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-Photograph by Greg Rhoades
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Friday, February 5, 2010
Matters of Great Importance: Uncle Batiste’s Stolen Drum
Who Dat?!: Songs For The New Orleans Saints
If fight songs decided football championships, the New Orleans Saints would be 27-point favorites, while the Indianapolis Colts (who have most recently inspired the Baltimore Colts fight song) would be scrappy underdogs. When the Saints captured the NFC Championship two weeks ago, music roared from every neighborhood and spontaneous brass-band parades shut down streets: New Orleans rhythms exploded across the city in a way that just seemed natural for celebrations of football glory.
Conversely, when Prince penned a tune lauding his hometown Minneapolis Vikings, the result was "Purple and Gold": plodding, strangely sexy and ironic, with uncomfortable references to religious music. Yes, it was a Prince song — with the lead vocal double-recorded in falsetto, no less — but it didn't work as a football tune.
The Vikings lost. No, Prince had nothing to do with it, but his "Purple and Gold" illustrated an important point. Football and the successful songs that celebrate football are not about anything but the moment — a blustery, idiotic, immediate and childlike moment. This is why New Orleans, with its Bourbon Street, jazz and Southern-fried hip-hop, might be the perfect football town. (Okay, take away 42 years of mostly unbearable, losing football, and then New Orleans is the perfect football town.)
Americans lose themselves in football much like they do on certain weekend trips to New Orleans. And it's this escapist, feel-good beat — the music of the city — that's provided the soundtrack to the improbable 2009-10 Saints. Internet search engines find at least 80 individual Saints-themed songs, and many of them are streaming at the New Orleans Times-Picayune's site. Listen here to some of the best, and tell us about more Saints songs — and Colts songs, of course — in the comments section below.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Where They At: A Multi-Media Archive of New Orleans Bounce Music at Abrons Art Center
New York City's Abrons Arts Center is proud to announce Where They At, an exhibition that portrays the founders, architects, and players in New Orleans hip-hop and the uniquely regional rap known as bounce music, a phenomenon that evolved from the communities based in the city's housing projects. Photographs, oral histories, and video footage compiled by photographer Aubrey Edwards and journalist Alison Fensterstock document the passing of seminal beats from New Orleans music traditions to a new generation in the late 1980's, and the creation of this new voice in Southern roots music.This multi-media archive draws a line to the present-day diaspora, as Hurricane Katrina has scattered a once tight-knit bounce and hip-hop community whose music only existed at home — a home that has been redefined physically and culturally. Where They At will also be exhibited during SXSW in Austin, Texas and will launch during Jazz Fest in New Orleans at the Odgen Museum of Southern Art, where numerous events spanning several months have been planned.
New Orleans has midwifed every existing form of indigenous American music, including funk and the street music exemplified by 2nd Line bands and Mardi Gras Indians. Hip-hop is the newest manifestation of that Southern tradition. Mardi Gras Indian chants, brass band beats and call-and-response routines equally inform bounce music, which almost invariably samples the Showboys' "Drag Rap" (a.k.a. "Triggerman") and Derek B's "Rock the Beat" or Cameron Paul's "Brown Beats." Featuring lyrical patterns that focus mainly on sex, parties and dancing, it invites – even demands – audience participation by calling out dance steps or prompting replies.
This exhibition at the Abrons Arts Center features portraits culled from the larger archive of New Orleans hip-hop and bounce artists to focus on women and gay and transgendered men in early New Orleans hip-hop and bounce.
In the 90's heyday of New Orleans hip-hop, female rappers like Mia X, Ms Tee, Magnolia Shorty and Cheeky Blakk appeared in significant number with songs that were just as bawdy and aggressive as their male counterparts. Often, their tracks served as answer songs that challenged male MC's sexism in a way that created playfully ribald conversation, such as Silky Slimm's "Sista Sista" or Mia X's "Da Payback."
The prominence of queer members of the bounce community, such as such as Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, and Vockah Redu, defies the myth of insurmountable homophobia within Hip-Hop, and speaks to a curious tradition in African-American entertainment in New Orleans, which has accepted and celebrated queer and cross-dressing entertainers for over half a century. Katey Red, a Sissy, was signed to the prominent bounce record label Take Fo'.
The full Where They At archive project will open at the Smithsonian-affiliated Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans in April 2010, on the eve of the first Jazz Fest weekend.
UPCOMING "WHERE THEY AT" EVENTS
February 11, 2010, 6-9 pm: Opening at the Abrons Art Center/ Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street (on the Lower East Side), New York, NY
212.598.0400
Trains: J/M/Z or F to Delancey/Essex; B/D to Grand St.
NolaFunky Audio Lagniappe
Home of the Groove's Throw Me Some Second Line, Mister
Groovescape's The OG Vol. 1: James Booker
Groovescape's The OG Vol. 2: Professor Longhair
Groovescape's The OG Vol. 3: The Meters
NPR's Cedric Watson In Concert: GlobalFEST 2010
Home of the Groove's Under The Toussaint Covers
NPR's Irvin Mayfield Sextet: Live In Minneapolis
Burning Wood's Another Round Of Booker
NPR's Preservation Hall Jazz Band: Cajun Christmas
Burning Wood's ALLEN TOUSSAINT: Live At The Village Vanguard 
Burning Wood's John Scofield's Piety Street Band: LIVE IN THE NETHERLANDS 
Home of the Groove's Two More From Toussaint
Win Tickets to Galactic @ Terminal 5
We know you’ll have so much fun seeing Galactic (above, playing “Hustle Up” with Boots Riley) that The House List is giving away two tickets to the show. Want to win them? Then just fill out the form below, listing your name, e-mail address, which show you’re trying to win tickets to (Galactic, 2/5) and a brief message telling us why you could use a free night of the funk. The winner will be notified on Friday. |
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Quiz: How Much Do You Know About New Orleans Food Culture?
It would have been embarassing if I didn't do well, but I did achieve a perfect 100%...
If the Super Bowl came down to each team's hometown foods, we'd be rooting for the Saints. The city is full of inventive foods that really only exist in New Orleans. How much do you really know about the New Orleans grub? Take the quiz! »
Monday, February 1, 2010
Buckwheat Zydeco, Terence Blanchard & New Orleans Jazz Orchestra Win Grammys
Buckwheat Zydeco Wins Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album -- Grammys 2010
Buckwheat Zydeco's first studio album post Hurricane Katrina was, by all accounts, a masterpiece. Featuring five original compositions and several other Buckwheat-ified cover songs, 'Lay Your Burden Down' touched a particularly tender nerve with a region and a city seeking renewal, hope--and, most of all, joy. Buckwheat Zydeco's been the hottest zydeco act for a few years now. And with the Grammy award for Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album, Buckwheat's musical legacy seems to be safer than ever.
Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra won the Grammy for Best Large Ensemble Jazz Album for Book One.
Fellow New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard, a Grammy veteran, won a gold Gramophone in the best improvised solo category. He was honored for his work on “Dancin’ 4 Chicken,” a track on drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts’ 2009 album “Watts.”
