{"id":4456,"date":"2014-10-12T17:53:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-12T17:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=4456"},"modified":"2014-10-12T17:53:04","modified_gmt":"2014-10-12T17:53:04","slug":"in-new-orleans-a-young-organization-fights-an-old-battle-for-culture-happy-anniversary-maccno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/10\/12\/in-new-orleans-a-young-organization-fights-an-old-battle-for-culture-happy-anniversary-maccno\/","title":{"rendered":"In New Orleans, A Young Organization Fights An Old Battle For Culture (Happy Anniversary, MACCNO)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you\u2019ll be in New Orleans on Monday night (October 13), you\u2019d be wise to get down to Caf\u00e9 Istanbul. The musical lineup is reason enough\u2014among others, singer John Boutt\u00e9, drummer Herlin Riley, trombonist-singer Glen David Andrews, and the Treme Brass Band. The club, co-owned by Chuck Perkins, a spoken-word artist with a resonant voice and a big heart, is a particularly welcoming space with good sound.
\nThe real draw is the Second Anniversary Benefit Party for the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans (MaCCNO)<\/strong>. For more details, look here<\/a>.
\nIf you\u2019ve been reading my accounts of the fight for New Orleans jazz culture, you know just how important this young organization has been; if you haven\u2019t, you can find some good context here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0These days, as I try to track the machinations surrounding a new Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance and other legislation that will directly affect music and culture in New Orleans, I regularly look to MaCCNO executive director Ethan Ellestad. Beyond its work in galvanizing a community and instigating activism, MaCCNO is a source of open and good information.
\nIn her\u00a0Louisiana Weekly column<\/a>, Geraldine Wyckoff gave some valuable background on MaCCNO\u2019s beginnings, and the need for its work:<\/p>\n

The attack on live music has been achingly long, pervasive and ongoing. It dates back decades and has led to the elimination of music clubs throughout the city \u2013 think places like Donna\u2019s Bar & Grill, the Funky Butt, Little People\u2019s Place and so many, many more. There was even a move to take brass bands, including the legendary Tuba Fats, out of Jackson Square and later the young, To Be Continued (TBC) off the corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets. Recently, Buffa\u2019s Bar & Restaurant, which has been operational at the corner of Esplanade Avenue and Burgundy Street since 1939 and has long presented live music, is struggling to keep the music alive.
\nAfter a particularly strong onslaught on the music several years ago, Kermit Ruffins called a meeting at his then Kermit\u2019s Trem\u00e9 Speakeasy to gather and unite folks in the music community for a common cause. That effort became the birth of the MACCNO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here\u2019s something I wrote two years ago:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026what has emerged is a movement to turning the volume down \u2014 not of the music, but of the rhetoric surrounding it. Those weekly gatherings at Ruffins\u2019s club have become meetings of the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans<\/a> (MaCCNO), an organization bent on educating its members about city policies and building bridges with local government more so than fomenting protest. Hannah Kreiger-Benson, a freelance musician and Tulane University graduate student, refers to herself as \u201cfacilitator, planner, and representative\u201d for the group. \u201cMaCCNO represents something new, a broader coalition which formed in an organic, grassroots fashion,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to change the public perception of musicians and culture-makers, who want to be seen as valid participants in the policymaking that directly affects them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The other day, I asked Hannah to reflect a bit about MaCCNO. Here’s what she wrote back:<\/p>\n

The Music and Culture of New Orleans happened by accident\u2014no one set out to form an\u00a0organization in September of 2012. But it was clear that there was a lot of work to be done around the ways that laws can affect or quash culture, and so what was supposed to be a one-time meeting turned into MaCCNO.
\nI attended the initial meeting at Kermit Ruffins’ Treme Speakeasy bar with my nerd hat firmly on my head. I was a Musicology M.A. student at Tulane, exploring a new-found interest in the Geography of music in New Orleans, and the ways that systems and structures like Zoning Law could shape the where and the how of music\/culture throughout the Urban Landscape. When I heard about the initial meeting, at noon on a Wednesday with lunch provided by Kermit, I went without having any idea of what to expect, but hopeful that I would meet some people I could interview, and gain some ideas for research questions.
\nThere were dozens and dozens of people packed into that not-very-large space, and my memory of that first meeting is of yelling. Lots and lots of people expressing anger and frustration and exasperation about a variety of interconnected topics\u2014 music venues being told to stop having music, music venues losing or being denied permits, street performers and brass bands being harassed or shut down, and the general feelings of: \u2018if you don\u2019t like the culture\/want it to flourish, why did you move here?\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s like moving next to the beach\/the airport and complaining about the sand\/the planes\u2019, and \u2018our culture is special\u2014 New Orleans is not Akron\/Kansas City\/Louisville\/Columbus\/Des Moines!! It was an electric space, full of obviously large personalities and strong feelings and opinions.
\nI don\u2019t remember how it was decided, but there was so much potential energy and power gathered in the room that people decided to come back the next week, same time. It was at that second meeting where I stood up to make myself known. \u201cHi everyone\u201d, I said nervously, \u201cI want to introduce myself so you have a face to put to the name\u2014 I\u2019m a grad student and will probably be contacting a lot of you in this room for interviews in my work about how legal structures shape the cultural landscape\u2026.\u201d And to my infinite surprise, someone in the back of the room said, \u201chey, do you want to help lead these meetings??\u201d I became the MaCCNO Facilitator, and later spokesperson, and have served in those capacities since.
\nMaCCNO has taken on a broad and deep scope of work, picking up on and continuing the past efforts of many other local people and organizations. A large part of what we deal with is information, and access to it. We make legal information that affects musicians and cultural practitioners clear, condensed and accessible (information that is often very obtuse, dense, obscure, sometimes contradictory and daunting to laypeople). We act as a central point for information gathering\/dispensation, and have worked hard to become known as an organization that vets information so that people can come to us to quell rumors and ask questions. We work with the various city officials to update old and\/or poorly written laws that can or could have negative impacts on various aspects of the culture. And we advocate explicitly for the needs of the cultural community in conversations on law and policy, working to ensure that those viewpoints don\u2019t get left out, overlooked or ignored.
\nFor me, MaCCNO represents the perfect opportunity to combine my deeply nerdy love of law\/geography\/musicology\/anthropology\/urban studies with my day-to-day identity as a working musician. It is an organization that I am proud to be a part of, and a cause that I deeply believe in. I am not a native New Orleanian, but I adore my adopted hometown and want to fight to make it the best that it can be, in all its complexity.
\nFor the record, I have not actually been able to finish my Master\u2019s thesis, yet. The story I want to write is still unfolding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So is the story I’m working hard on writing now. MaCCNO has become an important part of that unfolding process, and a character in its essential narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ll be in New Orleans on Monday night (October 13), you\u2019d be wise to get down to Caf\u00e9 Istanbul. The musical lineup is reason enough\u2014among others, singer John Boutt\u00e9, drummer Herlin Riley, trombonist-singer Glen David Andrews, and the Treme Brass Band. The club, co-owned by Chuck Perkins, a spoken-word artist with a resonant voice … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “In New Orleans, A Young Organization Fights An Old Battle For Culture (Happy Anniversary, MACCNO)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25,11,12,14,203,61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456"}],"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=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/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=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}