New Orleans
"If there were no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom"
-- Judy Deck, New Orleans resident
The above quote is telling for two reasons. Firstly because it reveals an important characteristic of New Orleanians: they really adore their city. And secondly, while it is obviously hyperbolic, after immersing yourself there, you kind of understand where Judy Deck is coming from. The city's one-off hybrid of African American, European American, Cajun, Creole, and Native American culture has forged a heritage and atmosphere unlike any other. While most of the other cities I've visited in the US have felt in many ways similar to each other, New Orleans is truly distinctive, and pulses with energy. At any given time in "the most unqiue city in America", the streets ring out with music day and night, bars in the 18th century French Quarter stay open til dawn, people drink freely in the street, and cafes and restuarants are flocked with visitors after a taste of the famed Cajun and Creole cuisine. I struggle to fully comprehend how crazy N'awlins must be like come Mardi Gras.
With the possible exception of New York, the city at the mouth of the Mississippi was my most anticipated stop. New Orleans has long aroused my curiousity for its jazz heritage and incomparable cultural make-up, which I had never really understood but was eager to learn more about. But it wasn't until I got hooked on the TV series Treme (pronounced "Tre-may"), by the creator of The Wire, David Simon, that my excitement to visit the city peaked. The series follows a collection of New Orleans residents, mostly musicians, as they attempt to put their lives back together in the wake of the devestation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. It portrays a proud city ravaged by death, destruction, and displacement, but also one which has lost none of the joyous live music or free-spirited party atmosphere at its essence. The recovery post-Katrina continues today, and while most of the city has been rebuilt, certain areas still resemble urban wastelands. There are a few rebuilding organisations still operating which rely heavily on volunteers, and I decided to volunteer for a week with lowernine.org in the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the districts worst desolated by Katrina. Given my zero building and construction experience, I was under no illusions about how tiny my contribution would be in a week. It might sound like middle-class do-gooding, but as with working on the farm in California, I simply wanted to do something different, interesting, and hopefully make some new friends in the process.I rolled into New Orleans on Easter Sunday Morning. Nicknamed the Big Easy, the city is known for its informality, and the taxi driver at the bus station delightfully lived up to the stereotype. "You can come sit up 'ere with me, bruddah!", he exclaimed, patting the front passenger seat with a grin. That might sound creepy, but I could tell he was just a friendly guy. He hadn't heard of my address on El Dorado Street, so as we circled the Lower Ninth he routinely slammed on his breaks to yell across the street through his open window, "Yo man, where you been hidin'?! Hey bruddah you know where El Dorro at?!" As we passed the infamous levee, he even stopped for a chat with a policeman who was a buddy of his. Nobody had heard of El Dorro, or even El Dorado, but we got there eventually. Luckily he lowered the fare by a few dollars for the delays, but even if he hadn't the journey would have almost been worth it for entertainment value. A few hours after arriving at the lowernine base, I joined two of the longer-term workers, Hugh and Tim, at an Easter party hosted by a local woman, Deborah, whose new house they'd been building for the past few weeks. Easter is clearly a big deal to people in Louisiana. In her backyard were dozens of people and several generations basking in the sunshine; kids playing, adults chatting and listening to music, and everyone eating lots of good food. Considering I had just arrived and not begun work, I felt very lucky to have been welcome along, and was the grateful recipient of crawfish (similar to crayfish but spicy), turkey neck, and beer. I was also given some city insight and music recommendations by Hugh, who is a Londoner but has the knowledge of a local having lived in New Orleans on-and-off for the past year.
I spent the week working with four other volunteers; a French guy named Jean Francois (aka Jeff), a Swiss guy, Alexis, and two French girls, Emmanuele and Mathilde, who are all around my age. Most of Monday and Tuesday was spent attaching boarding to the side of a roof, which involved lots of time with the hammer and nail (a surprisingly difficult skill at first). Our team leader through the week was New Orleans local Darren, a full-time builder with boundless energy and occasional, though perhaps understandable, impatience. Watching the efficiency and speed with which he works was impressive. For some reason he could be particularly short-tempered around poor Jeff, but I think deep down he was fond of him! From Wednesday to Friday we were at "John Taylor's house" rebuilding part of the roof. First we built and erected scaffolding on the side of the house, then worked on removing the rusting and crooked metal sheeting on one half of the old roof. After scraping off the tar paper, we measured and cut the boarding for the new roof. By Friday we had finished one half of the new roofing. It was really pleasing to see the physical difference in just a few days. As Darren would croak upon completing a task, "See how it look decent?".
Definitely the best thing about being at lowernine, however, was developing genuine friendships through living and working with people rather than just the casual acquaintances one forms dotting from place to place. I spent most of my time with Jeff and Alexis (right), who had some local knowledge of where to go and what music to see having already been in NOLA for a couple of months. They accurately informed me that the famous Bourbon Street is actually pretty crappy; essentially a very seedy and smelly strip full of mind-numbingly tacky gift shops, stag and hen parties, loutish tourists, and "gentleman's clubs" with weary looking women in bikinis outside. Instead we spent most evenings on the quaint but lively Frenchman Street, with live music in every bar and often on the street, ranging from brass band, experimental jazz, bluegrass, reggae, blues, and more. Admittedly Frenchman is also filled with mostly non-locals like us, but it still has an altogether different atmosphere to Bourbon. Away from the French Quarter we watched legendary trumpeter Kermit Ruffins' long-running weekly set at Vaughn's, one of a few musicians I saw who appears in Treme. He was joined by an amazingly soulful female singer, while three mercurial Japanese jazz players also made a cameo that got everyone dancing.
It seems like there is always some kind of festival going on in New Orleans, and on my first weekend the free French Quarter Festival had its turn. The Saturday of the festival has been one of my favourite days in the US so far. After a much-needed lie-in,
More of the same followed on Sunday with a pulsating set from jazz-rock Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, one of the most talked-up names on the New Orleans music circuit. On Monday I left for a hostel planning to stay for 2 or 3 days to see a bit more of the city, but I ended up staying another whole week. First I visited the Backstreet Cultural Museum in the Treme. The small house converted into a museum is run by a Mardi Gras Indian family and exhibited several Indian Chief suits from previous years, as well as a little history on the city's jazz funeral and Second line traditions. Also on display were various posthumous tribute t-shirts which I saw lots of people wearing around town, with eulogies such as "Heaven sent us one of his Gs, now it's time for him to go home", and "Heaven's got another angel.Smile now, cry later", with "sunrise and sunset" for date of birth and date of death. It is a poignant reminder of how death and violence have long been part of everyday reality for New Orleanians, especially as many of the people commemorated were in their teens or twenties when killed. Another interesting spot was Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park, which during slavery was one of the only places in America where slaves were free to dance, sing, and drum; cultural expressions which eventually evolved into early jazz and rhythm & blues - ultimately the foundation for nearly all modern day popular music.
I continued to spend most evenings with the guys from lowernine. On a day of flash flooding, we saw surf rock pioneer Dick Dale at the Howlin' Wolf Club. I knew him as the guy who did "that tune" from Pulp Fiction but wasn't sure what to expect beyond that. Despite being well into retirement age now, the man still knows how to put on a show; his incredible guitar skills and backing band ensured the gig reached a similar standard to the best music I saw in the city. We also attended a basketball game between the New Orleans Hornets and Utah Jazz. The Hornets "franchise" is originally from North Carolina, while the Jazz were moved from New Orleans no less. The lack of a real identity may in part explain why basketball is not that big in NOLA, where passion for American football predominates. It was a fun to see a match live but it wasdifficult to disagree with assessment that you only need to watch the last 5 minutes to see the whole game. Anyway, half the time there was no basketball being played, and time-outs were filled with anything from cheerleader performances, to a performance by the world's most flexible man, to dozens of McChicken nugget bags falling from the sky, and the slightly unsettling sight of hundreds of fans straining to the heavens to grab one. Not gonna lie though, I was feeling quite peckish so would have eaten them had they fallen at my feet. It all made a change from the traditional half time raffle at the Raith games.
That Thursday I ventured outside the city with a couple from the hostel for a swamp tour, where we were shown alligators up close by our guide who reminded me a lot of Cartman from South Park, both in his manner and appearance. However, by now I was feeling like I was hanging around at the hostel a bit, and in hindsight I should have stayed longer at lowernine. If I had planned my trip differently I could have stayed a whole month or so in New Orleans, and really got under its skin, but I saw enough to determine that Treme very accurately captures the life and ethos of the city. I remember a quote by one character that "This is New Orleans, everybody knows each other!", and I think that is evident walking around the city. After all, New Orleans is not particularly big, and post Katrina almost a third of its population has moved elsewhere. Especially in the French Quarter, I saw the same characters walking around, a community of musicians trying to make their living and competing daily with rivals and friends. And many of the more established performers have had weekly slots for years or even decades. For many visitors the town's main appeal would be the delicious crawfish etouffe or jambalaya of the Cajun cuisine, or the elegant 18th century Spanish architecture, but for me it was undoubtedly the music. And the journey through America's musical breeding ground would continue - up Highway 61, the Great River Road, though Mississippi and into Tennessee.
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