Aid to katrina music
In January, at the IAJE conference, I presented a panel discussion called "Jazz, Politics and American Identity." When Dr. And for all the ink spilled about post-Katrina New Orleans, I don't think there's been enough consideration of the cultural consequences of all this, not to mention the role that culture should play in finding solutions. I'm alarmed by the situation in New Orleans 18 months after Hurricane Katrina hit, surprised by the fact that so many of our readers are unaware of the depth of the problems that persist, distressed by the ineffectiveness of local, state and federal support, and dismayed that there is not more outcry and activism within the jazz community. Yet I could have written them yesterday-or today, after my arrival back New Orleans for a three-month stay, the continuation of my research and writing as a Katrina Media Fellow for the Open Society Institute. I wrote those two paragraphs nearly a year ago, for a piece in The Village Voice. The great body of culture that long inspired and still shapes the sound of American music-in the form of jazz musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Club second-liners, neighborhood brass bands and up-from-the-projects MCs-remains stuck in that unending. New Orleans is now two cities-one inching toward renewal, the other caught in what David Winkler-Schmidt of the local Gambit Weekly once called "the horrible unending of not knowing." The Gambit music section lists favorite clubs hosting favorite bands, many of whose members still travel from Houston or Baton Rouge for gigs, or who live in temporary quarters, perhaps with family, maybe even in a FEMA trailer.
Sluggishly approaching its former self, the Quarter again boasts coffee and beignets, music and mystery. Take a taxi from Louis Armstrong Airport to the French Quarter and you'll find scant evidence of Katrina's wrath. Stick to the "Sliver by the River," the high-ground neighborhoods along the Mississippi's banks, and you might think New Orleans is healing.