[Dixielandjazz] Pops orchestra hosts New Orleans' venerable Dixieland band

[Mike]

By Janelle Gefland/Enquirer Staff Writer

New Orleans is coming back. But for Ben Jaffe, who is struggling to 
resurrect the historic Preservation Hall, the pain wreaked by Hurricane 
Katrina last August is still fresh.

"It has proven to be emotionally draining for all of us," says Jaffe, 
referring to the reopening this month of Preservation Hall, the Mecca of 
New Orleans jazz in the city's French Quarter.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, that has embodied the New Orleans sound 
for 45 years in its 1750s-era building, joins the Cincinnati Pops at 
Music Hall this weekend for "Take Me to the River." The show will be 
taped for national PBS television broadcast.

Jaffe, 35, the youngest member, who plays string bass, has grown up with 
the band. His parents, Allan and Sandra Jaffe, opened Preservation Hall 
in 1961. Ben Jaffe, a graduate of Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory of Music, 
took over management of the venerable club with his mother after his 
father died in 1987.

Jaffe's emotions were running high last week, during the 10-day New 
Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival that ended up as a kind of reunion of 
displaced musicians.

"It was bittersweet. It was a wonderful thing to have music back on that 
stage, but it was also bittersweet because so many of our musicians are 
still evacuated to other cities, and not here," says Jaffe. "It's just 
hard. It makes it very difficult to be happy and to celebrate right now."

Although he sustained minor damage to his own home when Katrina flooded 
80 percent of the city and caused $96 billion in damage, five of the 
band's seven members lost theirs. He says about 60 percent of the 
musicians who regularly play Preservation Hall are still scattered.

The historic hall didn't sustain any physical damage. But emotional and 
financial devastation has taken its toll on the Preservation Hall 
musicians, Jaffe says.

"To actually measure the devastation to us? I lost the tour bus that the 
Preservation Hall Jazz Band toured the country in. That was a huge 
financial loss," he says.

He also lost a record company he had founded two years ago to preserve 
the band's sounds. And he recently closed the books on an artist 
management company called One Music that included Preservation Hall.

Still, he is one of the lucky ones. In New Orleans, an estimated 10,000 
small businesses will never reopen, he says. More than 300,000 families 
are still living as evacuees in other cities.

"That's unbelievable. Those numbers are staggering," he says. "The 
situation is so unique to every individual. Everybody has to deal with 
something that we never thought we would encounter in our lifetimes."

Jaffe and his wife, Sarah, founded the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane 
Relief Fund, to help support the far-flung musicians who have lost 
homes, musical instruments and livelihoods. The fund has aided 800 
musicians so far, helping them find new saxophones, repairing 
flood-damaged homes and subsidizing gigs.

They've met their initial goal of $1 million. But soon, Jaffe says, 
they'll announce a new goal of $25 million, to rebuild New Orleans' 
music scene, literally from the ground up.

"The money would go toward making sure the musicians were relocated back 
to New Orleans, and to make sure that there are places for them to 
perform," he says.

Jaffe is overcome by the sheer scope of the task.

"It's actually too emotional for me to talk about right now," he says.

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