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September 02, 2005

N.O. Jazz

Been reading neworleans.metblogs.com - trying to get some semi-rational perspective. Here's a good bit from a post by Jack Ware:

"I can’t stand to watch the news but I can’t stand to be disconnected from the situation. I don’t like reading some of the comments on this site because I am not interested in the politics and the racism and the blame. It isn’t productive and only serves to emphasize the fundamental problems New Orleans has been dealing with (or not dealing with) for years. Still, I understand that people are rationalizing, synthesizing and internalizing all the information that’s flooding in. It’s easy to see that people are in different stages of grief, whether they have a direct connection with the effected areas or just by proxy through the media. Also, there are words of encouragement and people whose comments show they are wracking their brains trying to find something helpful to say and something helpful to do."

That sums up the content, or tone of a great deal of the posts there - a sort of desperate, exhausted soft cry at the end of a long funeral. Others are a little less patient - You have to check out Ray Nagin, the NO mayor's "no more goddamn press conferences 'til we get some resources down here" blast. There's a link to the audio on the front page of CNN.com. That was awesome and refreshingly absent of any bureaucratic double-speak.

Someone on Air America last night (a musician? from the south, I think) brought up the very relevant point that New Orleans' rich and significant jazz history is all but gone, washed away with the rest of the city and the devolution into looting and chaos. I was thinking about all the incredible musicians who cut their teeth and honed their craft in NO, like Louis Armstrong, Mahilia Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton. I was thinking about my grandfather, Jack, a jazz pianist, who played trad jazz and toured through New Orleans frequently as a young man and brought a few of it's secrets and mysteries home to Chicago with him.