In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, there was concern that New Orleans' distinctive culture might not return:
Mardi Gras Indian chiefs moved to places like Austin, threatening to relocate their tradition beyond the city limits of their hometown for the first time. (Treme: Big Chief Lambreaux stays with his kids in Houston and NYC.)
High school marching bands weren't able to march in Mardi Gras Parades because many students hadn't come home, and those that did had to replace uniforms and instruments. (Treme: Antoine and Keith Hart direct the band at the Kipp school.)
Second line parades - which Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs had led through their neighborhoods for more than a century - were nowhere to be found. The streets of New Orleans were silent for perhaps the first time in the city's history.
There were some hopeful early signs. When famed Creole chef Austin Leslie passed away after evacuating to Atlanta, his body was transported to New Orleans, where a jazz funeral led by the Hot 8 Brass Band proceeded through devastated neighborhoods piled high with debris. Soon after, the Prince of Wales Social Aid & Pleasure Club organized the first post-K second line parade through their unflooded Uptown neighborhood. By January 2006, five months after the flood, a massive "Allstar" parade was organized by dozens of marching clubs, sending a signal that local culture continued to be a priority for New Orleanians rebuilding their lives.
Though the parade was meant to be a display of unity, at the end, as the crowd was dispersing, shots broke out along the perimeter of the crowd and three people were injured. (You'll remember this from the first season of Treme.) Then two months later, a shooting took place near a jazz funeral, and a 19-year old man was killed.
As you know from this season of Treme, if the return of culture to New Orleans was something to celebrate, the return of violent crime was harrowing. Somehow the NOPD conflated the two. Police chief Warren Reily tripled the permit fees required for parading, from $1250 to $3760, and clubs like the Pigeontown Steppers that parade on holidays (Easter) were hit with a whopping $7560 bill.
This is the moment we've arrived at in Treme, when ACLU lawyer Mary Howell (the basis for the Toni Bernette character) partnered with the Social Aid & Pleasure Club Task Force and sued the city for discrimination. They argued that predicting where shootings would happen was impossible, that no one participating in a parade had ever been involved in the shootings, and that shootings occurred consistently at Mardi Gras parades and the elite krewes had never been 'taxed' for the police detail.
The result? The NOPD settled the case, agreed to a reduced parade fee of $1985, and the parade season resumed.
The return of local culture in New Orleans preceded the return of infrastructure. It sent a signal that the city was rebuilding, and it helped to lure tourists back to visit and spend their almighty dollars. And as far as their role in the community, an LSU study found that Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs were models for community participation. Many musicians and marching club members think the city should PAY them for their efforts in perpetuating local culture rather than TAX them as misdirected punishment. I would advise the optimists not to hold their breath.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
episode 15: surreality
The weeks surrounding New Years 2007 were positively gut wrenching. New Orleanians who had suffered the trauma of the flood, navigated through systemic failure of the government response, and summoned the emotional resiliency needed to rebuild, now saw violence return to the city with a vengeance.
Dinerral Shavers, the snare drummer for the Hot 8 Brass Band and marching band director at L.E. Rabouin High School, was shot and killed on December 28, 2006. As the story unfolded, we learned that Dinerral was not the target of the shooting: his stepson had become entangled in a 'turf war' after being transferred to a new high school post-Kartina, and police believe another student fired as his classmate and hit Dinerral instead. What made Dinerral's loss so tragic was that he was an innocent victim who was determined to make an impact on his community. Bandleader Bennie Pete told me a few days after the murder:
“If you look at the news and you just read the paper every day, you would be in the mind frame to think that everybody in that age bracket is into killing and crime, and [Dinerral] was just the opposite, you know. He was really striving to be a complete grown man and a musician and just a positive role model, a positive person.”
You can hear Dinerral's message (and his soulful singing voice) in his song "Get Up," with the prophetic line “my people keep the peace / strike this murder rate down.”
Dinerral's death taught me that for every murder reported in an endless stream of sensationalized media coverage, there is a victim who was loved and who touched the lives of people in some way. Dinerral's mother Yolanda had worked all her life, purchased her own home in the Lower Ninth Ward, and put three daughters through college. The youngest, Nakita, was driven by the loss of her brother to call for a reform of the police department and the District Attorney's office.
As Nakita and others were bringing attention to Dinerral's murder, the city learned of Helen Hill, a filmmaker who was attacked in her home by an intruder and killed as her husband protected their child. In a week of 8 murders, the headlines were again filled with a story of an exceptionally caring person lost to violence, but this killing was noteworthy in another way as well. Helen Hill was white, and in a city where at least 80% of murder victims are black men and 50% are under the age of 30, Helen's murder not only stood out, it reached people who might be desensitized to the news of another black man killed in the murder capital of the country.
Baty Landis, who runs the Sound Cafe, knew both Helen Hill and Dinerral Shavers, and she joined forces with Nakita and others to launch Silence is Violence. They organized a march to City Hall that was a success in bringing together black and white New Orleanians in a demonstration that culminated in a series of speeches in front of mayor Nagin, police chief Riley, and other politicians.
The jazz funeral for Dinerral Shavers and the march to City Hall frame this week's episode of Treme. I was at both of these events and if you are one of those armchair critics who are concerned with Treme's representation of real events, then i can point out several discrepancies. Nakita did not speak at the funeral service (that was left to pastor Macolm Collins, who played himself in the scene); the Hot 8 did not lead the procession out of the church (jazz funerals begin with the dirge outside); and the musicians did not raise their instruments in silence (they raised them as the others played "Just A Closer Walk With Thee"). As for the march: it was an explicitly silent march, without music and with very little chanting. And, as far as I know, there was no great white cop trying to handle the case properly.
But I am not an armchair critic and I could care less if Treme the TV show portrays real life accurately. What these two scenes accomplished was to give viewers a sense of the emotional intensity of a jazz funeral and the invigorating possibility of a protest march, and that is no small feat.
Sandwiched in between these two scenes was a whole lot of other stuff that, for the most part, did not measure up. Here's one kvetch: For a show that claims to be centered around New Orleans music, why is so much airtime being given to actors playing music onscreen? Annie is a great violinist, but her song was indeed terrible, both times we had to sit through it. Delmond's singing is a travesty and the whole onstage scene with him warning his band "follow me or die trying" and then launching into one of the oldest, easiest jazz standards - "Milneburg Joys" - was an insult to the talent sharing the stage with him. And then there's Antoine and the Soul Apostles, which - OK, that storyline is actually cool with me. (Dang, Bunk can sing!). But hearing all the amateur music and then seeing Rebirth Brass Band flit by onscreen for a nanosecond is cruel.
Dinerral Shavers, the snare drummer for the Hot 8 Brass Band and marching band director at L.E. Rabouin High School, was shot and killed on December 28, 2006. As the story unfolded, we learned that Dinerral was not the target of the shooting: his stepson had become entangled in a 'turf war' after being transferred to a new high school post-Kartina, and police believe another student fired as his classmate and hit Dinerral instead. What made Dinerral's loss so tragic was that he was an innocent victim who was determined to make an impact on his community. Bandleader Bennie Pete told me a few days after the murder:
“If you look at the news and you just read the paper every day, you would be in the mind frame to think that everybody in that age bracket is into killing and crime, and [Dinerral] was just the opposite, you know. He was really striving to be a complete grown man and a musician and just a positive role model, a positive person.”
You can hear Dinerral's message (and his soulful singing voice) in his song "Get Up," with the prophetic line “my people keep the peace / strike this murder rate down.”
Dinerral's death taught me that for every murder reported in an endless stream of sensationalized media coverage, there is a victim who was loved and who touched the lives of people in some way. Dinerral's mother Yolanda had worked all her life, purchased her own home in the Lower Ninth Ward, and put three daughters through college. The youngest, Nakita, was driven by the loss of her brother to call for a reform of the police department and the District Attorney's office.
 |
| Dinerral Shavers, in baseball hat, parading with Hot 8 Brass Band a few weeks before he was killed. |
As Nakita and others were bringing attention to Dinerral's murder, the city learned of Helen Hill, a filmmaker who was attacked in her home by an intruder and killed as her husband protected their child. In a week of 8 murders, the headlines were again filled with a story of an exceptionally caring person lost to violence, but this killing was noteworthy in another way as well. Helen Hill was white, and in a city where at least 80% of murder victims are black men and 50% are under the age of 30, Helen's murder not only stood out, it reached people who might be desensitized to the news of another black man killed in the murder capital of the country.
Baty Landis, who runs the Sound Cafe, knew both Helen Hill and Dinerral Shavers, and she joined forces with Nakita and others to launch Silence is Violence. They organized a march to City Hall that was a success in bringing together black and white New Orleanians in a demonstration that culminated in a series of speeches in front of mayor Nagin, police chief Riley, and other politicians.
The jazz funeral for Dinerral Shavers and the march to City Hall frame this week's episode of Treme. I was at both of these events and if you are one of those armchair critics who are concerned with Treme's representation of real events, then i can point out several discrepancies. Nakita did not speak at the funeral service (that was left to pastor Macolm Collins, who played himself in the scene); the Hot 8 did not lead the procession out of the church (jazz funerals begin with the dirge outside); and the musicians did not raise their instruments in silence (they raised them as the others played "Just A Closer Walk With Thee"). As for the march: it was an explicitly silent march, without music and with very little chanting. And, as far as I know, there was no great white cop trying to handle the case properly.
But I am not an armchair critic and I could care less if Treme the TV show portrays real life accurately. What these two scenes accomplished was to give viewers a sense of the emotional intensity of a jazz funeral and the invigorating possibility of a protest march, and that is no small feat.
 |
| Jazz Funeral for Dinerral Shavers, Fifth African Baptist Church, January 6, 2007 |
Sandwiched in between these two scenes was a whole lot of other stuff that, for the most part, did not measure up. Here's one kvetch: For a show that claims to be centered around New Orleans music, why is so much airtime being given to actors playing music onscreen? Annie is a great violinist, but her song was indeed terrible, both times we had to sit through it. Delmond's singing is a travesty and the whole onstage scene with him warning his band "follow me or die trying" and then launching into one of the oldest, easiest jazz standards - "Milneburg Joys" - was an insult to the talent sharing the stage with him. And then there's Antoine and the Soul Apostles, which - OK, that storyline is actually cool with me. (Dang, Bunk can sing!). But hearing all the amateur music and then seeing Rebirth Brass Band flit by onscreen for a nanosecond is cruel.
Monday, May 16, 2011
episode 14: marching
There are a bunch of little plot lines in Treme that I've already dwelled upon and are now marching along nicely:
... The local style of rap known as 'sissy bounce', made by transgender rappers like Katey Red, returns in a wack recording project dreamed up by Davis and bankrolled by dear old Aunt Mimi (after Davis puts on the hard sell by describing it as a "Big Sleazy reincarnation of Def Jam Records")...
... Del is trying to reconcile his progressive impulses towards modern jazz with his rootedness in tradition by digging into the mammoth Jelly Roll Morton oral history recordings from the Library of Congress, even listening to Jelly discuss masking as a Mardi Gras Indian as a kid while sewing an Indian suit of his own...
... Antoine Batiste and his Soul Apostles make their debut with guitarist June Yamagishi, who in real life plays (too many notes) with 'new funk' bands like the Wild Magnolias and Papa Grows Funk, though to my ears The Apostles sound a bit more like Big Sam's Funky Nation...
But I want to return to another story line I've already written about from another angle: the marching band tradition in New Orleans. This week, Desiree finally makes Antoine take up steady work as an assistant director of a school marching band led by (real life) band director Keith Hart at KIPP Believe College Prep. Marching bands do a great service for kids in New Orleans. They teach the fundamentals of music, which is mandatory job preparation in a city that must have more working musicians per capita than anywhere else. I don't know a single professional musician from New Orleans that didn't play in school band, marching in Mardi Gras parades in their flashy uniforms and playing tunes that are way funkier than your school band.
Spending time in band before and after school is also productive for kids who might otherwise be lured by crime. In this season of Treme we're beginning to catch wind of the violence that touches the lives of too many New Orleanians but viewers may not be aware that so many perpetrators and victims are young, really really young.
Students at LE Rabouin High School described their band director Dinerral Shavers as a mentor. "He was like a big brother to me," drum major Christopher Lee told me in early 2007. Dinerral was plenty busy as a substitute French teacher and snare drummer with the Hot 8 Brass Band but he took time to organize a band in the tumultuous year after Katrina to bring some stability and security to kids. The school principal took notice: “Kids that we had serious problems with, after they had band, I saw a total change in them." Others from the community stepped forward to volunteer: Katey Red was even teaching the majorettes.
Unfortunately, Dinerral was a victim of the debilitating violence that kids are generally sheltered from in the band room. While picking up his stepson, a group of teenagers approached the car, shots were fired, Dinerral was hit, and he died after managing to drive his family to safety. Police believe the bullet was intended for Dinerral's stepson, who was embroiled in a feud with another student from John McDonogh High School, but the trial collapsed when no one would testify to witnessing the shooter.
Unfortunately, Dinerral was a victim of the debilitating violence that kids are generally sheltered from in the band room. While picking up his stepson, a group of teenagers approached the car, shots were fired, Dinerral was hit, and he died after managing to drive his family to safety. Police believe the bullet was intended for Dinerral's stepson, who was embroiled in a feud with another student from John McDonogh High School, but the trial collapsed when no one would testify to witnessing the shooter.
This was the story referenced briefly at the end of this episode, when Hot 8 trumpeter Terrell Batiste gets a call from bandleader Bennie Pete about Dinerral. You might remember the actor playing Dinerral interacting with (the real) Terrell and Bennie a few episodes back, or you might have missed it since the story gets kinda lost amongst all the others competing for air time. Too many notes? Perhaps, but Treme is swinging by this point, and next week the aftermath of Dinerral's murder will no doubt get full treatment. Until then...
Monday, May 9, 2011
episode 13: politics
The air is getting thicker on Treme. Dysfunctional institutions of health care, housing, insurance, criminal justice, and city hall lay the foundation for individual struggles with money and crime. The seemingly mundane activities 'on the ground' - scheduling a meeting, getting work, going to the hospital - run together with traumatic events - hurricanes, rapes, robberies - within a suffocating atmosphere of corruption and negligence. In domains that seem as far removed from 'politics' as possible (like a community 'second line' parade), we sense that the tiniest movements and encounters are politically infused.
Soon I'll have more to discuss re: the politics of parading and the debilitating violence that has crippled the lives of New Orleanians, but for now I want to focus on one of those little crevices that, on the surface, seems inherently apolitical but the writers on Treme have shown to be fraught with disagreement and debate. Jazz. "Jazz?" you ask. Yes, jazz.
We all associate New Orleans with jazz but the question is, What kind of jazz? That's easy: traditional jazz, which, once people figured out the music came from here, became known simply as 'New Orleans jazz' or (disturbingly) 'Dixieland'. Though we eventually came to inflate the status of this music, New Orleans-style jazz was everyday dance music in the 1910s and 1920s, when it became an international craze and eventually ballooned into swing. By WWII, jazz had become benign pop music, prompting a backlash among musicians in New York looking redirect the music away from mainstream audiences by emphasizing artistry over entertainment. The progressives jettisoned the functional aspects of music as a dance form, which smacked of Uncle Tom accommodationism, to make speedy, virtuosic, discordant music - 'bebop' - meant to taken seriously.
This break with tradition, of course, instigated a new tradition that is now its own museum piece and, I would argue, has constrained experimentalism in jazz, but that's neither here nor there for the moment, because we're concerned with how jazz fared back home in New Orleans. It wasn't until the postwar period when a traditional 'revival', mustered in response to the progressivist attacks, alerted New Orleanians to their hometown's identity as the birthplace of jazz. This recognition coincided with a shift in the local economy - away from industry and towards tourism - and musicians and entrepreneurs soon realized there was money to be made by 'preserving' tradition and putting it on display in places like Preservation Hall and Jazz Fest. Music as entertainment became the calling card for New Orleans and it wasn't only jazz that benefited but any form of African American music - R&B, soul, funk, brass band - that functioned as feel-good social dance music.
This put bebop in a precarious spot. Against entertainment and not suitable for dancing, the music languished, forcing New Orleans musicians to find workarounds. Many, like Harold Battiste and the circle of musicians that were enlisted by his label AFO Records (like drummer James Black, saxophonist Nat Perillat, and trumpeter Melvin Lastie), played trad jazz gigs and made R&B recordings in order to fund their bebop endeavors. (Check them out on Barbara George's "I Know".) A few, like Battiste and especially Ellis Marsalis, became educators at schools such as the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) and University of New Orleans. Most left New Orleans. The drummers were particularly successful: Ed Blackwell with Ornette Coleman, Vernel Fournier and later Idris Muhammed with Ahmad Jamal, and Herlin Riley with Wynton Marsalis.
Modern jazz musicians from New Orleans face a double-bind. They struggle to carve out a space for themselves at home, while away they have to shed their associations with trad jazz to prove that they can can hang with 'serious' musicians. Throughout the first season, trumpeter Delmond Lambreaux was caught in the tension between being a tradition-bearer for audiences who expect familiar New Orleans standards like "When the Saints" or "Iko, Iko" and the modern jazzheads who police the boundaries of serious music. In a clunky scene from the first episode of this season, two young lions give Delmond a once-over about trad jazz musicians "caught in a tourist scam like a minstrel show." And in this week's episode, Delmond is struggling to build an audience, playing to a smattering of applause at Jazz at Lincoln Center and firing his manager for lackluster promotion.
Delmond's character is based on Donald Harrison Jr., a saxophonist who moved to New York in the 1980s along with trumpeter Terence Blanchard, following in the footsteps of Branford and Wynton Marsalis and generations of New Orleans musicians before them. Harrison's father, like Delmond, was a Mardi Gras Indian chief, and Donald Jr. has managed to maintain his connection to deeply rooted local traditions while extending the boundaries of tradition into modern jazz. (His CD "Indian Blues" is indispensable.) And a few who have come up since, including his nephew Christian Scott and pianist Jonathan Batiste (both recent grads of NOCCA and both appearing onstage w/Delmond in Treme) have prospered. But they walk a fine line playing music that is supposedly a world apart from politics but, as we get a sense of in Treme, is abundantly political.
Soon I'll have more to discuss re: the politics of parading and the debilitating violence that has crippled the lives of New Orleanians, but for now I want to focus on one of those little crevices that, on the surface, seems inherently apolitical but the writers on Treme have shown to be fraught with disagreement and debate. Jazz. "Jazz?" you ask. Yes, jazz.
We all associate New Orleans with jazz but the question is, What kind of jazz? That's easy: traditional jazz, which, once people figured out the music came from here, became known simply as 'New Orleans jazz' or (disturbingly) 'Dixieland'. Though we eventually came to inflate the status of this music, New Orleans-style jazz was everyday dance music in the 1910s and 1920s, when it became an international craze and eventually ballooned into swing. By WWII, jazz had become benign pop music, prompting a backlash among musicians in New York looking redirect the music away from mainstream audiences by emphasizing artistry over entertainment. The progressives jettisoned the functional aspects of music as a dance form, which smacked of Uncle Tom accommodationism, to make speedy, virtuosic, discordant music - 'bebop' - meant to taken seriously.
This break with tradition, of course, instigated a new tradition that is now its own museum piece and, I would argue, has constrained experimentalism in jazz, but that's neither here nor there for the moment, because we're concerned with how jazz fared back home in New Orleans. It wasn't until the postwar period when a traditional 'revival', mustered in response to the progressivist attacks, alerted New Orleanians to their hometown's identity as the birthplace of jazz. This recognition coincided with a shift in the local economy - away from industry and towards tourism - and musicians and entrepreneurs soon realized there was money to be made by 'preserving' tradition and putting it on display in places like Preservation Hall and Jazz Fest. Music as entertainment became the calling card for New Orleans and it wasn't only jazz that benefited but any form of African American music - R&B, soul, funk, brass band - that functioned as feel-good social dance music.
This put bebop in a precarious spot. Against entertainment and not suitable for dancing, the music languished, forcing New Orleans musicians to find workarounds. Many, like Harold Battiste and the circle of musicians that were enlisted by his label AFO Records (like drummer James Black, saxophonist Nat Perillat, and trumpeter Melvin Lastie), played trad jazz gigs and made R&B recordings in order to fund their bebop endeavors. (Check them out on Barbara George's "I Know".) A few, like Battiste and especially Ellis Marsalis, became educators at schools such as the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) and University of New Orleans. Most left New Orleans. The drummers were particularly successful: Ed Blackwell with Ornette Coleman, Vernel Fournier and later Idris Muhammed with Ahmad Jamal, and Herlin Riley with Wynton Marsalis.
Modern jazz musicians from New Orleans face a double-bind. They struggle to carve out a space for themselves at home, while away they have to shed their associations with trad jazz to prove that they can can hang with 'serious' musicians. Throughout the first season, trumpeter Delmond Lambreaux was caught in the tension between being a tradition-bearer for audiences who expect familiar New Orleans standards like "When the Saints" or "Iko, Iko" and the modern jazzheads who police the boundaries of serious music. In a clunky scene from the first episode of this season, two young lions give Delmond a once-over about trad jazz musicians "caught in a tourist scam like a minstrel show." And in this week's episode, Delmond is struggling to build an audience, playing to a smattering of applause at Jazz at Lincoln Center and firing his manager for lackluster promotion.
Delmond's character is based on Donald Harrison Jr., a saxophonist who moved to New York in the 1980s along with trumpeter Terence Blanchard, following in the footsteps of Branford and Wynton Marsalis and generations of New Orleans musicians before them. Harrison's father, like Delmond, was a Mardi Gras Indian chief, and Donald Jr. has managed to maintain his connection to deeply rooted local traditions while extending the boundaries of tradition into modern jazz. (His CD "Indian Blues" is indispensable.) And a few who have come up since, including his nephew Christian Scott and pianist Jonathan Batiste (both recent grads of NOCCA and both appearing onstage w/Delmond in Treme) have prospered. But they walk a fine line playing music that is supposedly a world apart from politics but, as we get a sense of in Treme, is abundantly political.
Monday, May 2, 2011
episode 12: infrastructures
In last week's episode, the premier of Season 2, the scriptwriters were tasked with updating us on returning characters and introducing new ones, and I found it slow and clunky, like a little tugboat trying to pull a big steamship up the Mississippi. There are a LOT of storylines in this show, but thankfully this week everything cruised along at a nice clip, and - most significantly - the camera is taking a step back from the close-up of individuals' experiences to give us a more panoramic 'wide-shot' of what happened post-Katrina. Yes, there is a new face on Treme, with the lovely name of 'infrastructure', and we get to see her in all her glory: Failed criminal justice! Political corruption! Corporate greed! And more!...
... Lieutenant Terry Colson bristles as the police department comes under fire for corruption and misconduct, including the police killing of two men, one mentally disabled, on the Danziger Bridge in the days after the flood...
... Desiree runs into a fellow school teacher who is reapplying for the job she lost when the state took advantage of the tumult to dissolve the teacher's union and takeover the school system...
... Big Chief Albert Lambreaux's insurance company pays him a sum total of $495 "and no cents" for his flooded home, and he can expect to wait a long, long time to get whatever the state's "Road Home" program decides to give him...
... Meanwhile, two new characters, smarmy developer Nelson Hidalgo and his good-ol-boy banker, discover there's money in them thar flooded neighborhoods and start scheming on how to capitalize on disaster. In fact, ALL of the new characters on Treme - including two local politicians eventually convicted of corruption, Bill Jefferson and Oliver Thomas - have been added to give viewers a sense of the fraught politics and economics of recovery...
Which brings me to the debut of the Hot 8 Brass Band as a new kind of 'group character' that will appear throughout Season 2, which covers the 'long winter' of 2006-2007 when the Hot 8's snare drummer Dinerral Shavers was shot and killed. And there we see Dinerral standing at the bar next to his bandleader, tuba player Bennie Pete, both bemoaning the violence in their hometown, which has re-emerged with a vengeance after a period of relative quiet when the city was de-populated. "You're from New Orleans, act like you're from New Orleans," says the actor playing Dinerral of the violent thugs (a line that Richard Barber, who is directing the documentary The Whole Gritty City and was editor of a 48 Hours special about Dinerral, says Dinerral actually spoke in an interview with CBS months before his death.) But viewers are also made aware that interpersonal violence stems from more pervasive problems when Bennie refers to Hot 8 trombonist Joseph Williams, who was shot and killed by police officers about a year before the storm, in 2004. Tragedy struck the band more randomly when trumpeter Terrell 'Burger' Batiste, who had evacuated to Atlanta after Katrina, was struck by a car in the breakdown lane of the Interstate and lost both his legs. (We see Terrell in an earlier scene being courted by Antoine to join his new band.)
It's a bit bracing for me to see these stories play out on Treme, since they feature prominently in a book I'm writing about New Orleans brass bands, but Bennie and others featured in the show (including Dinerral's sister Nakita) applaud they way the show has handled them. I'll post the excerpt from my book about the police killing of Joseph "Shotgun Joe" Williams here for those looking for more info.
Another story that A) I'm writing about, B) is also woven into this episode of Treme, and C) is true, is the firing of DJ Davis from radio station WWOZ. The 'real' Davis was let go in 2003 for what station director Dwayne Breashears referred to as "tardiness, erratic and sometimes disruptive behavior and non-adherance to the music that should be played on the Nerw Orleans Music Show". As on Treme, what got Davis fired in real life (besides acting like Davis) was playing hip-hop, specifically a regional form of hip-hop known as 'bounce'. There's a lot of great material on the web about this local style of rap - including this exhibit at the Ogden Museum, this documentary film, and this blog - so I'll just make a quick point related to the show:
Bounce was a homegrown style that became identified with its own rhythms (the 'Triggerman' and 'Brown' beats), dance moves (i.e. the saltshaker), and group chants (especially shout outs to neighborhoods, wards, and housing projects). All of these musical characteristics point to the community aspect of bounce as a social music that audiences sing and dance to together at nightclubs or in DJ parties in project yards. That describes a few centuries of music in New Orleans, and yet the controversy surrounding hip-hop as a youth music that foregrounds explicit lyrics and images has made it a tough fit for those traditionalists who police the boundaries of New Orleans culture, such as the 'guardians of the groove' over at WWOZ. As part of the bigger question, "What is New Orleans Music?", it has forced those of us progressives on the other side to argue on behalf of hip-hop's place in the history of New Orleans Music.
It's a messy debate, and one of the things I like about this episode of Treme was its portrayal of the tension that permeates daily life, in something as minute as the controversy over a style of music or as colossal as violence at both interpersonal and structural levels.
... Lieutenant Terry Colson bristles as the police department comes under fire for corruption and misconduct, including the police killing of two men, one mentally disabled, on the Danziger Bridge in the days after the flood...
... Desiree runs into a fellow school teacher who is reapplying for the job she lost when the state took advantage of the tumult to dissolve the teacher's union and takeover the school system...
... Big Chief Albert Lambreaux's insurance company pays him a sum total of $495 "and no cents" for his flooded home, and he can expect to wait a long, long time to get whatever the state's "Road Home" program decides to give him...
... Meanwhile, two new characters, smarmy developer Nelson Hidalgo and his good-ol-boy banker, discover there's money in them thar flooded neighborhoods and start scheming on how to capitalize on disaster. In fact, ALL of the new characters on Treme - including two local politicians eventually convicted of corruption, Bill Jefferson and Oliver Thomas - have been added to give viewers a sense of the fraught politics and economics of recovery...
Which brings me to the debut of the Hot 8 Brass Band as a new kind of 'group character' that will appear throughout Season 2, which covers the 'long winter' of 2006-2007 when the Hot 8's snare drummer Dinerral Shavers was shot and killed. And there we see Dinerral standing at the bar next to his bandleader, tuba player Bennie Pete, both bemoaning the violence in their hometown, which has re-emerged with a vengeance after a period of relative quiet when the city was de-populated. "You're from New Orleans, act like you're from New Orleans," says the actor playing Dinerral of the violent thugs (a line that Richard Barber, who is directing the documentary The Whole Gritty City and was editor of a 48 Hours special about Dinerral, says Dinerral actually spoke in an interview with CBS months before his death.) But viewers are also made aware that interpersonal violence stems from more pervasive problems when Bennie refers to Hot 8 trombonist Joseph Williams, who was shot and killed by police officers about a year before the storm, in 2004. Tragedy struck the band more randomly when trumpeter Terrell 'Burger' Batiste, who had evacuated to Atlanta after Katrina, was struck by a car in the breakdown lane of the Interstate and lost both his legs. (We see Terrell in an earlier scene being courted by Antoine to join his new band.)
It's a bit bracing for me to see these stories play out on Treme, since they feature prominently in a book I'm writing about New Orleans brass bands, but Bennie and others featured in the show (including Dinerral's sister Nakita) applaud they way the show has handled them. I'll post the excerpt from my book about the police killing of Joseph "Shotgun Joe" Williams here for those looking for more info.
 |
| Snare drummer Dinerral Shavers with Hot 8 bandleader Bennie Pete on tuba. |
Another story that A) I'm writing about, B) is also woven into this episode of Treme, and C) is true, is the firing of DJ Davis from radio station WWOZ. The 'real' Davis was let go in 2003 for what station director Dwayne Breashears referred to as "tardiness, erratic and sometimes disruptive behavior and non-adherance to the music that should be played on the Nerw Orleans Music Show". As on Treme, what got Davis fired in real life (besides acting like Davis) was playing hip-hop, specifically a regional form of hip-hop known as 'bounce'. There's a lot of great material on the web about this local style of rap - including this exhibit at the Ogden Museum, this documentary film, and this blog - so I'll just make a quick point related to the show:
Bounce was a homegrown style that became identified with its own rhythms (the 'Triggerman' and 'Brown' beats), dance moves (i.e. the saltshaker), and group chants (especially shout outs to neighborhoods, wards, and housing projects). All of these musical characteristics point to the community aspect of bounce as a social music that audiences sing and dance to together at nightclubs or in DJ parties in project yards. That describes a few centuries of music in New Orleans, and yet the controversy surrounding hip-hop as a youth music that foregrounds explicit lyrics and images has made it a tough fit for those traditionalists who police the boundaries of New Orleans culture, such as the 'guardians of the groove' over at WWOZ. As part of the bigger question, "What is New Orleans Music?", it has forced those of us progressives on the other side to argue on behalf of hip-hop's place in the history of New Orleans Music.
It's a messy debate, and one of the things I like about this episode of Treme was its portrayal of the tension that permeates daily life, in something as minute as the controversy over a style of music or as colossal as violence at both interpersonal and structural levels.
Monday, April 25, 2011
episode 11: interventions
In Fall 2007, I collaborated on a brass band workshop with the Rebirth Brass Band and students from school marching bands all over New Orleans. At the end of the night, snare drummer Derrick Tabb asked me if I would help him launch an afterschool music program targeted towards younger kids who were not getting being educated in music in their schools. I was able to get a few instruments and a little bit of money donated, but it was the herculean efforts of Derrick and Allison Reinhardt that got Roots of Music up and running.
On May 22, 2008, Roots of Music launched with Derrick, Lawrence Rawlins, Allen Dejan, and Shoan Ruffin teaching about 40 kids aged 9-14 the rudiments of music. Our talks with the school district had gone nowhere but Tipitina's offered up their club as a rehearsal space, so every weekday, all summer long, the teachers and students piled into the hot, dark, musty bar, beaming with enthusiastic smiles.
Seeing Reginald Williams open up a brand new tuba case and hold the instrument for the first time on that day is something I'll never forget...
Later that summer I saw Reginald standing around after rehearsal, so with Derrick's permission I offered him a ride and he politely declined, saying he was waiting for his brother Jaron to finish practicing. Jaron then appeared, trumpet case in hand, so we climbed into the car, I asked where I should take them, and we were all stunned to find that we live a few blocks from each other.
Witnessing "Diggy" and "Bear" learn how to play music has made me realize the power of music in positively shaping the lives of kids in New Orleans. Listening to them practice scales on my street, helping them figure out the melodies to brass band songs in my yard, and watching them march in Mardi Gras parades in their resplendent Roots of Music Marching Crusaders uniforms is a endless supply of pride and joy. Like many before them, they have music in their blood - Diggy's dad is the rapper Tec-9 from the 90s rap group UNLV and their uncle is trombonist 'Big' Sam Williams - and like many before them, they've had music teachers who have intervened in their lives and taught them how to be productive young men in addition to teaching music.
Diggy and Bear lost their older brother to violence but they didn't let this tragedy slow them down: Diggy graduated from Roots of Music (which now runs a fully operational 'school' at the Louisiana State Museum with over 100 students) and he plays trombone with the greatest high school marching band in the city, O. Perry Walker, led by Lawrence Rawlins' brother Wilbert. You can see him and his brother featured in a preview for the amazing documentary The Whole Gritty City.
You can also see Bear throughout Season Two of Treme. There he is in the opening scene, practicing the tunes to "When the Saints" and "I'll Fly Away" while walking past cemeteries on All Saints Day and murder scenes that same night.
As for the rest of the episode, I'm bowing out of that discussion. I'm no TV critic, I'm no fan of the music that happened to be featured this particular week, and I've had some people positively intervene in my own life at various points who have taught me: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
Better to praise Treme for sponsoring a fundraiser for Roots of Music and the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic earlier this year, and to suggest that you help support Roots of Music by making a donation or attending their Marching to New Orleans Gala on May 20.
On May 22, 2008, Roots of Music launched with Derrick, Lawrence Rawlins, Allen Dejan, and Shoan Ruffin teaching about 40 kids aged 9-14 the rudiments of music. Our talks with the school district had gone nowhere but Tipitina's offered up their club as a rehearsal space, so every weekday, all summer long, the teachers and students piled into the hot, dark, musty bar, beaming with enthusiastic smiles.
Seeing Reginald Williams open up a brand new tuba case and hold the instrument for the first time on that day is something I'll never forget...
 |
| Diggy |
Later that summer I saw Reginald standing around after rehearsal, so with Derrick's permission I offered him a ride and he politely declined, saying he was waiting for his brother Jaron to finish practicing. Jaron then appeared, trumpet case in hand, so we climbed into the car, I asked where I should take them, and we were all stunned to find that we live a few blocks from each other.
 |
| Bear |
Witnessing "Diggy" and "Bear" learn how to play music has made me realize the power of music in positively shaping the lives of kids in New Orleans. Listening to them practice scales on my street, helping them figure out the melodies to brass band songs in my yard, and watching them march in Mardi Gras parades in their resplendent Roots of Music Marching Crusaders uniforms is a endless supply of pride and joy. Like many before them, they have music in their blood - Diggy's dad is the rapper Tec-9 from the 90s rap group UNLV and their uncle is trombonist 'Big' Sam Williams - and like many before them, they've had music teachers who have intervened in their lives and taught them how to be productive young men in addition to teaching music.
 | |||
| The short-lived Street Runners Brass Band posing for a group shot in my yard, Summer 2009 |
Diggy and Bear lost their older brother to violence but they didn't let this tragedy slow them down: Diggy graduated from Roots of Music (which now runs a fully operational 'school' at the Louisiana State Museum with over 100 students) and he plays trombone with the greatest high school marching band in the city, O. Perry Walker, led by Lawrence Rawlins' brother Wilbert. You can see him and his brother featured in a preview for the amazing documentary The Whole Gritty City.
You can also see Bear throughout Season Two of Treme. There he is in the opening scene, practicing the tunes to "When the Saints" and "I'll Fly Away" while walking past cemeteries on All Saints Day and murder scenes that same night.
As for the rest of the episode, I'm bowing out of that discussion. I'm no TV critic, I'm no fan of the music that happened to be featured this particular week, and I've had some people positively intervene in my own life at various points who have taught me: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
Better to praise Treme for sponsoring a fundraiser for Roots of Music and the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic earlier this year, and to suggest that you help support Roots of Music by making a donation or attending their Marching to New Orleans Gala on May 20.
Monday, June 21, 2010
episode 10: renewal
For 90 minutes last night the only sound in my house was the din of the TV and the hypnotized silence of four viewers glued to the set, interrupted only by the occasional weep or gasp.
The season finale of Treme was emotionally gripping.
Frankly, draining.
Intimate stories of heartache and anger counterbalanced by lightness; visions of feathered people, stoic buildings, and abandoned vehicles emerging from shadowy hues; everpresent sounds of poignant guitars and rejoicing horns. David Simon went solo on the script for this one and he created a monumental sendoff to what has to be the most illuminating season of television about this fragile city. ("Sure was better that K-ville," was the first thing my wife said as we snapped back into the real world.)
We didn't need a cliffhanger to bring us back for more next year. The few lingering questions - Will Janette flee the Big Apple and dart back to the Big Easy? Will Creighton get his jazz funeral? Will Annie get wacked by Sonny or find comfort with Davis or both? - could easily go unresolved in order to make way for new themes, a la The Wire. But the changing of the seasons raises the question of renewal, of what directions the screenwriters will take the show in as they move it forward, and it's a testament to the show's effectiveness that so many New Orleanians have an opinion on this.
Here's mine.
The Treme team are masters of evocation. The words, the music, the cinematography are beyond captivating; they're capturing. The show is a fictional keyhole into intense realities and like all art it can condense the really real in a way that allows viewers/readers/listeners to make connections we would otherwise pass up or take for granted. The connections in season one are all about intimacy: between families, friends, strangers, the city they share, and ultimately between the creators of the show and a subject that is so clearly meaningful to them.
Treme stays close to the ground, offering such a revealing close-up of emotional connection that we walk away each Sunday evening knowing more than we ever knew about this city and its people. But there is a disconnect happening as well, and it is not at the ground level, or even at the local level, but at a much broader level.
The impact of Katrina on the lives of New Orleanians is immeasurable but the root causes and lasting effects of this impact are not. Katrina was a systemic failure of institutions before, during, and after the flood. Long before August 29, 2005, government agencies laid a pattern of neglect from lost wetlands to shoddy levees to the massive reduction of FEMA in favor of Homeland Security. Dysfunctional school systems and the insecurities of service work ensured that black New Orleanians were more vulnerable to the failed response of the flood. And do I need to even address that particular failure, or can I just point to a few anecdotes like, oh say, the fact that tens of thousands of people were stranded outside the Convention Center for five days while a military commander prepared an armed attack mission to deliver water? Or the fact that the troops and the megacorporate winners of no-bid contracts could not be effectively deployed to help Americans because they were fighting Iraqis? That the city police department is so infested with corruption that there are currently eight federal criminal investigations into officers' actions in the immediate aftermath of Katrina?
Fast forward to operation Deepwater Horizon (or are we stuck on pause?): Governmental deregulation once again leading to corporate gluttony and, go figure, another massive crisis to give those in the Gulf a sense of shared purpose through cultural and material loss.
These institutions shape the lives of New Orleanians not because we live in some isolated babylon but because we are Americans who happen to have paid the dearest for the ceaseless expansion of this dysregulation nation since 9/11.
The impact of 9/11 couldn't be portrayed only through New York's financial 'culture' or Washington's political culture because the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon were (intentionally) emblematic of the far reach of empire. The deregulation of Wall Street generated a financial crisis that changed all of our lives. Katrina, too, can stand as a lesson to all Americans, not only because of the possible eradication of a singular place, but because it was itself an ominous sign of trouble at home, in your home, wherever you are, whether or not you can walk down the street and order a po-boy and dance at a second line.
Of course, the Treme team has no responsibility to make these connections. And it's not as if the characters walk around in a vacuum: there are city councilmen and insurance agents and good cops and bad cops too. But this team is so abundantly capable to make this case to the American people; to harness the power of dramatic fiction that they use so effectively in intimate settings to situate these day-to-day experiences at the subterranean level of global connections without sacrificing the ground-level closeness.
Before Treme aired I read somewhere that Simon thought his story of New Orleans would resonate with audiences unfamiliar with the city because Katrina was a bellweather for the financial crisis, a foreboding sign of institutions run amuck. This piqued the interest of New Orleanians (OK, maybe just me) because part of the brilliance of The Wire was its capacity to show how institutional corruption effects the lives of policemen, politicians, dealers, dock workers, and school kids.
Now, Treme is not The Wire and it shouldn't be. There is no romance of distinction for Baltimore and that gave the creative team an almost blank-slate on which to inscribe politics at the everyday level through the lives of diverse characters. New Orleans and Katrina are too distinctive to permit that degree of interchangeability: Baltimore could maybe be your town or a town near you, and the devastating effects of bureaucratic corruption resonate everywhere, but New Orleans is not Indianapolis and Katrina is nothing but Katrina.
An unprecedented disaster and an exceptional place in the hands of great poets makes for compelling drama, but when all the 'otherness' of New Orleans creates an intoxicating fantasy world of local culture then the opportunity to challenge viewers about the state of the nation is lessened. I worry that Post-Katrina New Orleans could become just another fantastical storyscape of fundamentalist bigotry or backwoods vampirism in the eyes of viewers who might feel more connection and proximity to the characters if they saw how their lives were shaped by the same forces.
It's not a fair comparison, of course, and the surreality of black men in feathered costumes or crowds of mourners dancing in a graveyard does not have the innocuous, cartoonish, fringe quality of Mormons or bloodsuckers. But neither is New Orleans an imaginary museum of curiosities - a thing apart - because it is tied to America and the world through connections that are not readily visible. I say make more of an effort to uncover them, for the sake of New Orleans and for the sake of good drama too.
There are signs that the creative minds at Treme will complicate things in this subterranean direction. Regardless, I'm looking forward. But until then I'm signing off. I've got to write a book and that requires me to move off of the blogosphere and onto the word processor. See you in season two.
The season finale of Treme was emotionally gripping.
Frankly, draining.
Intimate stories of heartache and anger counterbalanced by lightness; visions of feathered people, stoic buildings, and abandoned vehicles emerging from shadowy hues; everpresent sounds of poignant guitars and rejoicing horns. David Simon went solo on the script for this one and he created a monumental sendoff to what has to be the most illuminating season of television about this fragile city. ("Sure was better that K-ville," was the first thing my wife said as we snapped back into the real world.)
We didn't need a cliffhanger to bring us back for more next year. The few lingering questions - Will Janette flee the Big Apple and dart back to the Big Easy? Will Creighton get his jazz funeral? Will Annie get wacked by Sonny or find comfort with Davis or both? - could easily go unresolved in order to make way for new themes, a la The Wire. But the changing of the seasons raises the question of renewal, of what directions the screenwriters will take the show in as they move it forward, and it's a testament to the show's effectiveness that so many New Orleanians have an opinion on this.
Here's mine.
The Treme team are masters of evocation. The words, the music, the cinematography are beyond captivating; they're capturing. The show is a fictional keyhole into intense realities and like all art it can condense the really real in a way that allows viewers/readers/listeners to make connections we would otherwise pass up or take for granted. The connections in season one are all about intimacy: between families, friends, strangers, the city they share, and ultimately between the creators of the show and a subject that is so clearly meaningful to them.
Treme stays close to the ground, offering such a revealing close-up of emotional connection that we walk away each Sunday evening knowing more than we ever knew about this city and its people. But there is a disconnect happening as well, and it is not at the ground level, or even at the local level, but at a much broader level.
The impact of Katrina on the lives of New Orleanians is immeasurable but the root causes and lasting effects of this impact are not. Katrina was a systemic failure of institutions before, during, and after the flood. Long before August 29, 2005, government agencies laid a pattern of neglect from lost wetlands to shoddy levees to the massive reduction of FEMA in favor of Homeland Security. Dysfunctional school systems and the insecurities of service work ensured that black New Orleanians were more vulnerable to the failed response of the flood. And do I need to even address that particular failure, or can I just point to a few anecdotes like, oh say, the fact that tens of thousands of people were stranded outside the Convention Center for five days while a military commander prepared an armed attack mission to deliver water? Or the fact that the troops and the megacorporate winners of no-bid contracts could not be effectively deployed to help Americans because they were fighting Iraqis? That the city police department is so infested with corruption that there are currently eight federal criminal investigations into officers' actions in the immediate aftermath of Katrina?
Fast forward to operation Deepwater Horizon (or are we stuck on pause?): Governmental deregulation once again leading to corporate gluttony and, go figure, another massive crisis to give those in the Gulf a sense of shared purpose through cultural and material loss.
These institutions shape the lives of New Orleanians not because we live in some isolated babylon but because we are Americans who happen to have paid the dearest for the ceaseless expansion of this dysregulation nation since 9/11.
The impact of 9/11 couldn't be portrayed only through New York's financial 'culture' or Washington's political culture because the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon were (intentionally) emblematic of the far reach of empire. The deregulation of Wall Street generated a financial crisis that changed all of our lives. Katrina, too, can stand as a lesson to all Americans, not only because of the possible eradication of a singular place, but because it was itself an ominous sign of trouble at home, in your home, wherever you are, whether or not you can walk down the street and order a po-boy and dance at a second line.
Of course, the Treme team has no responsibility to make these connections. And it's not as if the characters walk around in a vacuum: there are city councilmen and insurance agents and good cops and bad cops too. But this team is so abundantly capable to make this case to the American people; to harness the power of dramatic fiction that they use so effectively in intimate settings to situate these day-to-day experiences at the subterranean level of global connections without sacrificing the ground-level closeness.
Before Treme aired I read somewhere that Simon thought his story of New Orleans would resonate with audiences unfamiliar with the city because Katrina was a bellweather for the financial crisis, a foreboding sign of institutions run amuck. This piqued the interest of New Orleanians (OK, maybe just me) because part of the brilliance of The Wire was its capacity to show how institutional corruption effects the lives of policemen, politicians, dealers, dock workers, and school kids.
Now, Treme is not The Wire and it shouldn't be. There is no romance of distinction for Baltimore and that gave the creative team an almost blank-slate on which to inscribe politics at the everyday level through the lives of diverse characters. New Orleans and Katrina are too distinctive to permit that degree of interchangeability: Baltimore could maybe be your town or a town near you, and the devastating effects of bureaucratic corruption resonate everywhere, but New Orleans is not Indianapolis and Katrina is nothing but Katrina.
An unprecedented disaster and an exceptional place in the hands of great poets makes for compelling drama, but when all the 'otherness' of New Orleans creates an intoxicating fantasy world of local culture then the opportunity to challenge viewers about the state of the nation is lessened. I worry that Post-Katrina New Orleans could become just another fantastical storyscape of fundamentalist bigotry or backwoods vampirism in the eyes of viewers who might feel more connection and proximity to the characters if they saw how their lives were shaped by the same forces.
It's not a fair comparison, of course, and the surreality of black men in feathered costumes or crowds of mourners dancing in a graveyard does not have the innocuous, cartoonish, fringe quality of Mormons or bloodsuckers. But neither is New Orleans an imaginary museum of curiosities - a thing apart - because it is tied to America and the world through connections that are not readily visible. I say make more of an effort to uncover them, for the sake of New Orleans and for the sake of good drama too.
There are signs that the creative minds at Treme will complicate things in this subterranean direction. Regardless, I'm looking forward. But until then I'm signing off. I've got to write a book and that requires me to move off of the blogosphere and onto the word processor. See you in season two.
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