{"id":5628,"date":"2016-02-12T16:16:45","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T16:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5628"},"modified":"2016-02-12T16:16:45","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T16:16:45","slug":"new-orleans-celebrates-danny-barkers-spirit-and-influence-with-a-fest-in-his-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/12\/new-orleans-celebrates-danny-barkers-spirit-and-influence-with-a-fest-in-his-name\/","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans Celebrates Danny Barker's Spirit and Influence With a Fest in His Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gregg<\/a>
Gregg Stafford performing in the Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival\/ photo by Eric Waters<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAbove is a picture of trumpeter Greg Stafford, taken in New Orleans by the wonderful photographer Eric Waters. Stafford was at the French Quarter\u2019s Palm Court Caf\u00e9, playing a few tunes after a truly enlightening panel discussion in the second annual Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival<\/strong><\/a> in January.
\nAs I wrote in an earlier post:<\/p>\n

Outside New Orleans, the name\u00a0Danny Barker<\/strong><\/a> isn\u2019t all that well known.
\nYet talk to a New Orleans musician of any age, who plays in nearly any style, and Mr. Barker\u2014as these players call him\u2014inevitably comes up, in reverent and warm tones, much the way modern-jazz musicians talk about drummer Art Blakey.
\nBarker\u2019s Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band<\/a>, which he founded in 1970, late in life, helped launch many careers. No Barker, no Dirty Dozen Brass Band, no Rebirth Brass Band. No Barker, and it\u2019s hard to know what trumpeters including Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, Leroy Jones and Kermit Ruffins would sound like, just how drummers like Herlin Riley and Shannon Powell might\u00a0swing.
\nYet Barker\u2019s legacy is bigger than that, and just as much about the names we don\u2019t know. His Fairview Baptist band was a training ground for young musicians. For anyone even remotely connected to the city\u2019s indigenous culture, Barker\u2014who played banjo and guitar, sang and wrote songs, and led bands\u2014is the key figure of a brass-band revival at a moment when many felt that tradition\u00a0slipping away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the Palm Court, here are some things Greg Stafford said:
\n\u201cI always felt like he was my own special genie.\u201d
\n\u201cHe disciplined us as to what the music should sound like. He knew what he wanted. And he taught us to know what we wanted too, to not be unclear or uncertain.\u201d
\nHad Eric Waters zoomed out while taking that photo, we\u2019d also see trumpeter Leroy Jones, who played correctly in complementary fashion with Stafford on \u201cShake It and Break It,\u201d among other songs.
\nTen minutes earlier, Jones had recalled practicing his trumpet in the garage of his home. He\u2019d practice in the evening after completing his homework, leaving the garage door open. He\u2019d work first from method books, he said, and then for a few hours by playing along his parents\u2019 LPs, trying to emulate Louis Armstong or Al Hirt or Freddie Hubbard. Danny Barker, who live just down the street, would often walk by, \u201clooking dapper and with the hippest walk around,\u201d Jones said. Barker has been asked to organize the Fairview Baptist Church Christian Marching Band. Barker recruited Jones
\n\u201cI would have been a musician in any case,\u201d Jones said, \u201cbut I wouldn’t have developed a love of tradition had it not been for Danny Barker. I wouldn\u2019t have known why I was a musician and what my role is.\u201d
\nThe second annual Barker festival featured a wide range of rousing musical moments, including the Hot 8 Brass Band leading a second line past Barker’s former French Quarter home on morning, and then ripping into both classics and original tunes the next evening at Bullet’s Sports Bar.
\nAccording to Chris Haydel, who organized the Barker festival and its nonprofit foundation, the project is still very much \u201ca labor of love, in need of nurturing.\u201d Though the festival featured many performances by local and visiting stars, it was also marked by daily clinics for young musicians; these were hosted by a number of New Orleans schools \u2014 Landry High, the Craig School, NOCCA, and at the University of New Orleans.
\nHere\u2019s what Haydel told me:<\/p>\n

The foundation’s mission is to provide instruments and musical education. That mission is shifting more toward the latter. \u00a0The festival hasn’t provided much in the way of hard currency for these efforts, but it has provided a soft currency of awareness and support from educators and musicians. On a limited basis then, we should be able to expand the educational component to more worthy schools.
\nWe feel that, while Danny was a “feel-good” fellow, his real legacy remains the personal interest he took in so many young musicians; not only in their musical training, but in training them as professionals, and in readiness for life itself.
\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Above is a picture of trumpeter Greg Stafford, taken in New Orleans by the wonderful photographer Eric Waters. Stafford was at the French Quarter\u2019s Palm Court Caf\u00e9, playing a few tunes after a truly enlightening panel discussion in the second annual Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival in January. As I wrote in an earlier … <\/p>\n

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