[Dixielandjazz] Preservation Hall JB & Cincinnati Pops

[Steve barbone]

New Orleans institution picks up the pieces
By Walter Tunis CONTRIBUTING MUSIC CRITIC - Lexington (KY) Herald

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band will be a guest of the Cincinnati Pops
Orchestra next weekend.

It was a happy day during a sad time.

Last weekend, as a battered New Orleans put on its bravest face for the
annual Jazz and Heritage Festival, a modest but profound music haven came
alive again.

Preservation Hall was back in business.

It was an occasion, to be sure, with U2 guitarist The Edge jamming with the
club's internationally acclaimed jazz band on an impromptu version of
Vertigo. But for Ben Jaffe, son of the owners who started Preservation Hall
in 1961 and current director and overseer of the Preservation Hall Jazz
Band, the day of rejoicing was hardly at hand.

"The moment was bittersweet in many ways,"

he said by phone last week from New Orleans. "Music returned to a very
important place. But it's also sad.

"I mean, it was good last weekend. It will be good next weekend. But how
will it be in three months? We don't know. The reopening doesn't mean that
everything is OK."

The festival did its part to provide a break from the city's recovery from
Hurricane Katrina. It also served as a well-publicized reminder of New
Orleans' musical heritage. But the struggles of Preservation Hall and its
band, which performs as a guest of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra next
weekend, are reminders of Katrina's toll.

"Five members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band that will be playing in
Cincinnati lost their homes, their cars and their instruments," Jaffe said.
"They're now living outside of New Orleans for the first time in their
lives."

Until last summer, Jaffe's role in spreading the musical joy and faith of
New Orleans was promoting Preservation Hall. In his youth, he listened to
scores of jazz greats who mixed Dixieland, swing and an exuberant
performance sound at the club. He joined the Preservation band as a bassist
in 1993. By 2004, Jaffe had begun a record label to distribute the
ensemble's albums.

With an estimated 70 percent of the city's musicians without homes, jobs
and/or instruments after Katrina, he and wife Sarah began the New Orleans
Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund. It has raised and distributed more than
$500,000.

After Katrina, "We evacuated to Lafayette. That's where I started getting
phone calls from musicians who didn't have any access to money. Their ATM
cards didn't work. The banks shut down. After that, we didn't wait for
musicians to contact us. We went out and found them."

While Preservation Hall itself sustained minimal damage from Katrina, the
displacement of thousands of musicians, not to mention the audiences they
played to, made it impossible for the venue to remain open, at least
initially.

"You can't just measure the damage in physical terms," Jaffe said. "We're
rebuilding a business in a completely different economy than what existed
eight months ago."

Jaffe said the national and international audiences the Preservation Hall
Jazz Band plays to can't fully appreciate what has become of the band's
hometown.

"This afternoon, I took our band manager on a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward.
Mind you, the Ninth Ward looks completely different than it did six months
ago. Six months ago it looked like Hiroshima. But there are still houses on
top of houses on top of cars and uprooted construction everywhere.

"Now, this is a guy who knows this neighborhood well. He's lived here for 10
years. And he couldn't comprehend what he saw. So how can someone who has
never even seen New Orleans before comprehend it? ... It just can't be
done."

Overseeing Preservation Hall's reopening and the Relief Fund leaves little
time for Jaffe to make music. So while he still plays at the club and
arranges tunes for the band, Jaffe recently retired from touring. Bassist
and educator Walter Payton will take his place in Cincinnati.

"I'm doing a better service to the New Orleans music community, to
Preservation Hall, to myself, to my marriage and to the people who have been
touched by New Orleans music by remaining here in the city," Jaffe said.

He cautions that the still dire situation in New Orleans doesn't mean hope
for renewal is fleeting. Music, as always, heals. And as long as
Preservation Hall's doors stay open, another avenue for that healing will
continue.

"One of the amazing things about our city has been its ability to celebrate
in the face of adversity," Jaffe said. "That's why we play jazz at funerals
in New Orleans. It's our way of celebrating a person's memory and life.

"That's what we're doing now. And that's what the Preservation Hall Jazz
Band is continuing to do all over the world."