Deep Culture
- A Book Review -
This book might have a large ratio of title to content, but it's deceiving. Death, Resurrection, and the Spirit of New Orleans is more than a book. It's a guide to a wealth of documentary material concerning the destruction of New Orleans in 2005 by a series of levee failures, and its rescue and renewal thanks to the Crescent City's musicians and culture freaks.
One such culture freak is Ken McCarthy. Raised in New York, enriched in Silicon Valley, the Internet visionary first came to New Orleans in 2006 when the Town That Care Forgot lay in ruins, giant debris piles everywhere and ghost cars packed under the freeway, their windows frosted with mildew. "There were no birds," McCarthy writes.
The very first businesses to reopen in New Orleans were bars; a few had never closed. The musicians were not far behind. Ken was right behind them, in the second lines and the jazz funerals and the protests at City Hall, with his microphone and his camera, documenting everything. This book is a collection of transcribed conversations with a handful of people who shaped the cultural renewal in New Orleans, plus a sweet little interview with Ornette Coleman about his early years in New Orleans.
What makes this little book so huge is the vast online archive that undergirds it. All of the chapters lead to online videos, podcasts and text documents created or curated by Ken McCarthy, providing a local's view of Mardi Gras Indians, second lines, jazz funerals, impromptu parties, all filled with the vital, driving, unstoppable swing of New Orleans' musicians.
Death, Resurrection, and the Spirit of New Orleans:
Jazz on the Tube Conversations
Copyright 2023 by Ken McCarthy
Published by Jazz On The Tube Books
Paperback, 115 pages, photos, bibliography, resources
ISBN 979-83866-47995, US$9.99
McCarthy's Jazz on the Tube site scours the universe to bring a daily diet of jazz videos, musician interviews, jazz birthdays and jazz news. He has a passion for sharing the music of New Orleans, which he feels many people neglect and he himself neglected until he became immersed in the neighborhood dives and Indian dens that teem with musicians playing brash, swinging funk you feel deep in your bones.
The conversations are a fascinating cultural mix. Author John Swenson, himself obsessed with interviewing musicians, makes a case that the city's recovery is being driven by New Orleans' musicians' intellectual property. Ronald Lewis, founder of the House of Dance and Feathers – a museum of Mardi Gras Indian culture – when asked why he rebuilt in the Lower 9th Ward, says "the vision and the spirit takes control of you."
Dirty Dozen saxman, Roger Lewis, gives a rollicking history of the New Orleans sound, from Dixieland to Dizzy Gillespie, showing how the brass bands, the zydeco, the rhythm & blues, the funk, the country & western, and modern jazz all work together. He says of growing up, "everybody in everybody's family plays some kind of musical instrument."
I found this small book with the beautiful deep cover to be a surprisingly deep dive into the deep culture of New Orleans. I enjoyed the stories teased out through dialogue and supported with dozens of videos and audio tracks of the musicians and cultural guardians of New Orleans. It's a book you'll return to again and again.
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STEVE O’KEEFE <@steveokeefe> is the author of Set the Page On Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers (New World Library) based on over 250 interviews.