather than rational, and in need of guidance and “schooling” from more
mature, adult culture.
Interestingly, this correlates with many traits of the Orient, as described by
Edward Said. Said writes:
The Orient is irrational, depraved “fallen”, childlike, “different,” thus the
European is rational, virtuous, mature, “normal.” But the way of enlivening the
relationship was everywhere to stress the fact that the Oriental lived in a different
but thoroughly organized world of his own, a world with its own national,
46
cultural, and epistemological boundaries and principles of internal coherence.
(Said 1978: 40)
There is a lot of rhetoric surrounding New Orleans that is directly tied to the music scene
(especially when it comes to notions of parties and indulging in excess) which suggests
that New Orleans is perceived as distinct from the United States. In fall of 2005,
President George W. Bush referred to people from New Orleans and the surrounding area
as “People from that part of the world,” and “down there” (Etheridge 2006: 799-813).
Use of this language rather than more inclusive terms (after all, New Orleans is, in fact,
part of the United States and technically should not be referred to as a different part of the
World) indicates that the dominant paradigm from the United States has distanced itself
from New Orleans, regardless of whether this separation is conscious or unconscious.
Why would the United States seek to separate itself from New Orleans? New Orleans’s
checkered history of political corruption and connections with licentious behavior might
be seen as embarrassing or foolish. Jeremy told me, “[New Orleans] traditionally has a
very strong musical culture, and there’s basically born out of poverty, and ironically it
seems to happen in Catholic cities. Puritanical elements seem to frown on the good time
part of your recreational activities.” Considering the deep puritanical roots in New
England, it is not surprising that New Orleans, a profligate Catholic city, would be seen
as at least something of a renegade. After all, Said writes, “[Orientals] in everything
oppose the clarity, directness, and nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race” (Said 1978: 39).
However, reducing New Orleans to the town where George W. Bush “used to come … to
enjoy myself—occasionally too much,” (Bush 2005) undercuts the very real presence of
a rich and textured culture.
47
However, this estrangement isn’t just a dialogue coming from the world outside
of New Orleans, though. People that I spoke with had no problem with mentioning, offhand, that New Orleans wasn’t really part of the United States. In describing the unique
musical developments in New Orleans, Ron said, “I think it’s probably just very old and
it probably goes back because we’re not American. New Orleans wasn’t part of America
until very late in its history because the French and the Spanish and the African, the same
thing that created this unique music has created New Orleans.”
In the context of mainstream America, New Orleans has been framed as an island
of exotic, sometimes dangerous culture, or an internal other. The palpable division
between New Orleans and the United States is characteristic of Orientalism. New
Orleanian culture takes on “oriental” characteristics such as those described by Edward
Said: exotic, seductive, frightening, alien, static, and threatening to upset ‘normal’ ways
of life. New Orleans music, especially traditional jazz, is one of the most easily identified
cultural characteristics of New Orleans, and thus comes to be considered exemplary of
the entire city of New Orleans (despite the deep and complicated world of New Orleanian
music culture). However, when New Orleans music is performed outside of New
Orleans, a crucial ingredient is deficient—the audience participation. In New Orleans,
participation in musical performance is a folkway, a tradition, an expectation. It goes
without saying. Outside of New Orleans, participation is hindered twofold. First of all,
performers on tour do not have the support of the folkways that help maintain the New
Orleanian music scene. Secondly, the reactions of American audiences are shaped by
their positions in mainstream America. They will react to the music as if it is an artifact
of New Orleans, a static symbol of Dionysian good times and uncontrollable outbursts of
48
excess. Thus, reactions to musical performances tend to be tentative and intellectual;
audiences gravitate towards those characteristics of the music and performance that seem,
to them, to be authentic representations of New Orleans.
As Said points out, a repercussion of the west (represented here by mainstream
America) looking at the exotic through an Orientalist lens is the belief that the exotic
culture is unchanging, that it has always looked and sounded the same, and that new
sounds or influences radically undermine the old, traditional sounds. The musicians are
fully aware of these expectations, and furthermore, they know that working to change
New Orleans music in order to express their own personalities sometimes faces direct
opposition from out of town audiences. Thus, it can be very difficult for performers to
move away from outsider notions of New Orleanian music.
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Some Concluding Thoughts
As we conscientiously rebuild New Orleans, it is extremely important to be
sensitive to its scattered, fragile communities. The music scene is elemental to the
character of the city. The actual music has many characteristics that identify it with New
Orleans, but even more important are the interactions that occur during live music
performance. These interactions form an arena in which New Orleanians may physically
engage a symbol of their identities as New Orleanians, and even more viscerally, an
identity that stretches before Hurricane Katrina.
If we reduce live music to simple characteristics, particularly if those
characteristics are associated with perceptions of third world countries and Others, we
run the risk of compromising New Orleanian communities from which the music
emerges. Post-Katrina change is inevitable, but by exposing problematic dialogues
associated with New Orleans, we may be better prepared to rebuild.
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