First Kiss New Orleans

This is my first trip to New Orleans.

I find every bit as much Oxymoron as I expect,
but
not always where I expect to find it.
I also
find Serendipity,
Felicity,
and Coincidence,
and I realize,
beyond any skin or bone or flesh at all,
that this city is waiting for me,
that it can go on limpidly waiting and
will not be bothered in the slightest
if I should take a thousand years
or even
forget to come at all.
Its ghosts will remain and are willing willing willing
to tell all manner of Stories in form of Secrets, in form of Tall Tales, in form of involuntary Nightmumblings.

There is a strange Beauty about this city, beyond its romantic architecture, beyond its great moss-weeping trees, beyond everything that draws Dreamers & Seekers & Scalawags to its plumply velveted, jasmine-scented lap. I begin looking for a name for this ambiguous Beauty at the Jazz and Heritage Festival, when New Orleans' heart is purported to be at its finest.

*******

DAY 1.

First thing in, Thursday morning, right as the gates open at 11 a.m., I'm devouring Ms. Wanda Walker's Cochon de Lait po'boy with wet slaw, served up on a crusty third of a baguette; pork so sweet and soft, I could eat it toofless. Oh, it's so perfect. It's just what babies should taste like. I also manage a bite or two out of Otter's softshell crawfish po'boy, shells softer than kettle-fried chips, with fried sour gherkins and cabbage; crawfish never tasted so wickedly delicious. After breakfast, we're set for a day of music and food and music
and food and
and let's get it goin already, y'all.

On the Jazz & Heritage Stage, Red Hawk Hunters Mardi Gras Indians, resplendent in thousands of ostrich feathers, hand-beaded headdresses and chestplates, left to right, orange yellow fuschia green.

Kelly Guidry's sculptures (Breaux Bridge, LA) of elongated female forms. Beautiful winged mermaids, giant bugs, and the loveliest giant fishing lures. Dreamy whimsy. Romantically menacing.

Pirogues hand made by Tom Colvin, whose Cajun-French accent is thick enough to make communication difficult to my uneducated ears. The boats are joined without aid of screws or metal parts. They are flawless. I shed my first Fest Tears at this astoundingly skillful demonstration of a Beautiful and Dying Art.

New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy at Congo Square.
Squirrel Nut Zippers meets Gogol Bordello.
...That about sums it up.

Panorama Jazz Band at Gentilly. Sousaphone, Potosa accordion, clarinet, awesome (girl) tenor sax and trombone, drums, banjo. New Orleans/Island/Latin jazz outta the 1920s-40s. Danceable, mysterious, nostalgic, ultimately joyful.

A man with a tie-dyed prosthetic leg sits in front of us on the lawn, tapping his fingers against his personal rainbow.

Timbuktu Art Colony out of Ellenwood, GA. Silversmiths who make The Most Amazing Jewelry I have ever seen. Turquoise and amber and silver in sweeping, gracefully organic designs. Yum.

Strawberry cream sno-balls and strawberry lemonade.

Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers. Kermit singing "What A Wonderful World" makes me feel the magnolias in my hair. As the band plays and swings and jives and invites everyone listening to Up and Enjoy all that Life offers, the band is slowly joined by family members, children, everyone playing some instrument or another, everyone dancing. When they play "When It's Sleepytime Down South," Otter and I get all teary-eyed.

Randy Newman. "God bless the potholes down on Memory Lane." Funny as all hell, to my surprise. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country." Watch a guy camping next to us, who had set up his site early just to see Randy Newman, fall asleep about 15 minutes before the show starts, skin burning in the alcoholic afternoon. Newman has the quote of the day, about New Orleans: "It's important that America has a place like this, that knows what's important." When he sings "Louisiana 1927," a song about the worst river flood in U.S. history, there isn't a dry eye as far as I can see.

"It's not what you look like when you're doin whatchya doin!" is shouted over a thousand sunburned bodies by Tower of Power. It's their first time playing Jazz Fest, surely through some gross oversight. You wanna talk about some heavy bass- and horn-powered Funk, this is where it's at. Bootys shakin everywhere. Emilio Castillo shouting, "Let's see how many laws we can break tonight!" gives me the happy energy boost I need.

Fais-Do-Do stage has all the best dancers from across Louisiana. Swear. You can tell the natives by the movements that actually complement, actually belong with the music of CJ Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band.

And...and I'm dragged over to see,
to see...
Dude.
Deacon John.
Seriously.
Old New Orleans style is Original Cool.
Slow Fluid Graceful.
A seizure carved outta butter.
No segue, from the Crescent City to the (rock-infused) blue Delta with its flesh-palpitating rhythm and shake.
Sexagenarian duckwalking across stage.
Breaks a string playing so hard.
Plays his guitar with his teeth.
Whole band in black suits, white shirts, dark ties.
Moved from Sweet Slow Slide "Amazing Grace" into half-fast "Shake Your Moneymaker."
Sky full of sunset, lovebugs, and bubbles.
No metaphor.
Best act of the day.

This evening, walking around Faubourg Marigny, our friend Jay exclaims, "If you're anti-porch, you're antisocial!"
I am inclined to agree.

DAY 2.

Second of May, Friday, promise of rain from drift-cloudy skies.

Photography of Jerry Moran, his Jazz Titanic series. Patina'd and rusted clarinets, case after case, ghosts of the River.
Brienne Joubert's surreal Cities of the Dead.
Ghosty New Orleans, pre and post, of Libby Nevinger's eyes.
Christopher Porche-West, his full-sized doors home and history assemblage, hold us rapt and overwhelmed with its layers of meaning and innuendo. Tiny essay on the importance of teaching history to our society's children: what it means, how it affects us, how it shapes us and teaches us and connects us to something greater than the sum of our lives.

The Driskill Mountain Boys coulda been Grandad and his buddies gathered together to accompany a Saturday dance. Pure bluegrass untainted by pop country or rock & roll. I cry like a baby, missin my grandad's fiddle.

Joseph 'Zigaboo' Modeliste, original Meters drummer, brings the funk, as well as an injunction to every musician to include at least a single track, on any album they record, that is positive, constructive, and encouraging to folks who're listening. He said it was an obligation of artists to do their part to lift up their audiences, their communities, to spur them to Love and to Action.

...And goddamn, this man shakes a stick like no one but the King of the Funky Drums can!

The pomp and ego and pure fuckin skill of Trombone Shorty is a wonder. Straight up New Orleans Funk all over Congo Square. He and his tenor sax and trumpet players leave the stage and snake through the crowd for several minutes, blowin and struttin and makin a joyful noise. As soon as they return to the safety of the canopy, the sky lets loose the first of its baggage, and we begin to drink the rain. It lasts just long enough to cool our backs from relentless sunshine and warm, just long enough to begin softening the interior of the racetrack and turning everything to mud.

The photographs of Frank Relle catch our eyes; they emit some measure of the light and spirit we feel around us in this city. Nightphotos of old New Orleans houses.

We head over for a bit of Stevie Wonder before heading back to Congo Square for Michael Franti. Stevie gives a shout-out for Obama, asks for a moment of silence for Katrina victims, dead or displaced, a moment of silence for all loved one lost (cue crowd tears). There appears a rainbow in the still-wet downpour-threatening sky.

Michael Franti + Spearhead. Ohhh, goodness, this is the most wonderful show. It pours, in vehement fits and sporadic spurts, down and down and down; Franti leaves the stage, cordless microphone in hand, to share the deluge with us, to sing among us, with us. He sings "I Got Love for You," and we feel it, we love them and each other and ourselves. The water comes harder, and we outdance it. We are soaked, grinnin, full of love and rowdy exuberance. We are ready to heal all wounds with our lightnin feet. This show is a blessing. A perfect end to Friday at Jazz Fest.

Later, on Magazine, we take a friend's recommendation for an awesome taco spot and are happy, happy, happy with what food finds our mouths. Everything, down to the plain ol' black beans, has intense, creamy, adventurously homey flavors. I'm not telling what or where the place is; they looked like they had plenty of business and, honestly, I don't want to have to fight another ogling tourista for a spot for dinner. Our lagniappe happens to be our server, Sunshine, who is a charmingly petite competitive eater; she proudly pronounces that she can put away a 17-ounce burrito in under a minute. We are impressed.

DAY 3.

Traversing the city today, checking out neighborhoods, performing our own odd surveying. I am glad for the break from Jazz Fest's sea of mammals.

Tonight we check out Rebirth Brass Band at the Rock 'N' Bowl, a second-storey bowling-alley-concert-dancehall that shakes to beat hell when it's full of people dancing like the devil's after 'em.
Oh, Rebirth, thy name is Joy!
Goddamn, we have the greatest time here, for any number of reasons:
talkin with two septugenarian ladies about Atlanta strip clubs and the joys of pot-smoking;
dancing until we shake the house, top to bottom;
eatin turkey and andouille gumbo in the middle of all that jostlin and dancin;
fascinated watchin the lady behind the merch counter embroidering bowling shirts to order;
looking over at the lanes and realizing everyone bowling is dressed as some sorta royalty, from Disney's aryan-nations Cinderella to ye creepy olde Burger King, and they are drunk and dancin and ludicrously beautiful;
watching six burly guys (including one of our own drunk, kind-hearted, built-like-an-appliance friends), sweatin and strainin, maneuver a 400-pound man in a wheelchair backward down a storey-and-a-half flight of steep stairs, depositing the gentleman into a wildly applauding crowd. No one knows how the wide giant got up the stairs to begin with, and he is not exaclty forthcoming about the matter.

End the night with joyfully circuitous conversation in an untopped convertible,
arms of grand oaks and
lights of New Orleans
stretching around
and above
us.
Perfect.

DAY 4.

Jazz Fest again;
the Final Day,
the most ridiculously crowded day.

The fairgrounds overfloweth with people, with mud, with mud that smells a lot like horse-and people-shit combined, with trash, and with unbelievably good spirits, considering how fuckin tired and hungover everyone is. I spend my own suffering dreaming of eating more Houma fry bread than my tummy has thus far been able to accommodate, and I also repeatedly dream of eviscerating my mother-in-law. When distracted from that, I get to dig on

Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, bass-directed supercool funk, which helps shake off a lot of the previous night's party. We catch the beginning of Dumpstaphunk and the end of Galactic, those new grandaddies of N.O. funk, playing a high-energy set featuring some supagroovin tuba solos.

The only band I sit through, unattached, is The Raconteurs, though the sidereally related maternal hurricane is sitting next to me, which colors everything a little resentfully. Still, the band was pretty good altpoppowerrock, if you're into that sort of thing. They sorta sound like the Mars Volta if MV were, say, in junior high, recording in their parents' garage, praying for the experience and wisdom that will one day make them such an amazing band to watch and hear.

While waiting for the set to finish, we notice that dozens of birds are coordinating a grand mass of sticks and fluff atop several of the stadium lightposts. And the birds appear to be...parakeets. We later find out that New Orleans is home to wild Quaker parrots, indigenous to Argentina, now comfortably settled here, as well. Apparently, no one knows exactly how or why they're in New Orleans, but there are a hell of a lot of 'em. ...Huh.

The last day of Jazz Fest 2008 means:
We've gotta see the Neville Brothers.
Just gotta.
It's their first year closing Jazz Fest since 2005.
Apparently, there was some local ambivalence about the Brothers' belated performance:
"What took you so long?" and
"We're family; where you been while we need you like we do?"
seem to be the basic (painful) questions at the root of any popular hesitance.

Tell you what, though...
soon as that family opens their mouths?
soon as the first beats ride out on the humid evening air,
soon as the bass moves the mud,
soon as the keys color the clouds,
the entire crowd is one great embrace, one grand family, with its beauty and nasty and bicker and joy, these people are astoundingly happy to be together,
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.

And y'know, that kinda sums up the whole experience of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival: there's thousands of different people with different agendas and ideals, crammed into one blazingly hot, pretty grossly messy area for seven hours a day; there's a million-billion ways this thing could go wrong, wrong, wrong, but...
It doesn't.
I do not see a single argument while I am here.
I do not see any angry people.
I do not see a single person trying to meddle or control or interfere.
I do, however, see a lot of smilin, a lot of laughin
...a lot;
I see a lot of old-fashioned courteousness and instinctive lagniappe;
and I see a hell of a lot of people
happy to be together
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.

Welcome to New Orleans, baby.
Where you been?


Thanks to Internet Archive for the gorgeous live and 78rpm music that accompanied this transcription and translation. Ma Rainey, King Oliver, Michael Franti, Ethel Waters, and on and on and on. Thank you for making these available to the world.