The Storm Still Rages

(Above: The Preservation Hall Jazz Band marches through the streets of the French Quarter immediately following the April 27 re-opening of New Orleans-music shrine Preservation Hall, which had been closed since Katrina. Photo by Michael Weintrob.)

It’s been a year since the citizens of New Orleans were subjected to the horrors of Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters. People died by the thousands while relief efforts foundered and the weaknesses of emergency plans were exposed. For a week, the world watched this ultimate reality-television show—even as wheelchair-bound elders and dehydrated infants perished in the stifling heat, pundits made smug jokes about those who stayed behind to suffer, and televangelist/politician Pat Robertson explained away the destruction of New Orleans as divine retribution.

But on the new Dirty Dozen Brass Band album Ivan Neville doesn’t let Robertson’s rhetoric go unanswered—“Don’t go and talk about my Father, 'cause God is my friend,” Neville charges in an emotional rap with the DDBB backing him up on their stunning reinterpretation of Marvin Gaye’s classic What’s Going On. The album is a departure from the Dozen’s trademark second-line brass-band rhythms, but it’s true to the band’s vision of expanding this traditional music into a lexicon that can interpret a wide range of styles. Along with Neville, the DDBB gets help from Chuck D, Guru, Bettye LaVette and G. Love on the project, its Aug. 29 release marking the one-year anniversary of Katrina’s landfall. This is only one of a number of outstanding recordings by New Orleans musicians released in the wake of what’s generally acknowledged as the greatest disaster ever sustained by an American city.

Ivan Neville, son of Aaron and part of what used to be called the “First Family of New Orleans Music,” was displaced by Katrina and now lives in Texas along with several other members of The Neville Brothers. He also contributed to Sing Me Back Home, the outstanding album made by New Orleans musicians exiled to Texas. “Ivan nailed that, he really felt it,” says DDBB saxophonist Roger Lewis, one of the countless musicians who lost his home in the flood. Lewis expresses outrage at Robertson and other public figures who appeared to exult in the suffering of New Orleans’ poorest. “It was an immature statement for a reputed man of the cloth to make,” says Lewis, who’s been taking visiting journalists on tours of the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, where he was born. “We’re looking at the total demise of a neighborhood,” he says as he drives through the debris-ridden blocks of collapsed houses. “Everything out here was under 20 feet of water. It was like a lake. A lot of people’s lives got lost. A lot of people’s history got lost. It’ll take 30 years to clean up this mess.” Lewis also expresses frustration about the recovery’s slow, inefficient pace. “It’s all about greed,” he says. “Somebody been swingin’ with the money. Somebody don’t really care.” It’s a charge voiced by many New Orleans musicians these days.

“I’m mad, I’m tired and I’m salty,” says Dr. John, who recorded the inspirational Sippiana Hericane after Katrina was followed a week later by Hurricane Rita, which devastated western Louisiana. “They try to shuffle us under a rug, but when you look at the bottom line of all of it, there still ain’t been no federal help, basically FEMA’s been a disaster, the [Army] Corps of Engineers has been a disaster, they need to put dikes in there and save the wetlands. Unfortunately it’s something they could’ve done anytime in the last 50 years … but everybody—true to form in politics—pockets all the money they can. It always happens. The city, the state, the feds, everybody does the same thing. We lost another 150 miles of wetlands last year. Bobby Charles, who wrote ‘Walking to New Orleans,’ the whole town he was livin’ in is gone. He used to call me at least twice a year and tell me he’s gettin’ closer and closer to havin’ Gulf Coast property which he never wanted. You got a city where the work force, the people that makes New Orleans what it is, are basically stuck elsewheres. My band members are all over the place. My bass player’s in Michigan, my drummer’s in Baton Rouge … I was talking to [New Orleans musician] Henry Butler—he’s got no place to go back to, he was trying to find a place in Dallas or Colorado.”

Butler, the virtuoso pianist and vocalist who was also part of the Sing Me Back Home project, has relocated to Boulder, Colo., and is adopting a wait-and-see attitude about returning to New Orleans. “I’m keeping my options open,” he admits. “I’m not in a rush to make a quick decision. I wanna see what they do. They don’t always make wise choices in terms of how the politicians deal with the general citizenry. I’m saddened that there’s not really a school system in New Orleans at this point. You’ve got 40 or 50 chartered schools, all operating on different standards. I don’t know how you can call that an educational system. If you can’t educate your children I don’t think you can claim to have a real city.

"I love New Orleans and I don’t want that to get lost in all this, but as long as I’ve been conscious of it I’ve never liked what the politicians have been doing; I’ve never [felt] they truly cared about the arts. I know the current mayor [Ray Nagin], for instance, could care less about music. I know people he’s hired as consultants and they’ve just been ignored.”

Butler is doing his part for New Orleans music by touring constantly and bringing the sound to as many people as possible. He recently tore it up at Michael Arnone’s Crawfish Festival in western New Jersey, playing two sets with Corey Harris and sitting in with The Radiators in addition to his own set. “It’s great therapy for me,” says Butler. “I think every New Orleans musician worth his salt is doing that wherever he or she lands. I’ve been working with some of the guys in Boulder and we do New Orleans versions of jazz standards, blues and other things. I wind up breaking down the whole New Orleans rhythmic conception. I can do it because I’ve been teaching kids to do it for years; I’m not one of those guys who says ‘Oh you just have to feel it.’ I tell them where the accents are and, if you can articulate it, some of these guys can do it. … Since so many of us are dispersed, we’re spreading New Orleans information all over. It’ll take a long time to see how it affects the general music cuisine in society.”

Irma Thomas, fabled “Soul Queen of New Orleans,” was all but wiped out by Katrina. Her house and her nightclub, The Lion’s Den, were both destroyed. It’s the second time Thomas has been displaced from New Orleans by a hurricane—she was forced to move to California for several years after Camille hit in 1969. “This isn’t the first disaster I’ve lived through and I’m sure it won’t be the last,” she says defiantly. “Camille was nothing compared to this one. Then I only lost my work, but this time I lost everything. I’m working on getting my home rebuilt, but I’m getting out of the nightclub business.”

Thomas reacted to the disaster—like a number of local musicians—by going into the studio and making an outstanding record, After the Rain, an R&B classic imbued with the spirit that’s made New Orleans music central to the city’s identity. DDBB, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, The Radiators, Cowboy Mouth, Papa Grows Funk, Davis Rogan, Juvenile, Christian Scott, Theresa Andersson, the subdudes, Kidd Jordan, Leslie Smith, Marc Stone, Eric Lindell, Morning 40 Federation, Mute Math and John Mooney are only some of the New Orleans musicians who’ve released excellent albums since 8/29. Though Virgin Records in New Orleans went out of business after the flood, the independent Louisiana Music Factory has thrived by selling local recordings.