Tag: jazz

SMALL WORLD: Guitarist Lionel Loueke Brings Gentility to ‘The Journey’

Posted on by Editor

Lionel Loueke sat in a hotel room while on tour somewhere in Europe about a year and a half ago, watching the news on TV. The Benin-born guitarist, whose inventive playing has astonished many through his roles with Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard and his own band, was horrified by what he was seeing.

“It was a ship,” he remembered of the coverage. “A boat that came from Libya, I think. Many people died in the sea. I remember seeing kids, pregnant women in a boat and in very ugly conditions tossing the Mediterranean.”

It was a boat carrying refugees from North Africa to Europe, people trying to escape war and famine, only to perish on route. He was overwhelmed with emotion. He responded in the way most natural to him.

He picked up his guitar.

“I wasn’t thinking of composing that day,” he says. “Just playing some simple triads. I recorded myself improvising, all triads, more of a classical style.”

As much as what he was watching tore him apart, made him angry and pained by the horror and violence of it, the music he was making didn’t sound angry, did not reflect the violence and brutality. Instead it was music of gentility.

“I’m personally a non-violent person,” he says. “I practice Buddhism, with Herbie now for a few years. That comes through my playing and my music. There are other ways to resolve problems than violence. I think we touch more people this way — maybe the gentle part will catch more people’s attention than something angry and aggressive. That’s the way I see it.”

And that is exactly the tone throughout his new album, The Journey, which includes “Vi Gnin” (“My Child” in the Mina language of a coastal district of Benin), the piece that grew from those triads he played in the hotel room.

It’s a tone that tied to a lot of things for him as he watched and played that day. He thought of other ships, ships that took people from his home region in an earlier era across the Atlantic to be slaves in Brazil. And he thought of the music of Brazil of more recent times, echoing the earlier eras, sounds that thread through the album.

The album, the 45-year-old musician’s seventh as a leader, doesn’t start with slaves being taken to South America, though. It starts with some returning to Africa. Opening track “Bouriyan” is a lilting samba, inspired by those who moved back to Benin, once a Portuguese colony, from Brazil as slave revolts racked the country during its fight for independence in the 19th century. It’s something to which he feels a very direct connection, as many of those returnees settled in the town of Ouidah, where his mother grew up. Loueke has indelibly fond memories of his mother cooking feijoada, the Brazilian-rooted beans-and-meat stew. But of course he had no idea of those roots.

“For me, I thought it was from Benin!” he says. “That’s the real connection.”

It was the same with the music that came from the Brazilian ties.

“I grew up listening to Brazilian music, without knowing it was Brazilian music,” he says.

That came later, when he left Benin as a young man to study jazz at the American School of Modern Music in Paris. “I started hearing the Brazilian guitarists,” he recalls. “First guy I heard was Baden Powell. Then of course João Gilberto, Gilberto Gil. All those classic Brazilian composers.” And, of course, Antonio Carlos Jobim, the essential Brazilian guitarist-composer of “The Girl From Ipanema,” “Desafinado” and so many others at the foundation of the canon.

“Jobim! Jobim might be the second one I heard. I was already playing some of those standards, classic songs we all knew.”

For many, that connection may be a bit of a revelation. The evolution of some music back and forth across the Atlantic is well-known — the way Afro-Cuban music sprung from Yoruban roots and then returned to be embraced and reworked in various African locales, most prominently. But the sounds associated with Brazil on which Loueke draws for The Journey are lesser associated with Africa.

“You have the return after slavery, that part is not well-known,” he says. “But pretty much in every country where you have the coasts, some of the slaves who came back on different coasts got together and used the culture back from where they had come from.”

That all provided the starting point for creation of the music here, under the guidance of producer and co-arranger Robert Sadin, starting with Loueke’s guitar and vocals, with words in Mina, Fon, Yoruba and his own “language” of clicks, hums and sighs. They then brought in a variable cast of complementary, enhancing support, a wide-ranging roster including Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, bassist Pino Palladino (the guy who, among many other things, stepped in to the Who when John Entwistle died), New York saxophonist John Ellis, Trinidadian trumpeter Étienne Charles, classical clarinetist Patrick Messina, versatile cellist Vincent Ségal and Benin-born percussionist Christi Joza Orisha, as well as Loueke’s long-time trio partners, bassist Massimo Biolcati and drummer Ferenc Nemeth.

“We didn’t think about who was going to play at the beginning,” Loueke says. “I was doing three days myself for the project, then we decided based on that who would be the right person to bring something magical. Choice was to find musicians who can bring something different, refreshing.”

Refreshing is a good description of Loueke’s whole approach to music, but also dazzling in technique and originality, something he developed from his youth when he came under the sway of the music of Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and Grant Green, then developed in his studies Paris, in Boston at the Berklee College of Music and in Los Angeles at the Thelonious Monk Institute — his audition at the latter being in front of a panel that included Hancock, Blanchard and Shorter.

All of that, all of him, is in this new album more than anything he’s done before, he says. It comes through strongly when he talks about the songs and their inspiration, what they mean to him.

“‘Kába,’ when something good or bad happens we look up or down,” he says of one. “Kába means ‘sky’ and it’s all about looking to the sky. We look for hope. We are thankful.”

Of another: “‘Gbé’ means ‘life,’ how life is beautiful at the beginning, but sometimes there are the roses and you have to be careful when you’re walking or step on the thorns.”

And another: “‘Molika’ is a song I wrote for my kids — Moesha, Lisa and Mika.”

He’s reluctant to call this a political album, despite the initial matters that spurred it. It goes much deeper than politics.

“It’s a very personal record for me,” he says. “I call it The Journey for that reason. It’s kind of a resume of all I’ve done from the beginning as a musician, and as a person, until today. And this is the right time to talk about these things. I’m not a political person. But to speak out, musically, to make a statement — well, after all for me we are living it, one way or another.”

Photo credit: Jean-Baptiste Millot

Small World: Music With Purpose By Magos Herrera, Miguel Zenón

Posted on by Editor

Most of singer Magos Herrera’s new album, a collaboration with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, draws on words and music written decades ago by Latin American poets and composers who spoke out against oppression, at the risk of their freedom and, in some cases, their lives. These are complemented by the haunting folk song “La Llarona,” already a staple of the Mexican canon but now globally known via its prominent place in the animated movie Coco.

Composer-saxophonist Miguel Zenón’s new work also teams him with a string ensemble, Chicago’s Spektral Quartet. The collection taps centuries of traditions, both musical and cultural, from his native Puerto Rico, to some extent to shine a light on the historic ignorance of many in the United States for its vibrant commonwealth. Folk melodies, evocations of religious festivals, and impressions of rural villages all mix in a celebration of that legacy.

But each is also very much of the moment, in the moment, tied to circumstances of the here and now, pointedly so. This is music with immediacy, with a purpose.

“I think these days we don’t have the luxury not to have a purpose,” says Herrera. The title of her album gives that purpose shape: Dreamers.

“It’s the spirit of our times, at least to me, after some time of confusion, showing how we got into these times, not only for what happens in America but in the world,” she says. “It was in invitation to ground in the reason why we make music and the purpose of our artistry and our music. And also because one of the first reasons I moved to New York 11 years ago was for all the opposite virtues of what we see — democracy, conversation, interaction, etc. The long story short is [the album] is really a response to what happens to the spirit of our times, beyond complaining.”

She’s made a career of exploring both her own and the larger Latin American heritage, primarily in a jazz context, but this album is very personal.

“I’m a Mexican in Trump America,” she says. “So this conversation of my situation as an immigrant, in every sense I thought it was a beautiful reaffirmation of my background to celebrate these incredibly huge masters of the word.” These influential poets and composers include Mexican poet Octavio Paz, Spanish martyr Frederico Garcia Lorca, Chilean “Nueva Canción” activist Violetta Parra, amd jailed and exiled Brazilians Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and João Gilberto.

Herrera adds, “They lived in dark times, but changed the conversation, and keep inspiring us with what they wrote. It’s music of the incredible poets, some effected by the regimes in different ways, some were exiled, Lorca was murdered. So to honor them, celebrate their love for humanity, for democracy and the love for imagination of their world.”

Zenón’s album Yo Soy La Tradición is not as explicitly political, though he says it’s hard not to find that in the series of eight new compositions, his alto sax woven with the Spektral strings.

Zenón says that much of the mission of this album is to shed a light on the beleaguered island commonwealth of Puerto Rico – not just post-Maria, with help still slow to come, but with a mind on issues that have existed for decades, some coming from its perceived status as a “lesser” part of the U.S. But the learning process most essential to the album, he says, was his own.

“As a Puerto Rican and a Puerto Rican musician, I’m amazed by how little I know,” he says. “Always something to discover, something around the corner. And when you get into something, there’s something more after that. A lot of the ideas on the album I’ve been focused on for a while, but wanted to dig deeper for this project.”

For each piece in the set commissioned by Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival he took some aspect of Puerto Rican life — a folk tune, a religious ritual, a community celebration — and fashioned a vibrant fantasia. “Rosario” is inspired by “El Rosario Cantado,” a version of the Holy Rosary passed down through the generations traditionally played on folk instruments at funerals and other occasions. “Yumac” is inspired by a musical form from the town of Camuy (the title is that spelled backwards) with an unusual cadence and rhyming scheme. And with “Promesa” he portrays the annual celebration on the eve of the Jan. 6 saints’ day honoring the Three Kings who took gifts to Jesus in the manger.

“The Promesa, that tradition is so unique and so special, so amazing,” he says. “People make a promise to a specific deity, usually Catholic, like the Virgin. I wrote this piece for the Three Kings. In Puerto Rico and Latin America, the Three Kings’ day is bigger than Christmas and is celebrated on Jan. 6 every year. You get your gifts then.”

For these saints’ day celebrations, people honor promises made to the heavenly figures who they asked for help with health or financial troubles or other matters, usually with a big party the night before. El Día de Reyes, this day, is the most elaborate.

“It involves songs and an offering and the music is very specific, which spoke to me,” he says. “There are bands that all they do is play the Promesa events, they have the repertoire. All the songs are about the Kings.”

One song in particular caught his imagination, a seven-bar piece (unusual for a folk song, he notes) and expanded on that, as well as on another song, “Les Tres Marias,” both in diatonic scales, which he said gave him a lot of room to work harmonically, which he does in what proves a vibrant intersection of folk, jazz and modern classical approaches.

Miguel Zenón

And that is something else the two albums have in common. Each takes various aspects of those elements to create their own distinctive form of chamber music. Zenón’s is spare but lively in its evocativeness. The Herrera/Rider project has a larger sonic landscape, in part simply from featuring her vocals, but also through bringing in percussionists and other musicians to expand the range. For Herrera, like Zenón, the most profound revelations in the course of her project were personal, insights into her own heritage in the context of Latin American culture.

“It was more a reconnection to my origins, what I was listening to growing up,” she says.

But she also relished the chance to delve into everything from Brazilian bossa and tropicalia to flamenco to Mexican folk, all given exciting twists by Brooklyn Rider and a complement of arrangers including the quartet’s Colin Jacobson, Argentine musician Guillermo Klein and Venezuela-born Gonzalo Grau, who also plays percussion on the album. As well, she stepped up to the challenge of composing new music for three songs, including “Niña” and “Dreams” using words by Paz. In that she took inspiration and energy not just from older sounds, but also from new movements.

“There is a very interesting new wave of Argentine instrumental music,” she says. “It connects with the Brazilian instrumental scene. The song ‘Milonga Gris’ by Carlos Aguirre, a wordless song, that’s from that.”

The final two songs on the album make the connections very strongly, of musical styles and of the resonance of themes from the past with today. “La Llorona” tells of a woman’s ghost, searching for her lost children, ties now to the recent reports of families separated by U.S. immigration authorities. Pointedly, on the album it’s followed by the closing “Undio,” a 1973 João Gilberto bossa nova that had been part of the Brooklyn Rider repertoire before meeting Herrera. The song, in Jacobsen’s arrangement, starts with a ghostly cluster of strings before revealing a somber, yet hopeful, sense of uncertainty.

Johnny Gandelsman, Brooklyn Rider violinist and producer of Dreamers, also feels a connection to the material, having his origins in an authoritarian state, before moving with his family to Israel at 12 and then to the U.S. at 17. The material on Dreamers and the writers’ experiences behind it resonate with him deeply, even more in what he sees in the current political climate. “La Llorona” took on even greater personal meaning when he took his young daughter to daycare and heard another girl, who knew it through Coco, asking what the lyrics meant. He hopes that the new album presents a sense of optimism.

“In the world, America has been a beacon of hope for so many people who have struggled in their own countries,” he says. “I guess we just want to say that it’s still a place that can provide shelter and hope and opportunity for people, and we want to see the beauty in it.”

Color photo of Magos Herrera & Brooklyn Rider by Shervin Lainez
Black-and-white photo of Magos Herrera & Brooklyn Rider by Ryan Nava
Photo of Miguel Zenón by Jimmy Katz

Mark O’Connor, ‘Pickin’ In The Wind’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Mark O’Connor comes about as close to being a household name as any musician in bluegrass (and its adjacent genres). Because bluegrass is predicated upon instrumental skill, the origin point of O’Connor’s recognition will always be his virtuosity, his musical expertise, and his command of his instrument. He’s a true master of bluegrass fiddle and contest fiddle forms, he’s a trailblazer in fiddle-flavored classical compositions of all manners and sorts, his musical code-switching extends to jazz, gypsy jazz, and swing, and he is pervasive on recordings and sessions from his years spent in Nashville. He even has his own violin and fiddle curriculum, The O’Connor Method, which pedagogically capitalizes on and celebrates American music, rather than Western European music, as usual.

Yet, no matter the level to which he transcends any/all musical barriers or the ubiquity of his name and brand, many folks don’t know he’s a maddeningly adept guitar player as well. In his youth, as he racked up wins at fiddle contests far and wide, he was also taking home flatpicking trophies with the same bravado. On his iconic 1976 album, Pickin’ In The Wind, the title track and the first tune on the record opts not to showcase his signature fiddling, but rather his guitar picking — backed up by a band that is no less than jaw-dropping: John Hartford on banjo, Sam Bush on mandolin, Norman Blake on dobro, Roy Huskey Jr. on bass, and Charlie Collins on the rhythm guitar. The tune listens down as straight-ahead bluegrass, but with a chord progression and arrangement that never strays into the simplistic, thanks in part to O’Connor’s compositional taste and the supreme talent of his fellow musicians. It’s an O’Connor staple that doesn’t require a single bowstroke.

So, in celebration of O’Connor’s birthday (August 5), it seems appropriate that we shine a light on the guitar stylings and the unbelievable ensemble of “Pickin’ In The Wind.”

The Heritage of New Orleans’ Jazz Fest

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Three hundred years ago just about now — May 7, 1718, so legend has it — representatives of the riches-minded colonial French Mississippi Company decided that a malaria-infested swamp in the crescent bend near the base of the river for which it was named would make a great place for a port settlement. Nouvelle-Orléans they called it.

Thanks to them, over the course of the next couple of weekends, not too far from that original settlement, you can find a spot where, depending on how the breezes are blowing, you will be able to hear five, six, maybe seven kinds of music all at once. This is music representing cultures from all over the world — from Haiti, from Mali, from Cuba, from Brazil, from Nova Scotia, from the bayous and prairies just a few hours away, and from Congo Square on the edge of that former swamp. Music originated by escaped slaves, by French refugees booted out of Eastern Canada, by Irish dockworkers, by free people of color and landed aristocrats, by Baptist celebrants and Catholic congregants and European Jewish immigrants. Oh, and of the indigenous tribes who were there long before the Europeans. Blues, gospel, country, rock, salsa, merengue, Celtic, hip-hop, bounce, rara, R&B, Cajun, zydeco, klezmer, funk, brass bands’ Mardi Gras Indian chants, and real Indians’ pow-wow chants. And jazz, of course, both traditional and modern, just for a start.

And while you’re standing there, in that same spot, you can savor the irresistible aromas of cuisine from just as many traditions, all blended together in ways that have come to be associated with this place, which we now know as New Orleans … though that’s a different story … or a different part of the same story, perhaps.

That spot is in the middle of the Louisiana Fairgrounds which, part of the year, is a horse-racing track, but for the last weekend in April and first in May, has for decades been the site of the famed New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. And this year, the event is marking the city’s tricentennial with a valiant attempt to showcase and celebrate all of the many cultures that made this city like nowhere else in North America, really nowhere else in the world. Technically, that’s always been part of the mission of what people refer to as JazzFest — its baker’s dozen of stages spread around the grounds hosting artists with connections to that heritage.

This year, that specific mission will be concentrated in a tent very near that mid-Fairgrounds spot. Most years, a Cultural Exchange Pavilion has hosted music, art, crafts, and workshops devoted to a particular country or culture with historic ties to New Orleans. Cuba was spotlighted last year, Belize in 2016, and Haiti, Mali, Brazil, and Native America among others featured in recent years. For the tricentennial, all of that is being squeezed into the pavilion, an ambitious, but fitting focus.

The late, great singer Ernie K-Doe was fond of saying that, while he wasn’t positive, he was pretty sure “all music came from New Orleans.” Hyperbole from a man who called himself the Emperor of the Universe? Well, a little, maybe. A more accurate statement might be that pretty much all music came to, and through, New Orleans. Heck, after hosting its first documented opera performance in 1796, the city was known as “the Opera Capital of North America” through the next century. And, if you roll your eyes when JazzFest announces its big name artist headliners — a crop this year including Aerosmith, Sting, Beck, Rod Stewart, Lionel Richie, and LL Cool J — well, how many of them would be making the music they make, if not for the powerful influences of music tied to the heritage of New Orleans and the surrounding region?

It was all pretty much in place, even before the city’s single centennial, as cultural historian Ned Sublette notes in the introduction to his definitive 2005 account of those first 100 years, The World That Made New Orleans.

“New Orleans was the product of complex struggles among competing international forces,” he wrote. “It’s easy to perceive New Orleans’ apartness from the rest of the United States, and much writing about the city understandably treats it as an eccentric, peculiar place. But I prefer to see it in its wider context. A writer in 1812 called it ‘the great mart of all wealth of the Western world.’ By that time, New Orleans was a hub of commerce and communication that connected the Mississippi watershed, the Gulf Rim, the Atlantic seaboard, the Caribbean Rim, Western Europe (especially France and Spain), and various areas of West and Central Africa.”

And with all of that came music, gene-splicing and mutating through the years, from the drumming, dancing, and singing of slaves, given Sundays off, gathering in what became known as Congo Square (in what is now Louis Armstrong Park, just across Rampart from the French Quarter) to the backstreets and brothels of the Storyville district down the street where Buddy Bolden and Armstrong played their horns and Jelly Roll Morton worked the sounds of Latin America — “the Spanish tinge” — into roiling piano adventures through the collision of rhythm & blues and country-blues in the years just after World War II that brought about the birthing of rock ’n’ roll in Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios right on the other side of Rampart.

As Sublette put it: “The distance between rocking the city in 1819 and [Roy Brown’s] ‘Good Rocking Tonight’ in 1947 was about a block.”

At the same time, that distance is a trip around the world. This year, it’s all in one little tent.

A few highlights of note from the Cultural Exchange Pavilion lineup:

Sidi Touré — The guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Bamako, Mali, is one of the leading figures in modern Songhaï blues, roots of which became American blues and its variations via slaves brought across the Atlantic and, in turn, influenced by American blues and rock.

The Cajun/Acadienne Connection — A special collaboration between descendants of French settlers relocated to the Louisiana bayou prairies after being booted out of Eastern Canada by the conquering British in1755, and descendants of those who managed to stay in Canada. The former is represented by the Savoy Family Band, Marc and Ann Savoy standing among the leading forces in the revival of once-oppressed Cajun music and culture joined by sons Joel and Wilson, who have brought their own vitality to the form. The latter comes via Vishtèn, a young trio from the resilient Francophone community on Easter Canada’s Prince Edward Island which mixes French Acadian and Celtic influences with overt nods to their Louisiana “cousins.”

Cynthia Girtley’s Tribute to Mahalia Jackson — The formidable Girtley, who bills herself as “New Orleans Gospel Diva” offers her homage to New Orleans’ (and the world’s) Queen of Gospel and force in the Civil Rights Movement who, two years before her death, was a surprise performer at the very first JazzFest in 1970 in Congo Square, singing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” with the Eureka Brass Band, followed by a formal concert the next night in the adjacent Municipal Auditorium, which now bears her name.

Tribute to Jelly Roll Morton with special guest Henry Butler — New Orleans-born Butler has long been one of the leading keepers of the flame of the city’s great piano traditions, an heir to such greats as Prof. Longhair and James Booker. Here, he is featured in a set honoring Morton who, if not the inventor of jazz (as he was wont to boast himself), was one of its key innovators and promoters in its formative years.

Jupiter & Okwess — Hailing from the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital Kinshasa, dynamic singer Jupiter Bokondji and his forceful band have become an international force in modern Congolese music, as it’s taken to the global road recently, gripping audiences at festivals and clubs alike in Europe and North America.

Kermit Ruffins’ Tribute to Louis Armstrong — Trumpeter and singer Ruffins became a star as a teen, helping lead a new generation of NOLA street musicians with the Rebirth Brass Band in the ‘90s, and has continued as a local favorite through his solo career (plus wider exposure via featured spots in HBO’s Treme, among other things). His love for and debt to the one-and-only Satchmo has always been a core presence in his playing and gravelly, good-natured vocal approach.

Leyla McCalla — The cellist, banjoist, and singer emerged in the second version of the Carolina Chocolate Drops alongside Rhiannon Giddens. Settling in New Orleans and starting a family, she’s dug deep into Haitian and Creole roots in her colorfully wide-ranging solo albums, showing herself a visionary, talented artist in her own right.

The East Pointers — Another young trio from Canada’s Prince Edward Island, this group draws more on the British-Celtic traditions, but with the distinct character of its home. Their latest album, What We Leave Behind, explores the sadness of young people leaving the island to seek work and wider horizons elsewhere.

Lakou Mizik — This Port-au-Prince group has been called the Buena Vista All Stars of Haiti, as it was formed after the devastating 2010 earthquake around a vibrant core of Haitian musical elders joining with rising youngsters. Their 2017 JazzFest performance was one of the year’s highlights.

Photo of Congo Square courtesy of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Hot Club Sandwich, ‘Swang Thang’

Posted on by Editor

Swing is the most bluegrass-y subspecies of jazz. The chunk of the guitar chopping and comping away, the improvisational fiddle, and the walking bass solos almost guaranteed to elicit applause are more than reminiscent of ‘grass. It’s not uncommon to hear standards played in the style of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli wafting from more progressive bluegrass jams. Quintessential numbers like “Swing 42” and “Minor Swing” morph seamlessly into new acoustic favorites like “16/16” and “E.M.D,” both written by David “Dawg” Grisman. Dawg, arguably more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing swing and gypsy jazz to the bluegrass masses — but he isn’t just a jazzy missionary to more folky, old-time realms; he has made a home for himself in the heart of the swing scene, as well. He’s as comfortable straddling the fence as he is jumping down and spending some quality time on either side.

On the opening track of Hot Club Sandwich’s just-released album, No Pressure, the duo of mandolins make this bluegrass comparison most palpable. But don’t be mistaken: This band, this album, and this track are all swing. Hot Club’s mandolinist Matt Sircely and Dawg himself, the writer of “Swang Thang” and the album’s producer/advice guru, twin the tune’s bouncy, whimsical, jovial head and swap licks with each other during the solo sections. Listeners may feel a sudden urge to run away to the countryside in France, or to sip wine or snooty coffee at a street side café, or watch an indie movie or Fiat/Vespa car chase after a dose of this swang. It’s a pleasure to hear Dawg do what he does best with this Washington-based string outfit that’s been carrying the swing banner for going on two decades.

Sam Reider, ‘Valley of the Giants’

Posted on by Editor

Accordionist, pianist, and composer Sam Reider was inspired by wandering through the surreal landscape of Valle de los Gigantes in Baja California, Mexico. The park is named for the gargantuan cardón cactus, a species that resembles saguaros of the U.S., but grows larger and taller and can live longer than 300 years. It might seem that the Sonoran desert — dotted by enormous, otherworldly plants — would evoke meditative, minimal, dreamy sounds — a musical reflection of desolation and austere beauty — but “Valley of the Giants,” off Reider’s debut album, Too Hot to Sleep, is anything but.

It’s rollicking and frenetic, lilting and energetic — more like the Wild West, replete with stampedes and tumbleweeds, than a silent, spiritual desert. The album’s roster of savvy pickers (Dominick Leslie on mandolin; Alex Hargreaves on fiddle; Roy Williams and Grant Gordy on guitars; David Speranza on bass; and Eddie Barbash on saxophone) pull from their overarching bluegrass expertise to drive the tune forward at a pace just shy of breakneck, galloping-horse-chase soundtrack speeds. Dashes of folk influences from around the world are sprinkled into its string band aesthetic like melodic Easter eggs. Reider’s accordion is the unyielding anchor, giving a dose of soulful, raw timelessness, but with a modern crispness and confidence. Somehow, it simultaneously conjures arid Baja and transatlantic scenes in an Irish pub or the countryside in France. It’s like a mini-vacation, wrapped up tidily within an instrumental.

Keeping the Culture Alive: A Conversation with Trombone Shorty

Posted on by Editor

If recent reports are to be believed, New Orleans has usurped Las Vegas’s drunken, fluorescent-pink crown as the go-to spot for bachelorette parties. Gaggles of girls trouncing down the Tremé sporting satin bride-to-be sashes are not an uncommon sight, as brash replaces the sound of brass that defined the city that Troy Andrews, known to most as Trombone Shorty, grew up in. Like everywhere with a deep and steely soul, gentrification has landed, bee to flower, and Andrews, who became a bandleader before most children had their training wheels removed, is intent on keeping that spirit alive: but in a way that makes sense for the modern world, not despite it.

On Parking Lot Symphony, his newest LP, Andrews collaborates with everyone from members of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros to Aloe Blacc, and has previously shared the stage with country, rock, and pop greats — including Dierks Bentley, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Madonna, to name a few. There’s a lot of arguing these days about how to best ensure that music keeps thriving in a bachelorette party-inundated, streaming- and synth-heavy world, and Andrews’ school — one that fuses R&B, jazz, blues, and big band — is the type to actually keep the art of song cogent. It’s full of tradition but never once traditional, rich in talent and technique, but never trying to fly out of reach.

The title track, written with Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the album’s producer, Chris Seefried, is this dichotomy in action: It’s slick and funky but joyfully unpredictable, adorned with pulls of the trumpet that are as lyrical as the words itself. Parking Lot Symphony is partly inspired by a youth spent playing anywhere outside of four walls, marching down the Tremé in street parades, and partly by Andrews’ sponge-like approach to current culture — more often than not, he’s browsing the Spotify Global Top 50 over any individual record.

“We played everywhere from Jackson Square to parking lots, funerals, backyards, on street corners, on street cars, everywhere,” says Andrews. “So Parking Lot Symphony really means music can go anywhere, be played anywhere, and take you anywhere.” True to form, the record feels blissfully free of any sonic or physical walls.

It’s been four years since your last record (2013’s Say That to Say This) was released. Was there a song that kicked things off for this new collection and made you realize the direction you wanted to take things?

I don’t know if it was one song; it was more a process of letting inspiration come to me while I was traveling and working on the road. Then some sparks of inspiration would come up to do some new music, and I’d be writing a hook. I went into the studio by myself for two weeks and played all the instruments before I introduced the band to the songs. I wanted to get a bunch of ideas out first, then have the musicians play the parts better than I could while we perfected the arrangements.

You have such an interesting roster of co-­writers on the record: Kevin Griffin from Better Than Ezra, and Ebert amongst them. On “Familiar,” with Aloe Blacc, you even create a new palette you’ve called “trap funk.” What do you do to stay connected to every corner of music, regardless of genre?

I think it is a natural progression. When I grew up, I was listening to brass bands and I was listening to New Orleans hip-hop, so that is a part of my culture. I started, then, playing my horn to hip-hop beats and rock beats. It’s part of knowing where you come from, but trying to move the music forward.

You chose two covers for this record, both from local legends: “Here Come the Girls” by Allen Toussaint, and the Meters’ “Ain’t No Use.” What musical gaps were you hoping those would fill?

I didn’t want to play standard songs and, when I heard “‘Here Come the Girls,” even though it was written before I was born, I almost feel like it was written for me to perform. I just thought that the horns in “Here Come the Girls” would fit really well with the sound I was creating at this moment. “Ain’t No Use” is a song we have played live.­­ The Meters are New Orleans legends. Their sound to me is New Orleans, and you can hear in their music how they adapted and grew and expanded on the traditions they started in, which we try to do.

Is there a song on the record that you are most nervous to play live?

I don’t really get nervous, but singing, in general, for me, can be a little challenging. It’s easier and more natural for me to play than it is for me to hear my own voice. Singing feels more like jumping over a hurdle. And I feel like I really pushed myself vocally on this album and I’m looking forward to doing that in our shows, as well.

Speaking of nerves, you’ve played at the White House before. Would you do it now? Do you think musicians should be overtly political?

It’s a personal choice to be political or not, and I don’t want to tell anyone what to say. I did play four or five times for President Obama at the White House, and a few times were for Turnaround Arts to support arts education. Those were tremendous experiences because I also got to collaborate with kids, as well as some artists that I never thought I would get to play with. It was just great to be on stage there, be among some of the greatest musicians in the world, and be able to play in front of the President and the First Lady.

You’ve also played with country musicians like Dierks Bentley and Zac Brown. Do you enjoy modern country?

I love all music. Garth Brooks is probably right at the top of the list for me, as far as artists I respect and would love to work with. Seeing Zac Brown live when we toured with him, I learned a lot from that, how he plays with so much emotion. And playing with Dierks Bentley and with Little Big Town … you can just feel the power of their talent.

New Orleans is once again becoming one of the biggest tourist destinations — a hot destination for bachelorette parties with AirBnbs everywhere. Does that worry you? Do you ponder gentrification much?

It does, when I go to the old neighborhood and realize how many of the people who made it a special place aren’t there. The Tremé is the neighborhood where I grew up, but since the storm, many of the original Tremé people I grew up with can’t afford to stay there any more. So, in some ways, it is already a New Orleans that lives on in my music.

We’re in a world of synthesizers and automation — as a musician, do you think about instruments themselves being at risk long-term, and kids growing up not wanting to play an instrument? What do you think can be done to ensure we keep kids picking up guitars and trombones, not just computers?

I can remember playing and marching down the street in the Tremé. Without that, and the people around me who taught me or provided access to instruments, I wouldn’t be who I am. That’s why I feel the responsibility to carry on the traditions that raised me. I don’t want to wait until late in my career to give back. I want to do it while things are growing for me. I felt an unspoken responsibility to give back.

What do you hope people take away from this record emotionally?

My goal is to put out great New Orleans music, and I’ve taken everything that I’ve learned, everything I’m interested in, everything I’ve played onstage with different people from country and western, to rock ‘n’ roll, to funk, to hip-hop, and I’m just putting that in the context of my own tradition of what I grew up with in New Orleans. So I hope people take that you can be true to your roots and still make your own way forward.

Photo credit: Mathieu Bitton

Squared Roots: Pieta Brown Gets into the Rickie Lee Jones Groove

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There are some artists who defy every convention and expectation we attempt to impose upon them. Rickie Lee Jones is one of them. Right out of the gate, she played by her own rules and danced to her own very groovy drum. Her eponymous debut in 1979 — with stunning songs like “The Last Chance Texaco” and “Weasel and the White Boys Cool” — set her apart from and, really, above the fray, and that’s where she has stayed for her entire career which, thankfully, is still going strong all these decades later.

Similarly, Pieta Brown has followed her own artistic instincts to pursue a career in music outside the shadow cast by her father, folk master Greg Brown. With her past few releases, she has focused on a quieter, simpler sound anchored in atmosphere. Her seventh (and most recent) album, Postcards, continues to explore that form as well as the function of collaboration with other artists, including Carrie Rodriguez, Calexico, Mason Jennings, and others.   

What are the characteristics you think of first, when you think of Rickie Lee Jones?

Experimental. And open. And non-linear, I think. I guess those are the first few. Then, really, very individual and unique. Extremely.

Those are all perfect. Adventurous and feisty come to my mind, along with fearless.

Yeah. Fearless. That’s awesome.

That was something Tift Merritt and I talked about in regard to Linda Ronstadt. Is fearlessness just something that women have to have, no matter what they do?

Maybe. Or maybe it’s more that you might be really scared, but you’re willing to cut through that anyway. I was going to say, for sure, in the music industry, but I don’t think it’s particular to that at all, really.

Yeah. I thought about that, too.

It’s a very good question.

We won’t get to the bottom of it today, though. [Laughs]

[Laughs] No.

It struck me in reading up on Rickie Lee that her self-titled debut was released in March of 1979. She was on Saturday Night Live one month later and played Carnegie Hall three months after that.

Wow.

And then came her Grammy wins, six months after that. Success doesn’t get much more overnight than that.

Yeah, she hit it right out of the gate, for sure.

Can you imagine being thrown into the belly of the beast that quickly?

No, I can’t. Speaking of fearlessness … there must be some fearless streak and I’m not sure how deeply it’s hiding in me, but I was so shy that it was like breaking down major walls just to start even doing a show. So, no, I really can’t imagine that.

I do know, from talking to Iris [DeMent], it was a similar thing for her, in terms of her putting out her first album and being rocketed into the light. She said that was pretty wild, on a certain level.

I bet! Another thing that struck me was the fact that a quirky, jazz-tinged singer/songwriter had that kind of success, hit number five on the Billboard album chart. There’s no way that would happen today.

No. It wouldn’t. It’s interesting, isn’t it? I can’t even imagine how that would happen now. I think it could happen, but not to people who are presenting themselves as a singer/songwriter, even if that’s what they really are. It’s in another disguise, these days, it seems like.

Geography, also, for her … she moved around a lot and it seems to add a lot of colors to her palette.

I think that’s maybe something I intrinsically related to without realizing it. I moved around a ton, as a kid. In fact, the reason I was thinking about Rickie Lee Jones, when I got asked to do this … the thing I flashed on was, I think I must have been about 9 or 10 and I had moved around so many times by the age of 10 — I must’ve lived in 12 or 13 different places by the time I was that age. I had moved down to Alabama with my mom, but then for about eight months when I was 9 going on 10, I moved up to the Twin Cities with my dad.

And I’ll just never forget — it’s just burned into my mind as one of the strongest memories of my childhood — I came across a cassette that was in a pile. While we were living in the Twin Cities, I think we moved two or three times, just in that nine months. But, at this particular time, we were living in this upstairs apartment and there was an attic where I could go hang out by myself. I had a Walkman and I put that tape in. It was Rickie Lee Jones. I didn’t know anything about her. Nothing. And I was so mesmerized by her sound. I remember I played the song “Walk Away Renee” for an hour or two. I just sat up in that attic. It was kind of an emotional time for me because my parents were all haywire, and everybody was coming and going so I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know why that song … I mean, the lyrics are pretty simple, but her sound and those words, it opened up another dimension for me or something. That’s why I chose her.

But, geography-wise, like you were saying, I moved around so much, too. And you can hear that in her music, like you said. So many textures and conversations and layers going on every time she sings. It’s super-cool.

I’m always fascinated by how geography informs an artist’s work For her, she grew up in Chicago, Arizona, and Olympia, then Southern California, New York, San Francisco, Paris, back to L.A., back to Tacoma … I think New Orleans is in there somewhere. You can hear all of those places coming through.

Yeah. It’s super-fascinating. I think another thing, for me at that age, a lot of the music I was hearing was in my family, of course, and the stuff that was on the radio. My mom liked jazz a lot, so I got a lot of early influences like Billie Holiday and stuff like that I heard. But I think hearing Rickie Lee Jones was the kind of thing where it’s like, “Okay, here’s this lady who sounds like no one else I’ve ever heard.” And she had all these different elements, but it didn’t sound confused. It sounded pure and really clear.

Did that bridge a gap for you, between your mom’s love of jazz to what you were hearing on the radio? Was she the in-between?

Yeah, I think so. And that family thing, with my dad being a songwriter, and my great-grandfather played the banjo and my great-grandmother played the pump organ. My grandmother played guitar. It was very rural. We got together pretty big family jams and it was a very rural sound. In fact, I found out later that my great-grandparents used to go down to North Carolina. They lived in southern Iowa. They would go down to North Carolina to jam, and bring that music back. So I always associated that kind of bluegrass sound with southern Iowa because that’s what I would hear and dance around to as a kid with my hat turned upside down. It was like, “Okay. This is what music sounds like.” So there was something about Rickie Lee Jones … I don’t know, just one of those moments in time.

I think, too, because I played piano. That was my first instrument from when I was really little. By that age, I was making up a lot of instrumentals and weird songs on the piano, but it wasn’t something I heard. So, when I heard this woman … I think, too, she has a childlike quality in her voice. So I thought, “Okay. Wow. This means this is possible.”

You’re right. It’s such an interesting juxtaposition between the simplicity and innocence in her voice and the complexity of the arrangements and compositions.

Yeah, right.

Then there’s just the pure creativity racing through her veins, to make a record like The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard in which she improvised her own impressions of various Biblical texts. Who would think of that?

[Laughs] It’s amazing. I got to see her play for the first time last year. It was a great show. The room was elevated. It was all those things. And another big thing for me is, she’s got the groove. She’s got that super-deep groove thing. She picks up her acoustic guitar and the groove is present as soon as she starts playing. So some of that is mixed in there, too. It’s very natural and real. It was great to hear her play live.

What’s your favorite album or era?

I love Traffic from Paradise. There’s a song on there called “Tigers” and I’ve listened to that album so much, in different periods. I went back yesterday and looked at the credits of that because I hadn’t listened to it in a few years. But that was engineered and mixed by a woman.

Julie Last.

Yes. Julie Last. Do you know about her?

I do. I know her, actually.

You know her?! I hope you tell her thank you for me because one of the reasons I love that album is because it sounds so good and so huge. It’s great. It sounds so good. I thought, “Who engineered that? I gotta find out.” I was excited to find out it was a woman. In all my record-making, I haven’t come across a ton of female engineers who are engineering and mixing the albums. And that record sounds so gigantic. It’s just so cool.

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau: Playing Against Type

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The repertoire for mandolin and piano isn’t exactly teeming with arrangements. Compared to other duets, those two specific instruments haven’t conversed with one another as often, but consider that dearth a starting point from which anyone daring enough can create their own dialogue. Mandolinist Chris Thile and pianist Brad Mehldau, virtuosos in their own right, have concocted just such a conversation — by way of original composition and cover, alike — on their first duo debut album, Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau.

The pair first experimented with what they could “say” when they performed a handful of live shows together in 2011 and briefly toured later in 2013. But getting to the studio would take some time. Thile sums up the reason in one word. “Schedules,” he admits, with a sharp chuckle. “We both have pretty voracious appetites for musical projects, and we both love to perform. The little touring things that we had were always coming in the cracks of other projects.” Those projects ranged from Thile’s role in progressive bluegrass band Punch Brothers to Mehldau’s eponymous trio, as well as a whole host of solo, duo, and collaborative projects in between.

The two stay busy, to put it mildly.

Thanks to their respective projects, Thile and Mehldau have learned the art of accommodation, but embarking on this particular album required a novel approach. “I felt like Chris and I were orchestrating for each other a lot,” Mehldau says. “We were finding the right ‘instrument’ to play for each other. Sometimes Chris gave me a drum part during my piano solos, sometimes I gave him low cellos during his. That orchestrating is a big part of the fun of the project.” Beyond that, Thile and Mehldau needed to find a balance between airy mandolin and weighty piano. Mandolin lacks dynamic range. It excels at being soft — Thile compares all the ways it can “whisper” to the myth about the Inuit’s many words for “snow” — but other instruments tend to sacrifice their own clarity to make way for it. “The challenge for me was to not drown out Chris with the piano, because the instrument is simply louder and bigger,” Mehldau explains. “I really enjoyed that challenge, though.” Thile credits Mehldau’s ear with helping the two instruments find a shared space. “He’s such a sensitive listener,” he says. “He immediately intuits the potential issues.”

Listening, as an exercise, has shifted for Thile ever since he took over hosting A Prairie Home Companion. “I feel like my ears have grown four or five sizes,” he says about his new gig. “I’m listening to everything with far more open ears. I’ve often listened to music like, ‘What can this do for me and my musicianship?’ as opposed to listening for pure joy. But joy is improving. Within my craft, I can get so mercenary about it. That hunger to improve can result in unhealthy listening habits, and I feel like this show is actually helping me grow out of that.”

As critical as Thile may be about his listening habits, he has always heard outside the box. It’s a connection he shares with Mehldau. Both men have covered artists seemingly antithetical to their styles, such as Beyoncé or Nirvana but, in that kind of play, they’ve forged edifying creative spaces, and the same is true on Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau. The 11-track album features an array of covers. There’s Gillian Welch’s “Scarlet Town,” Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” the 17th-century Irish tune “Tabhair dom do Lámh,” and more. “I think the reason why it worked so well was because of the common musical ground Chris and I share,” Mehldau says. “Roots rock, Bach, Radiohead … a whole bunch of stuff.” In short, there’s a level of fanboy about the album.

Thile and Mehldau went back and forth trading favorite songs, some familiar and some not. Thile says, “He and I have operated that way for a long time, as individuals, whether it’s something we’re listening to because we love music and hope that this thing we’re listening to seeps into the stuff we’re creating on our own, or whether it ends up as a performance piece or something we record.”

One particular track shows off the imaginative possibilities inherent in piano and mandolin, or at least when Thile and Mehldau play them. It’s a striking seven-minute cover of the jazz standard “I Cover the Waterfront.” Mehldau takes over the song from Thile’s anxious mandolin shortly after the 1:30 mark, at which point Thile concentrates on singing. What results is one of his most diaphanous vocals thus far. “I really enjoyed it because I had all this time to listen,” he says about the song’s extended phrases. “So then it was like an out of body experience for me. When I would start singing, I didn’t feel like I was singing, I felt like I was listening to myself sing.”

If there’s a parallel to Billie Holiday’s infamous version, it’s because she influenced Thile. “It’s so mournful and beautiful and delicate but strong,” he says. Thile captures those qualities in bits and pieces, but puts his own hurt on the track, as well. Mehldau says, “I think it’s a double challenge for Chris when we think about the possibility of a cover. Sometimes with vocals, the original performance is so iconic, it’s not immediately clear what more there is to do. I was just thrilled by what Chris did with all the covers that he sang on — he got to the heart of what was great about the song in the first place, lyric included, but also just completely made it his own, in this very easy-going manner, like he wrote the tune himself.” Thile, for his part, admires what Mehldau accomplished on “I Cover the Waterfront,” calling it a “masterpiece of a solo.”

As much as Mehldau brings a jazz and classical sensibility to the album, playing with Thile revealed a new quality to his own style. “In some deeper sense that is hard to put in words, I really have discovered another kind of musical expression with Chris, but I would say it was like unearthing something inside of me that I didn’t know was there,” he says. “It’s definitely not the jazz guy from New York; it’s the hillbilly who was born in Jacksonville.”

Aside from covers, Thile and Mehldau include a handful of original compositions on their debut, like “Noise Machine,” a song about a restless infant and sleep loss. Thile wrote the song to his son Calvin, but it ends up taking on the form of an ode indirectly addressed to his wife, actress Claire Coffee. “Whatever I go through pales in comparison to what she goes through, and she has a full-time job,” he explains. “I’m doing what I can, but I travel and he needs her because he’s still nursing.” The song oscillates between explaining sleep’s incredible fun to Calvin and making sure he knows just how lucky he is to have the mother he does. “So I sing just above the noise machine. Your mother is a hero,” Thile sings on the chorus, extending his delivery while Mehldau dances around him on piano. In the lyrics’ nuanced construction, Thile hit his intended mark — a way to praise Coffee for all she does — without becoming overly saccharine about it. “I’m amazed at my wife and won’t hesitate to praise her, but a song where I’m like, ‘Baby you’re great,’ doesn’t feel like the right approach in this case,” he says. As for sleep, that’s still hard to come by in their house. “I wrote that song over a year ago now and I thought for sure it would only be relevant to me for a little while, but, no, it’s still very relevant,” he says.

Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau is, at turns, compelling, curious, and playful. The two create soothing music together because they bring such care and consideration for one another to the recording process. Each track contains a deep breath, of sorts — one that comes from Mehldau’s jazz approach and Thile’s bluegrass-tinged response. But Thile knows the real secret to the album’s success. It’s not a matter of experimentation or improvisation or the sheer gumption of taking two instruments and exploring the conversation that results. “The secret is for the piano player to be Brad Mehldau, and then it works real well,” he says with a laugh.

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

Preservation Hall: Honoring Time’s Tradition

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New Orleans is home of the Bs: bayous, beignets, broils, Bourbon Street, and, most importantly, brass bands. Day and night, music wafts into the streets, carrying with it the history, traditions, and culture of this vibrant city. This is especially true on Sundays. In the afternoon, the air is thick with horn melodies and drum lines, as the time-honored tradition known as the second line parade takes place. Second lines are a derivative of the customary jazz funerals that used to occur in New Orleans: Marching bands would play during the procession to the cemetery to lay the casket, and they were known as the first line. Prior to integration, Black cemeteries were located outside of town, meaning that the walk back was a long one. But the band would continue to play. Passersby who heard the music were welcome to join in the procession behind the band, even if they didn’t know who had died. These people formed what was dubbed the second line.

Back in 1961, Pennsylvania natives Allan and Sandra Jaffe came upon one of these parades when they were visiting New Orleans on their honeymoon. They followed a brass band down the French Quarter and wound up at an art gallery at 726 St. Peter Street. A gathering place for artists, musicians, writers, and actors, the gallery immediately drew the Jaffes in. They permanently relocated to New Orleans and bought the gallery, transforming it into Preservation Hall. Although he wasn’t a jazz player, Allan had strong ties to horn instruments: He went to military college on a tuba scholarship and played in the marching band. With Preservation Hall, Allan and his wife set out to do just that — preserve. At that time, jazz was dying, and the couple wanted to bolster and continue the distinctly American tradition.

Together, they pulled it off. Sandra would work the door, taking money and deciding who could come into the club, while Allan would scout musicians around town and put bands together. Although Preservation Hall is now considered an institution, it was revolutionary when it opened. New Orleans was still segregated during that time and it was against the law for Black and white musicians to perform together. Nevertheless, legendary musicians like Allen Toussaint and Mac Rebennack (better known as Dr. John) would find each other and collaborate. In fact, Allan broke the 1956 law outlawing integrated entertainment when he joined the band on tuba. Preservation Hall became the only place in New Orleans where Black and white people were congregating openly, both in the crowd and on stage.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band formed in 1963, becoming the touring version of the club’s house band. For over 50 years, the rotating eight-piece has kept its home base at Preservation Hall while cultivating and spreading New Orleans brass band jazz around the world. Allan and Sandra’s son, Ben Jaffe, is the current creative director and plays tuba and upright bass in the band. In 2014, he appeared on Sonic Highways, an HBO special chronicling the recording of the Foo Fighters’ album by the same name. The group went to eight different cities to record individual tracks, and Preservation Hall was one of the selected recording spots. Throughout the course of the featured episode, Ben explains the significance of the New Orleans sound, which spawned musical heavyweights like Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, the Neville Brothers, the Meters, and even Little Richard, who recorded his early hits in the city.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is really the evolution of jazz,” Ben Jaffe says. “When Louis Armstrong’s Hot Seven albums came out, people lost their minds. It was punk-rock. It was out of control. A lot of the jazz musicians became the first wave of rock ‘n’ roll musicians.”

Sonic Highways is one of countless documentaries and collaborations Preservation Hall Jazz Band has participated in over the years. Their project with frequent collaborators My Morning Jacket was the subject of Danny Clinch’s 2011 documentary Live from Preservation Hall: A Louisiana Fairytale. In one notable scene, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James sums up the power of Preservation Hall: “Every time I’m in this space, I feel like there’s something inside of me that wasn’t there before,” he says.

Perhaps it has something to do with that New Orleans voodoo, but Preservation Hall certainly has a vibe all its own. It was built in 1750 as a Spanish tavern and once served as a photography studio where uptown aristocrats would come to get their portraits taken. But the small space hasn’t changed much. About 100 people can pack tightly into the room and there’s no air conditioning, no microphones, and hardly any seating. It’s all part of the mojo.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, there was an even bigger focus on the city’s intrinsic sound and, by proxy, Preservation Hall. Seven of the band’s eight members lost their houses and they, along with the rest of the city, used the culture to help guide them home. Although New Orleans is known as the Deep South, part of its rich heritage stems from being the northern-most part of the Caribbean. It was the largest port for a century, serving as the entry point for Africa, South America, and Central America. It was the port where Africans were brought into the United States and sold for slavery. It was also where goods and ideas were exchanged, leading to a giant mixing pot of musical stylings including Spanish melodies to African rhythms.

At Preservation Hall, traditions are passed on in the same way they were handed down. In this way, Preservation Hall Jazz Band has managed to celebrate the essence of New Orleans while maintaining cultural relevancy. At the Country Music Awards, they shared the stage with Maren Morris and the McCrary Sisters and, this summer, they’re hitting major festivals like Bonnaroo and Coachella to support the release of their new album, So It Is, a collection of new original music dropping April 21. Meanwhile, Preservation Hall still hosts music every night of the week. To ensure that the music thrives in the next generation, Jaffe also runs an after-school program at the Hall where young students learn from seasoned veterans, most of whom inherited their spots in the band. New Orleans is music, and it’s through this sense of community that it maintains its vitality.

Photo credit: Danny Clinch