[Dixielandjazz] EveryOKOM Lover should read this!!

[Steve Barbone]

Especially paragraph 3 below. It speaks to why there are so few black
"Dixieland" musicians around today, if you catch his drift. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Hold the Horn High

A Conversation with New Orleans Jazz Orchestra¹s Irvin Mayfield

The Santa Barbara Independent - By Charles Donelan  Thursday, April 26, 2007

The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, or NOJO, is a 16-piece big band that plays
an incredibly broad and soulful range of jazz styles, all the way from the
earliest sounds of the traditional second line funeral marches to the
caterwauling pedal point of Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington. The leader of
NOJO is Irvin Mayfield, a young trumpeter with a big, brawny tone and a
knack for creating memorable compositions. Brought up by a jazz-loving
father whom he lost recently to drowning in Hurricane Katrina, Mayfield is
also the protégé of jazz spokesman number one, Wynton Marsalis. At 30,
Mayfield already has 10 recordings to his credit and a whole lot more music
ahead of him. I spoke to him by phone last week while he was in his hometown
of New Orleans.

NOJO embraces a lot of different styles. What is it about the tradition in
New Orleans that allows you to be so free in your choices? One thing about
growing up in New Orleans: It¹s diverse. It¹s the only place I know where
all people have access to every kind of musical tradition. For instance, you
could go to the toughest, most dangerous high school in New Orleans, a place
where the real hard kids are, and just bring a tuba, a trombone, and a
clarinet, and if you could really play, that would probably cause a riot ‹
but a good kind of riot, because they would be so into the music.

Tuba, trombone, clarinet ‹ aren¹t those the Dixieland instruments? Yes, but
don¹t ever let anyone from New Orleans hear you say ³Dixieland.² We don¹t
call it that. When I hear about ³Dixieland,² I picture some old grandpas who
are out of shape and they just sit there ‹ or else maybe the band in the
Chips Ahoy commercial.

What are you aiming for in your concerts today? I want people to have a
direct and immediate response to our music. The other night I heard someone
after the show, and they said, ³If that¹s jazz, then I like it.² It made me
happy to hear that, because then you know you succeeded, when they don¹t
care what it is, they just like it. It¹s a hard thing, but still, I always
say this: ³Bad jazz is not necessarily better than something else that¹s
good.² There¹s a paradox to jazz that comes from the blues, which is that
it¹s a sad feeling, but one that¹s full of optimism, that American optimism
that makes us feel like we can be better; that no matter how bad things get,
they can still get better.

Is that the New Orleans worldview ‹ the optimism of the blues? Absolutely.
You can see it in everything we do. It¹s even in the way we hold the
trumpet. Everybody from New Orleans ‹ Louis Armstrong, Terence Blanchard,
Wynton, me ‹ we all hold the horn kind of high, like we don¹t want it to get
hit by somebody, but also so that we project, because we want to be heard
rejoicing.

I know you lost your dad, Irvin Mayfield Sr., to Hurricane Katrina, and I
want to say how sorry I am about that. Where are you at with the aftermath
of the tragedy now? There¹s not a guy in my band who didn¹t lose a home, or
a loved one, and their whole sense of well-being from the hurricane and the
floods. We were playing this old hymn, ³Just a Closer Walk With Thee,² as a
farewell to my dad, but when we finally got to play it at the White House
for President Bush a few months ago, I decided after that it was time to
retire it, to put it away. So now we are playing another piece, something I
wrote, that sounds similar and serves a similar function in our set. It¹s
called ³May Their Souls Rest in Peace,² and you will hear it close to the
end of our concert in Santa Barbara because we play that every night.

Do you have any parting thoughts about the upcoming show? People are always
asking me, what can we do to help New Orleans rebuild? And I am never going
to say no to a check, so you can write a check to one of our organizations
and that would be great, but what I mean to say is this. Coming to our show
is helping New Orleans, because it shows us and our culture respect and
love, and that¹s what we need to rebuild, just to have people show up. It¹s
the good will that we need. With that, we can make it.

Thanks so much, see you in Santa Barbara. Thank you, come on out and we will
have a good time.