Teddy
Fifty years ago there were Billie & Tad and their five children, and little else was going on in terms of family relations.
Then the adventures and the babies came in waves and an abundance of children replaced the generation of Billie and Tad when it passed on. Now Daniel offers to collect a new Round Robin letter about the latest adventures and babies.. And there are now plenty of former babies at that precious age when they learn about the "real world," discoveries their parents are probably eager to tell the Robin..
We had an invigorating four days in New Orleans avoiding the news of politics and war. The city has survived Katrina, not so much by outside assistance as by a massive frontal attack upon bad vibes. The action was organized at the grass roots and a first confrontation came at the 2006 Mardi Gras. Many city and state officials wanted the festival cancelled, saying the date was too soon after the 2005 disaster. How the event was saved was explained by Chief Howard Miller of the "Creole Wild West Indians" a festival dance troupe. He spoke during a discussion following a performance of the troupe which Selma and I attended. Disregarding the recommendations of officials, Chief Miller and cohorts decided they had a tradition to uphold. The "Wild West Indians" are a group of blacks and black Choctaws who had been parading since 1837. Mardi Gras approached and, Miller relates, "We decided to put on our costumes and parade.. What might happen, we didn’t know." They hit the street in their 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide feathered outfits and found a slew of other Mardi Gras groups of like mind. Bad vibes suffered a defeat.
The struggle continues.
"What is New Orleans like?" Mimi asked as she picked us up at the airport on our return.
"New Orleans is one big bar," Selma replied.
Well, not exactly, though in a figurative sense the quip might fit for the old French Quarter, where the Bourbon street is 10 long blocks of bars, restaurants, night clubs, disco joints, fortune teller stands, t-shirts and trinket shops. voodoo establishments erotic dancer dives and little doorways here and there leading to second story hotels with balconies overhung with flower pots and happy drunks. Attaining a high alcohol level is easy. Draft beer for a buck is yours by just reaching from the sidewalk into one of the stalls with their signs "public drinking is legal."
Compared with my two Pre-Katrina visits one difference in the French Quarter (which was spared a physical beating by the hurricane) was that I don’t recall strip joints before and now there are many. And before, black kids doing tap dance routines on the sidewalk for spare change were a rarity, this time they were common enough to seem in competition.
The nightlife spills into onto wide Canal street, which mirrors San Francisco Market Street in width and trolleys, but differs in having big crowds at late hours.
However, Canal street gives a glimpse into the effect of Katrina. Many a building on the thoroughfare is abandoned above the first floor, judging from unrepaired broken windows and lack of lights. One assumes that before Katrina the floors above the retail shops and restaurants of Canal Street had offices of lawyers, medical specialists, business concerns, etc. But New Orleans now has half its old population. The town needs fewer lawyers, accountants, chiropractors and others who make a professional/white-collar critical mass for cities.
A sense of urgency over how to keep the city together permeated the Black Music Diaspora culture conference of the Center for Black Music Research which invited me to be on a panel,( and which arranged that Selma and I could see the dancing then hear the commentary of Chief Miller and other Chiefs). Their view, and the consensus of CBMR participants was that city salvation was tied to the promotion of the New Orleans traditions in the musical arts
Panelists at the conference noted that New Orleans is a valuable training ground. I saw this on a previous trip during the city’s French Quarter Festival. Parading by were high school jazz bands that were big and made good music, as mentioned in a Robin some years ago. One of the feature events of this recent trip was music provided by the Xavier University, choir, jazz band, and opera singers. Ironically, outside the university hall, where promise for the future was on display, was block after block in which most houses were abandoned. The waters had been eight feet high at Xavier and remained there rotting the wooden homes for weeks. Xavier recovered, thanks to youthful energy and being built of mortar more than wood. But during the school recovery, Tess’s nephew Ky, then an Xavier student, had to spend a year at a school out of town - he is now in MedSchool in San Francisco.
Scholars say musical arts retain their traditions when those who know them have young people who will listen and learn from the elders. The very old Wild West Indians troupe was fortunate in the 1980s to have two 14 year olds (Miller was one) who sought elders, including 90 year olds, who passed down the troupe's long saga, which the two teens used to revitalize the troupe, and become among its Chiefs, who gather and handle costumed marchers and chanters, including children. Many other basically black "Indian"dance troupes are part of the New Orleans scene.
At Xavier, another feature of keeping traditions alive was presented by Michael G. White. He is a professor and renowned clarinetist of New Orleans style. His many performance credits include stints at Preservation Hall - where there are usually different personnel each night in as much as it appears the musicians are typically of the age that doesn’t go out much at night anymore. Michael White is a revered collector of the physical history of New Orleans jazz, amassing folders of long ago sheet music, advertisement fliers, many shelves of rare old instruments, rows of piano rolls and stacks of 78 rpm records, etc.. The immense collection was lost in the hurricane, save what White could cram in his car before a hasty flight.
Michael White lived in the area of Eastern New Orleans that until around 1960 was swamp, and then became a huge suburban development through drainage and fast talking developers, who claimed that they had solved water problems that washed out earlier attempts at farming and residential use. But by 1980 the new suburbia was suffering uneven earth settlement. Many houses developed cracks in the walls, sewer lines had problems and property values declined. What began as a pilot project in racial integration found whites leaving. They were only 4% when Katrina hit, Blacks 55% and Vietnamese 37%, their presence having been a proud achievement for the city in racially integrating while helping an immigrant population.
Another swampy part of the East, called Lower 9th Ward, was founded after the Civil War by freed slaves and immigrant laborers from Italy and Germany. Residents had suffered periodic floods over the years but nothing like Katrina, from which rebuilding in the Lower 9th has been tied up in red tape.
Today, the intact parts of New Orleans include a traditionally African American neighborhood of quaint and tiny row houses adjacent to the French Quarter. The two room to three room homes have high ceilings to keep air cool. In the 1960s, desire for a yard and a bigger home in the East led a number of blacks to leave the row houses, which are now gentrifying. It appears that coffee houses will soon outnumber the neighborhood’s jazz clubs.
Worry over gentrification was expressed at the music conference. Plans for corporate/city partnerships suggest a goal of revitalization via expensive housing and high end retail. Fear of a wave of genuine rich folk, however, appears unlikely, judged by the plethora of for sale signs seen in a stroll among the mansions of the city elite’s Garden District.
In the long run, it appears that good spirits will prevail over downers. The front lines in the struggle are resilient and malleable. They are manned by the likes of the "Creole Wild West Indians" Chief Miller explains that the basically black troupe that was founded in slavery times had to call itself Indian "because we were not permitted to gather." He adds, "Native Americans and Africans had much in common, so we could adapt Native American customs easily."
Chief Miller’s troupe performs at various street fairs, including the city Jazz Festival, which comes the week after the departure of Selma and I from the "Big Easy."
Teddy
