New Orleans Revisited

In my February column, I reported on various jazz education initiatives underway in New Orleans, based on my January visit there. A follow-up visit in August uncovered more initiatives, and I'm here to tell you about them!

My trip this time was for the purpose of doing a demo of TJEN's prototype Traditional Jazz Curriculum Kit at the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference and Roots Music Gathering. This is an annual convention that draws music professionals from all segments of the industry -- musicians, producers, entertainment lawyers, educators, record labels, historians, merchants, you name it. I was there at the invitation of conference producer Eric Cager, Executive Director of the Music Business Institute, with whom I had met on my trip in January. The conference consisted of panels, seminars, performances and interviews, with simultaneous conference tracks devoted to legal aspects of the music business; film production; career management; and the preservation of "roots music" (jazz, blues, Cajun, etc.). I took in as much as I could in the two days I was there and learned of several promising new educational initiatives.

Many touching stories were heard at a panel entitled "Recovery in the New Orleans Community: A Report Card and Prospectus for the Future" wherein the directors of various recovery initiatives in the city gave an update of what they've been able to accomplish and what remains to be done. Education plays a prominent role in these initiatives. The Tipitina's Foundation reported that their "Instruments Are Coming" program so far has provided $1.8 million worth of musical instruments to 67 local schools. They also provide scholarships and are supporting a program called "Roots of Music," run by Rebirth Brass Band drummer Derrick Tabb, which teaches the brass band tradition to young folks. In addition, they've launched the Tipitina's Tykes Summer Camp for 4-to-6-year-olds, which exposes them to New Orleans culture and heritage, and they send older kids to a summer internship program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, which teaches them the ins and outs of the music business.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), better known as "the Grammies," is filming local oral histories under its "Living History" program and is bringing artists into local schools under its "Grammies in the Schools" program. Habitat for Humanity's Musicians Village, a neighborhood of new housing populated predominantly by musicians, is building an Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. This facility will be dedicated to education, complete with a theater, recording studio and classrooms. Meanwhile, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation is now busy preparing the building next to its headquarters for its planned Heritage School of Music after-school jazz instruction program.

Benny Jones, leader of the Tremé Brass Band, spoke of the importance of that band's tutelage of young players in the brass band tradition through the "Music of All Ages" Saturday morning training program sponsored by the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. The band is also creating a "Tuba Fats Square" in memory of the late beloved sousaphonist "Tuba Fats" Lacen. This will be located at St. Philip and North Robertson and is envisioned as a place where older musicians will teach the music to younger musicians. The band is even donating some of the proceeds from their CD sales towards instruments for kids.

"This community has shown a remarkable will to come home and perpetuate these traditions," observed Jordan Hirsch of Sweet Home New Orleans. To which Don Marshall of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation added, "We have to get across the importance of music and arts education in our education system."

The above-named initiatives are just the education-oriented nuggets I gleaned from the panel; they are in addition to the many efforts of the above and other organizations to provide relief to working musicians in the form of financial aid, housing, counseling, employment, medical care and referral services. Bless them all!

I participated in a panel devoted to music education, which discussed the need to keep the city's musical traditions alive in the classroom. It was in this context that I demonstrated the TJEN curriculum. This got a very positive response. I also caught a later panel that dealt with the educational aspects of film. This discussion focused on the need to digitize and disseminate the many extant video oral histories via the Internet (websites, You Tube and such).

While making the evening rounds of the city's jazz spots, I caught the Tremé Brass Band at Preservation Hall. The band put on a terrific show, spearheaded by the blazing cornet of Kenneth Terry, a player I hadn't heard before but won't soon forget. Midway through the first set, the band announced a sit-in, and a diminutive fellow with a trumpet took a seat next to Kenneth. This young man then proceeded to tear through "Wolverine Blues," playing a lead that was driving and confident, with mature jazz phrasing. The place went nuts! My eyes and my ears were having one heck of a fight. He then launched into "Bourbon Street Parade," taking the vocal and then trading scat vocal "fours" with Kenneth, and the audience went even more nuts! After taking his bows, he was whisked away. At the end of the show I asked Kenneth about what I had just seen. The young man's name is John Michael, and he's a student of Kenneth's in the Jazz Park's "Music of All Ages" program. I asked his age, figuring he must look a lot younger than he is. "He just turned 12!" replied Kenneth, and my jaw hit the floor. This unexpected encounter certainly underscored Benny Jones' comments made at the conference.

I couldn't stay for the full conference. I missed a promising panel called Preservation and Presentation of Roots Music, as well as the culminating event, a brunch featuring 97-year-old trumpeter Lionel Ferbos doing a live oral history interview and performing with his Louisiana Shakers. Wish I could have caught these, but gigs beckoned back home. Still, my two days in town reaffirmed what I learned in January: New Orleans is well along the road to recovery, and its musical traditions have a front seat.

October 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

P.O. Box 19068, Minneapolis, MN 55419.