[Dixielandjazz] EveryOKOM Lover should read this!!

[Gluetje1 at aol.com]

I appreciated this article, Steve.  I often refer to my favorite music  as 
Dixieland, particularly with people with whom I know that term has  
communicative capacity.  In my area the term, Dixieland, is more familiar  than Trad or 
Classic.  In fact, classic jazz as a term in St. Louis  is almost always 
referring to bop.  And yet, I'm not fond of  needing to call it Dixieland in order to 
convey a sense of genre or style.   I know my favorite word for the genre is 
"Jass".  In fact my fingers  usually try to type that word in and I have to 
correct to Jazz.  But again,  when the singular word, Jazz, is used most minds 
go to bop.  Same as when  singular word, banjo, is used, minds go to bluegrass. 
 Just describing the  way it appears to me to be in this neck of the woods at 
least.
Ginny  
 
In a message dated 4/27/2007 9:52:41 A.M. Central Daylight Time,  
barbonestreet at earthlink.net writes:

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.








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