{"id":3428,"date":"2014-02-13T16:47:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T16:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=3428"},"modified":"2014-02-13T16:47:19","modified_gmt":"2014-02-13T16:47:19","slug":"whole-gritty-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/13\/whole-gritty-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Whole Gritty City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
11-year-old Jaron \u201cBear\u201d Williams, in the Roots of Music program\/photo by Andre Lambertson<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nIt\u2019s not often that a documentary about how real culture transforms actual lives airs on Saturday-night network TV.
\nI\u2019m not talking about a lucky aspirant getting plucked out of ordinary existence and voted into stardom by a celebrity panel (though I suppose that\u2019s a form of transformation, too, and maybe even a vehicle for someone\u2019s idea of culture).
\nWhat I mean is the way that rigorous and deep training by musicians steeped in both excellence and jazz culture offers boys and girls in New Orleans a path away from danger and despair and toward something admirable, promising and, yes, frequently swinging.
\nThat\u2019s the story told by \u201cThe Whole Gritty City<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d\u00a0a poignant, feature-length documentary that goes behind the scenes with three dedicated New Orleans marching band directors\u2014 Wilbert Rawlins Jr.<\/strong>, Lonzie Jackson<\/strong> and Derrick Tabb<\/strong>\u2014and that airs this Saturday, Feb. 15 (9pm EST, 8 Central)<\/strong>. \u00a0No narration. No voiceover commentary. Just real life, real music and the connections and contrasts between the two. And sometimes the camera is held by one of those young musicians. (You can find a trailer here<\/a>, and another website with useful links here<\/a>.)
\nThe film is billed as \u201c48 Hours Presents: The Whole Gritty City<\/strong>,\u201d and the link to the true-crime newsmagazine program makes sense, not just because the school-based marching-band programs in New Orleans may be among the city\u2019s most effective safeguards against violent crime, but due to the genesis of the film itself.
\n
\"\"<\/a>
O. Perry Walker High School Band\/courtesy of "The Whole Gritty City"<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nI first met Richard Barber<\/strong>, a \u201c48 Hours\u201d editor-producer (who created this film with cinematographer and photojournalist Andre Lambertson<\/strong>) in early 2007, in New Orleans. Barber was researching a \u201c48 Hours\u201d episode investigating two murders that sent shock waves through New Orleans.
\nThe resulting program<\/a> was a gripping and disturbing look at two tragic deaths, and two separate stories that said much about New Orleans life.
\nFilmmaker and visual artist Helen Hill <\/strong>was shot and killed in her own home in the Marigny neighborhood as her husband and two-year-old child helplessly watched. A week prior, during a nine-hour stretch in which 18 people were fatally shot, Dinerral Shavers<\/strong>, the Hot 8 Brass Band<\/strong>\u2019s snare drummer and a teacher at Rabouin High who managed that school\u2019s band program with few resources, was shot in his car on Dumaine Street with his wife at his side. Shavers died in surgery hours later. For the Hot 8, Shavers\u2019 murder was a devastating loss of a friend and the hearbeat of their sound.\u00a0For Rabouin students, it meant the loss of a hero who\u2019d taught them lessons in not just how to play, but how to approach life.
\nA sense of purposeful outrage took shape around the murders of Shavers, a young black man, and Hill, a young white woman. Baty Landis<\/strong>, a music-history scholar and nonprofit executive who ran the Sound Caf\u00e9, a coffeeshop that often hosted musical performances, joined together with Helen Gillet<\/strong>, a cellist, and Ken Foster<\/strong>, a poet, to organize a public gathering. They began planning a march on City Hall, to demand that the city address the ceaseless problem of violent crime. Some 8,000 people showed up. From a podium, speakers made demands: Better protection for witnesses and more accountability by police and the District Attorney.\u00a0 Finally, trombonist Glen David Andrews <\/strong>addressed the crowd:
\n\u201cWe are young black men of New Orleans preaching culture.\u201d
\nA spontaneous chant springs up: \u201cMusic in the schools. Music in the schools.\u201d
\nThis was the cry in answer to violence and the fear it stirs.
\nAnd that\u2019s the context for this new film.
\nIt\u2019s hard to overstate the power of these high-school band directors to shape lives in New Orleans, and to shape perceptions about life. That theme, as played out in the life of one of the subjects of \u201cThe Whole Gritty City,\u201d Wilber Rawlins, Jr., is elegantly documented in Dan Baum<\/strong>\u2019s book, \u201cNine Lives<\/a>.\u201d
\nAnd lest you think that the powers that be in New Orleans universally shower these figures with the same respect they command from their students, this piece of mine <\/a>from 2007\u00a0describes how another of the film\u2019s main characters Derrick Tabb\u2014snare drummer for the Rebirth Brass Band, whose Roots of Music <\/a>program\u00a0removes kids from New Orleans street action, and returns them to the streets as musicians marching in Mardi Gras season parades\u2014got arrested while making music.
\nWhen I spoke with Barber earlier this week about his film, he reflected on his experience in 2007.
\n\u201cI had a love and appreciation for New Orleans music and culture, but I didn\u2019t have any real familiarity or knowledge,\u201d he said.
\nAs Barber combed through his material, he recalled, \u201cI saw raw footage of the kids at Rabouin High talking on and on about how much this guy Dinerral Shavers and his positive energy meant to them, how he lifted them up when no one else would, how he took them away from negative forces. And of course, the irony is that these negative forces took him away.\u201d
\nBarber didn\u2019t yet have the idea for a documentary. He simply wanted to see what was next for these kids. \u201cWe began going down to New Orleans, and filming in the band room of Rabouin, not knowing where it would lead,\u201d he said. He met Rawlins and then Tabb, and soon a larger story took shape.
\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t really our story about these band directors and these kids,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is their story, the one they gave us.\u201d
\nTrumpeter Wynton Marsalis<\/strong>, who is now also a CBS news correspondent, will host this broadcast. In a press release he hinted at how he\u2019ll frame the film on-air:
\n\u201cNew Orleans buries too many of its young. This is their refuge, the band room. It\u2019s their safe haven from the lures and dangers of the streets and the tyranny of low expectations.\u201d
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Wilbert Rawlins, Jr., band director of O. Perry Walker\/ courtesy of The Whole Gritty City<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not often that a documentary about how real culture transforms actual lives airs on Saturday-night network TV. I\u2019m not talking about a lucky aspirant getting plucked out of ordinary existence and voted into stardom by a celebrity panel (though I suppose that\u2019s a form of transformation, too, and maybe even a vehicle for someone\u2019s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Whole Gritty City”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[87,25,11,88,12,14,89,61,90,91,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}