Keep on burnin'

The Bad Plus and David Rhyshpan say goodbye to New Orleans's own Earl Palmer. Palmer was the sound of early rock 'n roll -- maybe you don't recognize his name but you definitely recognize his beats. This video (linked to by both TBP and DR) is outstanding:

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New Orleans has such a complex and specific musical history that it can be daunting for outsiders to try to approach it, or even evoke it obliquely. Especially if you happen to be a "classical" musician by training. And most definitely if you are trying to craft a musical response to the unimaginable and ongoing tragedy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That's what makes Ted Hearne's Katrina Ballads so remarkable -- it's the kind of ostentatiously ambitious work that by rights, should never work... and yet it does. I have a lot more to say about this piece and no time to say it (which is basically the story of this blog), but please check out Isaac Butler's review over at Buzzine. Ted Hearne is at the Stone Sunday night, performing some new music with a group that includes many players from the Katrina Ballads band.

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Also new on New Amsterdam Records, Secret Society's own Sam Sadigurksy presents the second installment of The Words Project. Sam has crafted intricate musical settings of texts by literary heavyweights Andrew Boyd, Czeslaw Milosz, Langston Hughes, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, David Ignatow, Audre Lorde, and Caitlin Upton. You can stream the whole record here -- check it out.

Comments

[Chris Becker]

"...there was a point of reinforcement between French New Orleans (circa 1727) and Senegambian New Orleans: both sides played unequal eighth notes....This is the Baroque practice known in France as notes inegales. It is also the standard performance practice of jazz, where - with the upbeats accented - it is known as swing."

"If the Ursulines (nuns who arrived in New Orleans in 1727 and taught music), who were educators, were teaching the musical practice of notes inegales, that only helped to establish it in an environment where white, free colored, and enslaved musicians all crossed paths...I would also note the sometimes extreme fondness for melisma in New Orleans (e.g., the ornamentation of Aaron Neville's singing or James Booker's piano playing)...is an attribute of both French Baroque and the music of the Islamized Senegambia."

Both excerpts are from Ned Sublette's recent book The World That Made New Orleans. I know from living, working, and performing in New Orleans that there are plenty of tributaries to explore in the quagmire that is its music (including jazz and classical) and that our socialized preconceptions of what is "European" and what is "African" can quickly fall apart once you dig into history even a little bit.

All fascinating - I've corresponded with Ted and enjoyed his work Katrina Ballads. I'm sorry I missed his show (I was out of town in Richmond, VA for a show). Hoping to find some write up of it somewhere.

CB