{"id":5306,"date":"2015-08-25T21:24:39","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T21:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5306"},"modified":"2015-08-25T21:24:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-25T21:24:39","slug":"new-orleans-ten-years-past-the-flood-resilience-follies-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/08\/25\/new-orleans-ten-years-past-the-flood-resilience-follies-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 2 (Talking About Culture)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CoverStory-Second-Line-Nelson-690-947-14172401\"<\/a>
New Yorker cover: “Second Line,” by Kadir Nelson<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nHeadline of the day, the New Orleans Advocate<\/em>:
\n\u201cHas New Orleans Recovered? Depends On Who You Ask?<\/a>”\u00a0<\/strong>Wherein, Della Hasselle reports:<\/p>\n

“According to a\u00a0survey released Monday by the Manship School<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of Mass Communication\u2019s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at LSU, nearly 80 percent of white residents in New Orleans think the state has mostly recovered….\u00a0But three in five black residents \u2014 59 percent \u2014 say it hasn\u2019t.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above image\u2014the cover of the\u00a0current New Yorker magazine features a piece of art by Kadir Nelson titled “Second Line.” I like the way if conflates the image of a black boy playing trumpet with another image (by now iconic) of a cement stoop in the Lower Ninth Ward. (You still find such stoops, last vestiges of former houses; here one I shot just yesterday, below.)
\n\"photo-21\"<\/a>
\nThe questions raised by Nelson’s artwork\u2014What will remain? How solid is the foundation?\u2014seem apt for the panel discussion I moderated last night at Basin St. Station, \u201cTen Years After:\u00a0The State Of New Orleans\u00a0Music And Culture,”\u00a0<\/strong>presented by the Crescent City Cultural Continuity Conservancy (C5, for short).
\nThe panel was walking distance from the Sheraton Hotel on Canal Street, where the Atlantic magazine hosted a day-long conference yesterday, and where the city of New Orleans begins its bevy of discussions and events under the banner\u2014there\u2019s an official logo and a color scheme\u2014\u201cKatrina 10: Resilient New Orleans.\u201d Yet it was far from that media glare.
\nStill, our room was packed, and I have no idea how many tuned in thanks to a live-stream on WWOZ-FM\u2019s website.
\nThe panel is archived and available for viewing here<\/a>.
\nJan Ramsey, publisher of the monthly New Orleans Offbeat magazine, blogged about it here<\/a>.
\nI\u2019ll do a full transcription when I can, and gather what was discussed in a more presentable form. Here are some excerpts and notes.
\nI mentioned that my decade of reporting in New Orleans taught me a term I\u2019ve ended up defending more than once to a skeptical editor: \u201cCulture bearer.\u201d It reflects the fact that in addition to musicians, New Orleans culture involves many kinds of participants and supporters: from Mardi Gras Indians to the people who help them sew beads and apply feathers, and who drum alongside; from Social Aid & Pleasure Club members, who put on Sunday second-line parades to the folks who show up, help prepare sashes and banners, and dance in the parades; from the poets and visual artists and chefs whose work is inseparable and sometimes in conjunction with the musicians to the activists and attorneys who protect and defend all of the above from a city that is often at odds with its own cultural identity.
\nSome comments from the podium:
\nFred Johnson, director of the Neighborhood Development Foundation, and founding member of the Black Men of Labor (the most traditional of parading clubs):<\/p>\n

The level of insensitivity to our culture and to the people who create our culture has been amplified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this:<\/p>\n

Our culture is medicinal, but it\u2019s not strong enough to fight what is economically wrong, what is socially wrong, in this city right now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jordan Hirsch, who was founding director of the nonprofit Sweet Home New Orleans, pointed out:<\/p>\n

This community came back faster and with a higher rate of return, despite lower income levels and less access to assistance, to reconstitute its community faster than the local population with more privilege.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I asked Bennie Pete, sousaphonist and founding member of the Hot 8 Brass Band if post-Katrina New Orleans \u201cis a place for you, a place for people like the guys in the band?\u201d he shot back:<\/p>\n

Yeah it\u2019s for us, because it\u2019s ours. From the elders all the way down to the children that make our community, we created it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the discussion turned to ordinances and policies that the city uses to control and organize its cultural activities, Chief Howard Miller, President of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council, said:<\/p>\n

The culture must be allowed to continue\u2013free range.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lolis Eric Elie, former Times-Picayune columnist and co-producer of the documentary, \u201cFaubourg Trem\u00e9: the Untold Story of Black New Orleans\u201d:<\/p>\n

In the post-Katrina context, as always, we found that maintaining this culture is very much a political act. And that recovery has not assured at all that our social institutions are maintaining themselves in the ways that we have intended and that we would like.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Evan Christopher, a clarinetist and composer who has been an outspoken advocate for the city\u2019s indigenous music traditions:<\/p>\n

2005 was a missed opportunity for culture bearers to take hold of their own narrative in and out of New Orleans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tamara Jackson, president of Social Aid and Pleasure Club (SAPC) Task Force, recalled her efforts in late 2005 and early 2006 to organize an \u201call wards\u201d second line parade that drew busloads of natives back from Houston for the first time since the storm, and the \u2018hours and hours\u201d of rancorous meetings she endured in the Royal Sonesta Hotel with the city\u2019s police chief, just for permission to pull it off.
\n(There is brilliant and finely detailed context to those earliest second-line parades after the flood in Jordan Hirsch’s piece<\/a> up today at Slate.)
\nAt the panel, when I asked Jackson\u00a0if relations between city officials and the second-line community were better now as opposed to 2007, she said simply:<\/p>\n

Hell, no!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And when, during a question segment, an audience member wondered if outsiders and tourists were truly welcome at second-line parades, Jackson replied:<\/p>\n

Do you feel safe there? Do you sense the strength and the love? If the answers to those questions are yes, then you are welcome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jerome Smith was not on the panel, but he mounted something like a brilliant insurrection, commanding the microphone and everyone\u2019s attention in ways that only he can.\u00a0He spoke with poetic force about the rhythms of \u201cold women opening and closing their shutters\u201d and \u201cneighbors saying good morning and goodnight.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the real music of our city, and its context has always been directed by our local gatherings,\u201d he said.
\nHe recalled a pivotal moment, while still a young man, when he spoke his mind to Robert F. Kennedy, who was then U.S. attorney general (a scene recounted nicely on pages 267-8 of Harry Belafonte\u2019s autobiography, \u201cMy Song”:<\/p>\n

The Mardi Gras Indians prepared me to stand up to Bobby Kennedy. When I sat in his apartment, looking over Central Park, it was no contest. I did not try to define myself in his words. I defined myself in my own words. I had no fear. Because the Mardi Gras Indians had taught me, \u201cNo humbah.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the part that says, \u201cNo humbah.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Headline of the day, the New Orleans Advocate: \u201cHas New Orleans Recovered? Depends On Who You Ask?”\u00a0Wherein, Della Hasselle reports: “According to a\u00a0survey released Monday by the Manship School\u00a0of Mass Communication\u2019s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at LSU, nearly 80 percent of white residents in New Orleans think the state has mostly recovered….\u00a0But … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “New Orleans, Ten Years Past The Flood: Resilience Follies, Part 2 (Talking About Culture)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25,319,12,313,14,61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306"}],"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=5306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306\/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=5306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}