[Dixielandjazz] New Orleans

[Steve barbone]

Posted on Thu, Apr. 27, 2006 @ Sun Herald.com Gulfport/Biloxi MS.

New Orleans residents hope jazz festival provides signs of rebirth
BY DAN DELUCA - Knight Ridder Newspapers

NEW ORLEANS - Outside a boarded-up Foot Locker on the edge of the French
Quarter, a joyful noise is being made by a teenage brass band whose name -
To Be Continued - hangs like a question mark in the air. Their song is the
gospel hymn "I'll Fly Away," jazzed-up, New Orleans-style, full of promise
that the worst is over and good times lie ahead.

Residents of this storm-ravaged birthplace of jazz - and wellspring of
American popular music - cling to the belief that their city's cultural
lifeblood, its very identity, has not been lost. And, despite all they've
been through, that the bon temps will once again roulez.

Their hopes will be put to the test Friday, at the start of the 37th - and
most significant - New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

"It's important economically, and therapeutically," says R&B singer Irma
Thomas, a Hurricane Katrina evacuee now living in Gonzales, La.

"Even though there's lot of pros and cons as far as the government" - get
ready for a politicized JazzFest, amid a contentious mayoral race - "it's
important to show the world that there's a reason to come back. It's showing
that the city is not giving up on its culture."

The festival runs through Sunday and again next weekend at the rehabbed
Fairgrounds racetrack, where workers were busy Thursday with last-minute
hammering.

With a big-name line-up whose first weekend alone includes Bruce
Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Herbie Hancock, the Meters, Ani DiFranco, and
Juvenile - the token New Orleans gangsta rapper - the fest aims to
jump-start New Orleans' staggered tourism industry.

Last year, JazzFest drew more than 400,000 people, and pumped $285 million
into local businesses, according to Angele Davis, of Louisiana's department
of Culture and Recreation. But since Katrina, says JazzFest producer Quint
Davis, the city is losing $15 million in tourism dollars a day.

The festival was in limbo until January, when Shell Oil ponied up
sponsorship money, helping meet the needs of JazzFest, many of whose
regulars - local Mardi Gras Indians, zydeco accordionists, swamp rockers and
Dixieland jazz outfits - have been spread hither and yon by Katrina and
Rita.

This year, 100,000 advance tickets have been sold, about the same as last
year, said promotions director Matthew Goldman. He said the festival is
traditionally is a walk-up business, and organizers are "very optimistic" it
will be a banner year.

But in a city whose pre-Katrina population of 450,000 is now less than half
that, nobody knows how many people will show. Although some musicians, like
trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and songwriter Allen Toussaint, have moved back,
others have not and have no plans to.

"It freaked me out when I went back for Mardi Gras, because it used to be 65
percent black and 35 percent white, and now it's the opposite," Ivan
Neville, of the Big Easy's first family of funk, told The Dallas Morning
News. Neville, now living in Austin, Texas, said, "I just can't see going
back for a long time."

Davis' aim is to show that "some semblance of normalcy" has returned. The
tourism boosters' claims that the hospitality industry is 90 percent back
appear borne out if a traveler sticks to the guide book. Walking through the
French Quarter, you'd never know a cataclysm had hit.

That is, if not for the shops selling the T-shirts "Make Levees: Not War"
and "Willie Nagin and the Chocolate Factory: Semi-Sweet and A Little Nuts,"
referring to Mayor Ray Nagin's remark that New Orleans will be a "chocolate
city."

But take a right off St. Charles, where the street car named Desire isn't
running, on what locals call "the devastation tour" into the Broadmoor
neighborhood. Block after block of homes destroyed by fire and water sit
crumbling on abandoned streets.

There are plenty of efforts to help displaced musicians, like
TipitinasFoundation.org. Habitat for Humanity broke ground this week on a
Musicians Village in the Ninth Ward. But if, as jazz patriarch Ellis
Marsalis says, "music bubbles up from the streets" here, what happens when
the streets are deserted?

"It's just phenomenal the Third World treatment they've gotten from the
federal government," said singer and pianist Dr. John, the New Orleans
native who was born Mac Rebennack. "This city is the country's greatest
ambassador to the world with its music."

He fears that if developers turn it into a "shuck-ass Disneyland, it ain't
going to survive. The politicians just want to push it into something they
can make more money on. They don't give a damn about these people."

For many New Orleans musicians, business has been good on the road but
hurting at home - if they have one. "After the hurricane, a lot of people
had New Orleans on their mind," Bennie Pete, tuba player for the Hot 8 Brass
Band, said before a gig at Tipitina's on Wednesday. "We got a lot of
bookings."

But keeping the band together has been a trial. Pete's family lost its home
in the Ninth Ward so he has been living in nearby Kenner. Other band members
are as far-flung as Houston, Atlanta and New York.

"They say they want to rebuild the city, but do they want to rebuild it for
us?" said the bandleader. JazzFest, he said, promises exposure to a wider
audience, but "other than that, it's just another gig."

Even if JazzFest isn't about to make New Orleans' problems disappear, music
fans hope that it's a start.

"New Orleans is the soul of the country," says Mark Adler, of Wynnewood,
Pa., who has gone to JazzFest with his wife, Alice, for the past 18 years.
"We feel it's important to support the city, and it's music."

The strength of that connection makes New Orleanians, like Scott Aiges, who
promotes music for the state of Louisiana, think that the crowds will be
big.

"It's important in the same way Mardi Gras was important," he says. "People
who live here need JazzFest, psychologically and emotionally. ... Because we
need to know that all of the things we hold dear are still here for us. And
our culture is still happening."