[Dixielandjazz] Cross between jazz and funk yields "Junk Music"

[Stephen G Barbone]

New Orleans Horns, Raw and Funky

NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN - August 11, 2011


The Rebirth Brass Band ended its full-throttle show at Brooklyn Bowl  
on Thursday night more or less swarmed, yielding the stage to an eager  
throng. This of course was a handy bit of showmanship, timed to  
coincide with several of the band’s best-loved New Orleans anthems  
(“Feel Like Funkin’ It Up,” “Cassanova,” “Do Whatcha Wanna”) and with  
the climax of accumulated energies in the room. But it was also an  
affirmation of core principles. A stage is little more than a platform  
for the Rebirth Brass Band, and the distance it imposes on an audience  
is a passing inconvenience, even on the road.

Rebirth, as the band is often hailed at home, has barely deviated from  
the formula set by its leader, the sousaphone player Phil Frazier, in  
1983. Commingling parade-band protocols with the more ragged aspects  
of jazz and funk — “junk music” is Mr. Frazier’s term for the  
crossbred result — the group chases down euphoria one boisterous  
groove at a time. In New Orleans the band plays most Tuesday nights at  
the Maple Leaf Bar, where the main space accommodates about as many  
people as the Brooklyn Bowl stage.

This was a stop on the road in support of a sturdy new album, “Rebirth  
of New Orleans,” on the Basin Street label. (The band is traveling  
most of this month, before returning home in time for the New Orleans  
Jazz & Heritage Festival. This summer it will headline “A Night in  
Treme,” a tour pegged to the HBO series.) At times there was a hint of  
the routine in the show’s pacing, but never a flagging of intensity.  
And the newer songs held their ground against the classics: “I Like It  
Like That,” with a churning beat, a blaring trumpet lead and a  
puttering riff for saxophone and trombone, was as exhilarating as  
anything else in the set.

Rebirth’s trademark is loose precision, unruly at the granular level  
but cohesive on the whole. Mr. Frazier and his brother, Keith Frazier,  
who plays bass drum, held down a resilient low end; the tenor  
saxophonist Vincent Broussard and the trombonist Corey Henry  
maintained the mid-range, often sparring on the fly.

Two assertive trumpeters, Glen Andrews and Derrick Shezbie, carried  
most of the melodies, arranged in fortified octaves or a resplendent  
unison. (In “What Goes Around Comes Around” they also traded eight-bar  
solo bursts.) As for the snare drummer, Derrick Tabb, his second-line  
rhythms and syncopated rudiments gave the music its kinetic thrust,  
riveting and funky.

Thursday’s show happened to precede Bowl Train, a weekly late-night  
D.J. set by Questlove, the drummer with the Roots. Specializing in  
myriad strains of R&B — one stretch had him transitioning from  
Sunshine Anderson’s “Heard It All Before” into the Heavy D remix of  
Soul for Real’s “Candy Rain,” into signature hits by Experience  
Unlimited and Soul II Soul — he made at least one nod to the occasion.  
His first track was a brass-band version of Michael Jackson’s “Human  
Nature.” It was probably the one by the Youngblood Brass Band, not  
Rebirth, but the resonance was clear enough.


The Rebirth Brass Band will play on Wednesday in Austin, Tex.;  
Thursday in Houston; and Friday in Dallas; rebirthbrassband.com.