Sister City

Here in the States, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, we heard a lot about the Netherlands in 1953: how it was possible to build real protections against high water in a hurry, given enough volunteers, government will and funding. We rarely hear about that anymore: the comparison’s too embarrassing.

Volunteers came, and still come, to help rebuild. But anyone who’s followed New Orleans’ non-recovery even a little knows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is a model of incompetence. President Bush came to town after the flood and pledged: “We will do what it takes… There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again.” His promises have amounted to little: little money, little follow-through, little caring. Wij hebben geen Deltaplan.

Some wealthier folk whose houses flooded when the levees (dijken) broke are living normal lives again. In the mostly poor and black Ninth Ward, a few clicks downriver from the French Quarter, neighborhoods are still wastelands, or just plain gone. A zone that has half its old population back is thriving; some areas show signs of only one or two inhabited houses per block.

In the Lower Ninth, you see a smattering of FEMA trailers for displaced persons: poorly constructed mobile homes that look ready to blow over in the next stiff wind. Brad Pitt’s pet reconstruction project, Make It Right, as of December when I visited had assembled stacks of construction materials, tucked under smart- looking, form-fitting glaring pink tarps. But none of the planned eco- friendly houses have been built.

Across a big canal in the Upper Ninth, however, are five dozen new homes in contrasting pastel colors, set high on concrete, ready for the next breach. This is Musicians’ Village, masterminded by jazz musicians Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick. Jazz and blues and classical cats already live there; the locals say they make good, quiet neighbors.

When jazz musicians are the best organized force around, you know a town’s in trouble. (They’re still building: www.nolamusiciansvillage.org)

Elsewhere in the city, tourism is down, but things look more or less normal. Editorial comment comes mostly in the form of slogans on T-shirts for sale: “FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass!” Louis Armstrong Park is locked shut (to keep out the homeless, it’s said). You peer through fence bars to see Pops’ statue, Bechet’s bust, and the approximate location of Congo Square.

What you can’t see, beyond: the National Park Service turning the old Perseverance Hall into the headquarters of a new “jazz park”.

Congo Square’s successor as home of big-beat hoedowns is the sidewalk next to Foot Locker at Canal and Bourbon Streets: drummers smack heavy plastic buckets in polyrhythm for hours, save when they’re chased off by a young, terrifically raw and powerful brass band, whose sound reverberates for blocks; they never stopped playing long enough for me to ask their name.

In Holland, de Volharding recently played Kyle Gann’s “Sunken Cities,” which draws a connection between below-sea level New Orleans and Amsterdam. They are sister cities, in blending diverse musics to make something new—not that such blends don’t happen elsewhere. New Orleans got its jazz when blues, ragtime, brass and dance music collided. (For Amsterdam, make your own list.) In New Orleans, to survive, the same musicians have long played blues, jazz, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues gigs. Styles cross-pollinate, ideas spread: that sounds like Amsterdam too.

On Frenchmen Street, just beyond the Quarter, a cluster of music bars has cropped up near long running Snug Harbor, where Charmaine Neville (on “What a Wonderful World”) did maybe the worst imitation of Pops’ gravel voice I’ve heard from a professional singer. Down the block at d.b.a., on Saturdays, John Boutte sings eclectic: “Basin St. Blues,” “A Cottage for Sale,” Neil Young’s “Southern Man” and old Leonard Cohen, delivered with Jimmy-Scott- meets-Otis-Redding fervor. Backing him one evening, Leroy Jones played fancy double-tongued lines in trumpet’s middle-register, from which the occasional precise high note leapt out: lovely.

The night before, in the Quarter, Jones had played Preservation Hall, still proudly grungy, uncomfortable, and unheated in winter: musicians sacrifice for their art, so you must join them Two nights later there, Swedish expat pianist Lars Edegran led a trumpetless quintet that smacked less of Storyville days than 1945 Nicksieland—revival music heedlessly full of style-blurring anachronisms. Christian Winther played tenor sax, barely touching his clarinet; drummer Frank Oxley occasionally kept quiet time on ride cymbal; trombone treasure Fred Lonzo sneaked in quotes from “Salt Peanuts,” “Parker’s Mood” and (tellingly) “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.”

Not that the Quarter played a role in early jazz anyway. Outside it, there’s still no memorial plaque on, say, Buddy Bolden’s house (2309 First—it’s vacant) or the building that housed the Bolden- era musicians’ hangout Eagle Saloon (Perdido and Rampart). Such oversights need correcting, but let’s get houses for the living built first.