Meet The Roots of Music, StubHub's Inaugural Rising Star

Support StubHub's inaugural Rising Star: The Roots of Music. For every view of this film through Super Bowl Sunday (midnight 2/3/13), the StubHub Foundation will donate $1 to the Roots of Music (up to $50,000). www.stubhub.com/rising-stars

Soul Rebels featured on NFL Honors Awards Show & in Superbowl Promotions

John Ellis Writes a Letter to the Editor: "Gumbo, Joie De Vivre And The New Orleans Saints"

by John Ellis

He was born in North Carolina, and is now based in New York City. But in between, saxophonist John Ellis lived in New Orleans for five years. And he still keeps One Foot In The Swamp, as he titled a 2005 album: he often takes the city as his muse in his own composing, and the rest of his current band, Double-Wide, is based in the Big Easy. After the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl last night, he was so happy that he offered to write us something to commemorate the occasion. --Ed.

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New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees celebrates his team's Super Bowl victory. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

I am not a football fan. I haven't cared about the Super Bowl since I was 12 years old. But last night, when it all settled in, when I really grasped that the New Orleans Saints had won the Super Bowl, I cried.

It's a poetic story: a city nearly destroyed by a hurricane returns five years later to win the Super Bowl. It's appealing in a predictable Hollywood way. But this is an outsider's perspective -- a distant detachment kind of narrative, like watching a movie with a satisfying ending. For the people of New Orleans, it's much more than that. When I spoke to my friend on St. Charles Ave., as the party raged past him, he let out a huge cathartic sigh and said, simply: "We needed this."

Post-Katrina New Orleans is tragic and beautiful at the same time. The pain of the storm and the displacement is apparent in overt or subtle ways in nearly every interaction. And yet, there's a new proactive kind of defiance and a commitment to rebirth that's intoxicating. Fleur-de-lis are tattooed on skin, printed on clothing and flags, bumper stickers, candleholders, clocks, underwear. It takes significant effort to get to a place where there aren't several fleur-de-lis in your line of vision. People feel a special kind of pride about their city, a pride that they feel outsiders just don't quite understand. And they're acting in many varied ways to take charge and invest and rebuild.

In spite of the odds, they're beginning to hope again.

In spite of the precariousness of their existence due to levees and dysfunctional government and hurricanes to come, hope is returning. In spite of the sad truth that many in the nation and the world only think New Orleans is a debaucherous, sinful party destination, people are dreaming of a better future. In spite of a football franchise unparalleled in its capacity to disappoint, they dared to believe. And they were not disappointed this time.

The team transcended metaphor and symbol, and became gumbo and jazz and joie de vivre. Their performance in the game was all heart and risk-taking, and as they fought on in such an unpredictable fashion, they not only represented the city of New Orleans: they were New Orleans. They went beyond football and became poetry.

I am not a football fan, but this is so much more than football. I've never been more proud to cry.

John Ellis
Feb. 8, 2010
Brooklyn, N.Y.

In Pictures: Galactic @ Brooklyn Bowl

by Greg Aiello

By Dino Perrucci Photography

With Will Bernard

WYNTON MARSALIS writes a poem about the New Orleans Saints -

The Spirit of New Orleans - by Wynton Marsalis

Down on the Bayou where the mighty Mississippi kisses Lake Pontchartrain and spills into the Gulf of Mexico. There sits that jewel of the Southland. What the French lost to the British who gave it to the Spanish who lost it back to the French who sold it to America for..... Well, some folks say Jefferson conned Napoleon in a card game and won it for some jambalaya and a chicory coffee.



New Orleans, N'Awlins, the Crescent City, the Big Easy, the northern capitol of the Caribbean, Groove City. Man, they have things down there you wouldn't believe. A mythic place of Mardi-Gras and mumbo, voodoo and the moss-covered alligator-spiked pathways of back-country swamp drained and sprinkled with gris-gris dust to house a wild, unruly population. A city with they own cuisine, they own architecture, they own music..streets with names like Dorgenois and Tchoupitoulas.



People in crazy costumes parading talkin 'bout "throw me somethin' mistah", dressed like Indians chanting 'bout, "Madi, Madi-Cudifiyo", sittin in the young twilight on the 'poach' of they camelback shotgun house eatin po' boys bout to 'make' groceries for the crawfish 'burl' they gon' have on 'Sadday'. They sing through horns down there you know. Yeah Padnah! Something called Jazz, started by a cornet man named Bolden. They say Bolden could play so loud the sun was scared to set. Some folks say the air is so thick down here you, can eat it with a spoon.



Drummers drag rhythms in dirgey solemnity down neighborhood streets as horns moan, mock and moo. Man, hot notes echo against the sky with such weight as to be objects. Objects of sorrow so passionately played that the dead begin to cry. Then that trumpet calls and everyone falls in behind the band for a second line parade and those musicians get to hollerin and shoutin and folks get to struttin and steppin and the living let go of the dead and sorrow soon becomes laughter. In New Orleans, we bury our dead above ground.



They always walk amongst us.... but that music. It always ends happy. So when a strong rain brings angry winds howlin' down the Mississippi or up from the Gulf, those misty winds carry the dreams of ghosts, yes, but not just the goblins of Marie Laveau the voodoo queen, or the tortured spirits of the legendary lascivious lovelies of Storyville sporting houses, or even the undead demons of corrupt politicians who have steeled our idealism over three colorful centuries. They also brings the spirits of Saints, of those who have lived here in quiet dignity and sanctified religiosity, of those who have raised kids in the shadow of the St. Louis Cathedral and Sundayed in Jackson Square or of the River Walk lovers holding hands... of many who have fallen in love here, proposed here, honeymooned here. Not just the howling ghouls of the frat-boy drunks on Bourbon street, but they also bring the angels of all who have romanced in and with this beautiful land on the Delta.



Yes, the 'haints become more famous but the Saints endure. Where were you when 85,000 people gathered in the last open seated stadium in professional football to witness John Gilliam run our very first kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown? When Tom Dempsey kicked that 63 yard field goal with half-a-right foot? When Tom Fears, Hank Stram, and Jim Mora prowled the sidelines? Were you there when Howard Stevens, Danny Abromowicz, Rickey Jackson, and Archie Manning donned the black and gold? Ahhh..those New Orleans Saints! Confined to a purgatory of their own making looking for the fast track to hell. Maybe a brand new dome would appease the gods of football---a Superdome.



Fathers bounced kids on their knees while explaining how we would certainly blow our 30 point halftime lead by game's end.....and the Saints did not disappoint. Where you there when the Dome Patrol brought us to the upper chambers of purgatory in search of playoffs, playoffs..playoffs? Yes, 'haints become famous but Saints endure. Just ask Deuce. If 4 years is a long time: (your high school years, your college days, the length of the Civil War..WWII)...then 43 yrs is an eternity. You ever wait for something so long that waiting for it becomes the something? You ever see grown folks put bags over their heads in public, covering up to hide from themselves like an old alcoholic who won't admit? We can't help it. We're with our Saints even when we 'aint. New Orleans people are stubborn and hate to leave home.



Down here, people like to brag about how they handle tragedy. Epochal hurricanes like Betsy and Camille are discussed as if they're people. "Betsy was bad but Camille, 'Lawd Have Mercy', the water was up here to my neck." Nobody brags on Katrina. She swept through here like death on a high horse. Those flood waters seemed to run all the demons, goblins, AND saints away forever. There goes old Jean Lafitte the pirate relocated to Houston, there goes old Jelly Roll Morton off somewhere in Memphis with that diamond still sparklin in his front tooth.



But quick to return is the unbending will and irrepressible spirit, sin-dipped in Tabasco sauce and spiced with file' in possession of an unshakable, unbreakable soul that Louis Armstrong first announced to the entire world through a red hot trumpet, that Danny Barker broadcasted on a burnished banjo, and Sidney Bechet shouted and screamed through a scorching horn said to be a soprano saxophone. And here comes that chastened Noah's arc of a dome rising from ignominy to become again a beacon of community. And, oh yes, they are still down here marching in those funny-named streets blowing history AND the present moment through singing horns. And people still dance with abandon, exuberance, and unbridled human feeling because that music tells 'em "what has been may be what is, but what will be cannot possibly be known."



We live the moment. Laissez les bon temps rouler! --Let the Good Times Roll. I think I hear that trumpet calling the children of the Who Dat Nation home--not Gabriel's or the horns that blew down the walls of Jericho--that jazz trumpet conjuring up the spirit world with a Congo Square drum cadence. Ghosts, goblins, and 'haints aggravate. Saints congregate. I hear them now bringing that 43yr second line to a glorious crescendo. "Who Dat Say What Dat When Us Do Dat?" Its like waiting 43yrs to hear somebody saya 'I Love You' back. And they do. Let the tale be told bout how the black and gold won the Super Bowl.



And those jazzmen still play sad songs but they always end happy.....they always do.

Wynton

Last Minute Show: GALACTIC Post Super Bowl Party‏

// GALACTIC //

POST SUPER BOWL PARTY

Sunday, February 7th

Doors Noon :: Show 10:00pm :: 21+

BUY TICKETS

Come watch the big game on our big screens then stick around for a special post game performance as Galactic returns to Brooklyn Bowl.

FREE admission until Half Time

$10 after Half Time

Advance tickets guarantee entry