SHAKING IT & BREAKING IT:
Modern Brass Band Music
A New Jazz Style From New Orleans
When Wynton Marsalis released The Majesty Of The Blues (1989), he revealed to all who had ears his profound love for and appreciation of traditional New Orleans jazz. But although it is not obvious from New York, or other major locations for the music business, Wynton was participating in a major musical movement of contemporary New Orleans: the revivification of New Orleans brass band jazz.
Wynton is not alone in his interest in this phenomenon. St.Clair Bourne, an African-American film maker with over 30 documentaries and features to his credit, in September 1989 produced a documentary on this brass band tradition in New Orleans for National Geographic.
Unlike any other city in the United States, the traditional jazz is an active, lived tradition rather than a nostalgic attempt at recreating a music that reached its peak in the 1920s. Although respectful of their predecessors, the young brass band musicians of New Orleans are not trying to play like King Oliver, Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet. For most of them, the music they play is contemporary music played in a social context and in a musical form indigenious to the neighborhoods where they grew up. On the other hand, the reality is also more complex than simply an ongoing folk form maintained in a culturally isolated deep south metropolis.
IT AIN'T WHAT YOU THINK
Early in the shoot of the Bourne documentary, the crew passed through the French Quarter and in the mall area between Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, the Rebirth Jazz Band was seriously getting down. Efrem Towns of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was sitting in with them. The music was joyous. Before the band ended, baritone and soprano saxophone player Roger Lewis, also of the Dirty Dozen and a trio of other musicians were beginning to set up shop on the other end of the block.
Was this simply a case of brass bands playing for tourists, clowning for dollars? Patiently I tried to explain that there was much more going on than met the uncultured eye. For example, there's no prohibition on playing acoustic instruments in the quarter, but there is a prohibition against playing amplified music. Because brass bands are self-contained and mobile, they can play anywhere and anytime they want to in the quarter.
Bloodie (Gregory Davis, business manager for the Dirty Dozen) additionally pointed out that the reason members of the Dirty Dozen go into the quarter to play is that since becoming popular nationally and internationally, their at home schedule was very erratic, and their fees for playing were higher than most New Orleans venues could afford. So playing in the quarter was a way to earn pocket change during the periods when the band wasn't on the road.
"Also, you know it's hard to keep your chops up if you don't play. Sometimes we'll be on the road for two or three weeks playing every night and then we'll be home for two weeks with no gigs. If you don't play during the time you're home then when you go back on the road, your chops are in bad shape. So we come down here and it's like practicing for us and at the same time it's a chance to make a little money. But the main thing is that it allows us to keep in shape as musicians."
Ernest Doc Paulin, one of the stalwarts of the brass band movement who was born in 1906, comments that today there are so many "laws and stuff you can't get together like you could back in the old days. If you wanted to have a parade you got a band and some marchers or whatever and you did what you wanted to do, but now you've got to get all kinds of permits and things. The old days were better."
Unless one is careful, it is easy to misinterpret Doc Paulin's insights. Those "better days" that Doc Paulin is talking about in the context of the brass band movement has to do with the ability to perform when and where you wanted to unrestrained by legislation and unencumbered by a need to "buy" permits or pay for police security.
As a result of the unique social context of New Orleans and the mobility of the brass band itself, brass bands are venue non-specific -- meaning they can play almost anywhere. Brass bands are also economically independent units which are not necessarily dependent on club owners, hotels or other traditional and/or establishment middle men for income.
Roger Lewis also does it "because it's fun. We play whatever we want to play, for as long as we want to play, and it's a chance to experiment."
Far from just a circus show for tourists, far from a creatively moribund form whose practitioners are locked into ceaseless repetition of the same songs with roughly the same solos over and over again, the contemporary brass band movement is actually alive and well. From legendary elders (most of whom are well over 65 years old) to bright eyed pre-teen youngsters, New Orleans is experiencing a creative revivification of New Orleans Brass Band music.
BRASS BAND JAZZ: A TRADITION THAT TRANSCENDS ITS ERA
Other than the considerable impact of John P. Sousa's music on high school, college, and military marching bands, traditional New Orleans jazz is the only music who's popularity transcends its origins in turn of the century America. In fact, on a world level, Sousa's music is relatively unimportant especially compared to the profound impact jazz in general and New Orleans jazz particularly has had on world musical culture.
The world loves New Orleans jazz. People respond to its beat, its melodies, the way the various instruments work together. Although jazz specifically was a synthesis of experimentation with rag time (and other popular musics of the day), African-American religious music of the period, various blues manifestations (such as folk songs, work songs, field hollers and shouts) and other musical currents (such as the aforementioned marching music of Sousa) of that era, jazz is also a prime example of the whole creation being much greater than the sum of its parts.
Consciously or not, when people listened to jazz in general, and particularly jazz of the 1920s, audiences were responding to a profoundly 20th century musical phenomenon which united pre-industrial folk traditions and folk dispositions with an emerging futuristic industrial consciousness which America embodied more than any other country on the face of the globe at the close of 19th century.
Whereas, other American musics from that era are played today as period pieces, traditional jazz, and especially the brass band music in New Orleans, continues to have a healthy life in the contemporary context. Additionally, this music also continues to be attractive and accessible to musicians worldwide.
Louis Armstrong's phenomenal ambassadorship and popularity worldwide was a testament not just to Armstrong's particular genius as a musician and entertainer, but also a testament to jazz's potency and profound effectiveness. In essence this music unites the best elements of 19th century musical achievement with the aspirations of young men and women who, both literally and figuratively, optimistically entered the 20th century.
New Orleans jazz was a vehicle within which musicians (regardless of their ethnic or cultural origin) could use to participate on the stage of modern musical culture while simultaneously drawing on, and indeed even focusing on, their own indigenous culture. This was particularly true of the numerous Euro-immigrants (especially the Italian immigrants in New Orleans) who were washing onto American shores in wave after wave, seeking both a better economic life, as well as an opportunity for cultural self-expression both of which were generally suppressed by the feudalistic aristocrats in the native countries these immigrants were desperately fleeing.
In this light, it is no surprise that although jazz as an artform was created by African-Americans, the artform is also truly an American artform which the whole world shares precisely because jazz offers the best opportunity to participate in the creation of "high art music." In this context high art music simply means a music which reflects and projects the essential elements of a given culture.
This is why it is not incorrect (although sometimes misleading) to say that jazz is America's classical music.
From the basic principles of individual freedom and social democracy, to the constant creation of new and more effective (and indeed often "faster") modes of communication and commerce, from the constant efforts to set new records of technical excellence and human achievement, to the vitalness of an artform which innately looks more to the future than to the past; it is in this sense of embodying these and other essential characteristics of the America psyche and experience that jazz is indeed a classic expression of the American reality.
WHY "BRASS" BANDS?
While the marching brass band is only one format of jazz, the brass band remains a community rooted and healthy format which has managed to profoundly transcend the strictures of traditional forms to become a creatively fertile and culturally relevant format in the contemporary context. Before we briefly survey the contemporary scene from a stylistic point of view, it is instructive to understand the origins of the brass band movement in New Orleans.
Post civil war New Orleans was a polyglot of peoples and cultural influences. Both the German and Italian immigrant communities in particular had extremely strong brass band traditions which found active expression in numerous outdoor venues (including parades, picnics, riverboat trips and excursions on the lake). Specifically, the German Oom-pah brass bands were very popular and influential in New Orleans. Additionally, America was high stepping to the lively parade beat of John P. Sousa, and, in that regard New Orleans was no different.
Also, at that time New Orleans was the major gateway port to the Caribbean, Central and South America and there were numerous official, semi-official and public ceremonies to welcome and greet officials, dignitaries and other people of status from literally scores of countries and cultures. On a more mundane, although no less important, level, the pawn shops and music stores were awash with instruments left behind by the armed forces of that time.
The jazz marching brass band was born in this musical milieu teeming with musical activity and excitement, a musical milieu of mass cultural activity that few other cities on the North American continent could match in quantity and no other city could match in distinctiveness.
Although it might seem obvious that brass band music would naturally develop in New Orleans because of its cultural richness, the fact is that the jazz band was not simply an extension of existing American popular musical activity but rather the traditional New Orleans marching jazz band was a radical synthesis and transformation which combined both traditional African cultural antecedents with the technical demands of existing European musical cultural expressions to produce a music that is profoundly American in the truest and most accurate sense of what American musical culture is and aspires to be.
Moreover, this radical redefinition of musical culture was concurrently acceptable by the dominant society as well as both acceptable and accessible to the turn of the century subjugated African-American community precisely because the music's radicalness was contained within a "parade," a vehicle which was common, familiar and considered both safe and desirable by all strata of New Orleans society.
The African descents who played music in New Orleans and created jazz brought with them more than simply a "jungle sound" which emphasized the "wild beating of drums" and "undisciplined intonations and timbres." Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard, King Oliver and all of the other founding fathers of jazz also brought with them African cultural antecedents which included the procession as a basic focal point of cultural activity.
Turn of the century "negroes" did not parade simply because they loved to dance in the streets, but also because in addition to being acceptable to the dominant society, parading was culturally consistent with traditional African ways of celebrating life, death, triumph and important occasions.
We should also remember that this post-reconstruction era was a period of an intense backlash against Blacks which included the imposition of "Jim Crow" segregation and the creation of numerous restrictive and callous segregationists laws which circumscribed every public (and most private) activity of African-American people. In this context, although large gatherings were actively discouraged, parading was allowed.
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who has literally returned to his roots in traditional New Orleans music and who is actively studying his roots (through reading books, listening to records and tapes, as well as talking with older musicians and knowledgeable scholars), believes that traditional New Orleans jazz was the best possible synthesis of African and European musical artforms. In a conversation, he spoke with authority about the European cornet players of the day such as Jules Levy, Herbert L. Clarke, George Swift and others. "These men were not only great technically, but most trumpet players at one time or another end up studying from textbooks which taught trumpet techniques and which they wrote."
What the saxophone was later to become in jazz, and what the guitar is to post-50s pop music, the cornet and trumpet were to the popular music of post-civil war / pre-World War I American society. Additionally, Africans had a musical tradition which included trumpet-like instruments. This connection was made stunningly clear at a 1989 fall concert.
The Caribbean Cultural Center in New York presented a program of the "trumpet tradition" which began with a recording of traditional African trumpeters and included a cameo spot by Olu Dara playing a traditional African wood trumpet which is shaped like an animal's horn. The focal point of that program was on six New Orleans trumpeter's (Dave Bartholomew, Wallace Davenport, Umar Sharif, Joe Newman, Marlon Jordan and Wynton Marsalis). From our ancient African beginnings up through the 1920s, trumpets were part of our musical history.
In jazz it was not until the 1930s that the saxophone became the premiere instrument. It is instructive to note that Sidney Bechet, who is widely celebrated as jazz's first great saxophone player, was widely known in his formative years in New Orleans as a cornetist. In fact, Louis Armstrong testifies "I marvelled at the way Bechet played the cornet, and I followed him all that day. There was not a cornet player in New Orleans who was like him. What feeling! What soul! Every other player in the city had to give it to him."
Even in the modern context, New Orleans musicians who are known as masters of their instruments often have trumpet playing in their background. For example master drummers James Black and Herlin Riley both started off as trumpet players.
Wynton believes that part of the predominance of the trumpet has to do with the three part formation of the front line in traditional jazz and the trumpet's natural tones in the mid- range. "The trumpet plays the melody, the lead. The clarinet plays obbligatos, answering the trumpet and the trombone plays the rhythm parts. The trumpet is in the middle C to G above middle C range, the same range in which most melodies are written. The clarinet of course is well suited for the higher registers."
Thus there is both a cultural proclivity and a structural reason for the dominance of the trumpet player. In addition, prior to the invention of the microphone and the widespread availability of electricity, musical instruments had to be played loudly enough to carry without artificial amplification. This was another reason for the popularity of brass instruments. (An interesting aside is that this is also why the banjo was used in traditional jazz and it wasn't until the widespread availability of artificial amplification that the guitar replaced the banjo as the dominant hand held string instrument in jazz.)
Finally, the reason for the dominance of the brass band on the musical landscape of New Orleans is because the brass band was accessible to the community at large. Not only was there a cultural predisposition toward processions with brass instruments providing music, but more importantly, the support of brass bands was within the means of the Black community.
Many people have an image of a second line involving thousands and thousands of people, while it is true that there are extremely large second lines for annual parades, the more common occurrence is a small neighborhood based second line or funeral procession that comprised perhaps only one or two hundred people at the most. The economic maxim of small is beautiful is no where more true than in the context of community support for brass band music.
Both Doc Paulin and Danny Barker note that brass bands were integrally entwined into the social fabric of daily life in the Black communities of New Orleans up through the 30s. During that period, brass bands were employed by the myriad of benevolent societies and social, aid & pleasures clubs (SA&PC) which undergirded and held together the Black communities of their day. The benevolent societies in particular hired bands for funerals and the SA&PCs hired bands for parades, dances and balls.
Much more so than any other venue or institutions (including all of the hotels and nightclubs combined), it was these Black organized mutual aid social organizations that provided both the social and economic context within which the brass bands flourished. Gregory Davis of the Dirty Dozen notes that the SA&PCs were the main economic support for the Dirty Dozen during their formulative years.
Often this aspect of economic support is overlooked by those who are unaware of how deeply interconnected the brass band music scene is with the day to day life of the New Orleans Black community. This factor is particularly important to note when one considers that the city government does not in any way economically support this important manifestation of Black culture. Brass bands exist because the Black community of New Orleans has made it a priority to economically support these bands which play at parades, funerals, picnics, after baseball games, for private parties, wedding receptions and similar social functions.
THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
Jazz historian and clarinetist Dr. Michael is the author of "The New Orleans Brass Band in the Twentieth Century: Nature, Style, and Social Significance" a definitively important essay on brass band which offers the best definition of a brass band available. Writing in Volume 4, Numbers 1&2 of the Xavier Review (1984), Dr. Michael states:
"When one refers to the brass bands of New Orleans, one generally means those marching groups of between nine and twelve musicians who around 1900 began playing improvised jazz forms, head arrangements, and adaptations of standard marches, spiritual, dirges, ragtime, and popular music. These bands often consist of two or three trumpets, two trombones, a tuba, a clarinet, two drums and other brasses or reeds. The year 1900 marks an important transitionary period because beginning then and up until the present, the main emphasis of the bands in terms of performances and expectations shifted away from written music to spontaneous improvised jazz."
During the 1950s and early 1960s a number of Europeans (mainly English and German) immigrated to New Orleans to learn the brass band music from the legendary elders. Men such as clarinetist George Lewis, bassist Slow Drag Pavegeau, drummer Paul Barbarin and numerous others were actually the second generation of traditional New Orleans jazz musicians. They had learned directly from the first generation and were the most authentic players of the traditional style. At one point, it even seemed that as the older African-American traditional musicians literally began dying off in the mid 60s, the European new comers who had assiduously apprenticed with the old master would become the new masters.
But then a new development hit the scene: The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. These musicians are credited with turning the brass band music scene around. It was no longer a question of simply playing the way the "old folks" played. A new and more contemporary sound was introduced, a sound which drew on bebop and contemporary Black popular music for its new direction while retaining the format and feel of the traditional marching brass band. It was an innovation that attracted the attention of hundreds of young African-American musicians. The ascendancy of the Dirty Dozen directly spawned and stylistically influenced a generation of young brass band players and bands such as The Rebirth, The Allstars, Pinstrip, Treme, The Chosen Few and others.
Because of their prominence it is easy to mark the rise of the Dirty Dozen as the beginning of the contemporary brass band scene, however, it is historically correct to point to two important individuals who actually set in motion the whole youth movement among brass band players: Ernest "Doc" Paulin and Danny Barker.
DOC PAULIN. Proud, intelligent (some say that he is the shrewdest businessman among the elder bandleaders), and a maverick (he refuses to join the musicians union -- "You don't need nobody to tell you what to do. If you're the leader, you're suppose to take charge."), Doc Paulin is also the major mentor of sub-40 year old brass band players in this city.
Michael White, who worked with both Doc Paulin and Danny Barker confirms the importance of his apprenticeship with Doc Paulin. "From time to time all of the other bands like Olympia, Onward or Young Tuxedo would hire young musicians but you had to already known how to play in order to be hired. Doc Paulin was the one who would take a green musician, someone who hadn't really learned to play yet, and teach that person how to play brass band music."
According to Dr. White the lists of Doc Paulin alumni is extensive and includes some of the best known of today's brass band musicians. In fact three of the better known tuba players (Walter Payton, Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen, and Alton "Big Al" Carson), as well as Dirty Dozen trumpeter and business manager Gregory Davis and Young Tuxedo Brass Band leader and trumpeter Gregg Stafford, have all played with Doc Paulin. Additionally, a number of youngsters, such as saxophonist Donald Harrison, who would go on to play modern jazz also served time with Doc Paulin.
"I taught all of them. And not just music. I taught them how to be a musician. How to dress, how to rehearse, how to present themselves," asserts Doc Paulin, the proud patriarch. Dr. White vividly remembers that band members were required to assemble at Doc's house and pass muster. "He checked hats and shoes, the whole uniform. In fact, much of the lessons he taught me I use on gigs everyday as a musician and bandleader myself."
Because Doc Paulin was not a union musician it was easier for him to use young musicians, most of whom were not yet in the union. It was also more economical because the young musicians were not paid union scale. The fact is that the majority of the youngsters would not have been able to get union scale anyway, not just because they weren't in the union but also because they had not yet learned to play well enough for union bands to hire them. Doc Paulin offered a working apprenticeship teaching youngsters the rudiments of brass band music.
DANNY BARKER. Danny Barker's contribution was qualitatively of a different order. Following up on a suggestion by Rev. Andrew Darby, a progressive, Baptist minister in the St. Bernard area who was concerned about the youth of his community, Danny Barker started the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band as a means of organizing kids around an activity they could do for themselves. He taught them music, but he was not actually in the band itself. Through Rev. Darby, the young band began to get a number of gigs playing for church affairs including ground-breakings, fund raisings, anniversaries, youth programs, and the like. Eventually, the band began attracting youngsters citywide.
The specific difference between this band and Doc Paulin's band which used youth (including at least four of Doc's own sons) was that in the Fairview Band, Danny Barker instituted the first all youth brass band based on cooperative economics.
"I didn't take more money because I was the leader. I got them together and whatever we got paid we split up evenly among all the members. The kids counted the money themselves. The important thing was to get the youngsters involved in some positive and useful activity. After they left the Fairview, they were equipped to go out on their own as musicians and to start their own bands."
This was a major development, never before had a band composed entirely of young people and based on economic egalitarianism been active on the brass band scene.
When the Rebirth Brass Band was filmed during a stint in the quarter, the "divving-up" into equal portions of the money collected in the cardboard kitty box illustrated a direct manifestation of the principles that Danny Barker had taught. And less some think that the link between Danny Barker's teachings and this example is a bit far fetched, I point out that the Rebirth Brass Band was tutored by Gregory Davis of the Dirty Dozen who served an apprenticeship with trumpeter Leroy Jones in Jones' "Hurricane Brass Band," which was a band that Jones formed from remnants of the Fairview Brass Band of which he had been one of the long standing members.
It is impossible to conceive of the contemporary brass band scene without considering the contributions of Doc Paulin and Danny Barker. Although neither of these men actually played in the new style or taught the younger musicians to play in the new style, Doc Paulin and Danny Barker were the foundation on which the new music stylings would be erected.
THE DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND. If Doc Paulin and Danny Barker are the foundation, the scaffold for the new departure in brass band music was bebop jazz. One has only to listen for a short while to the Dirty Dozen to hear their stylistic debt to bebop and jazz references and influences other than traditional New Orleans jazz. In order to fully understand the origin of their ideas, we must look at the "lost generation" of New Orleans jazz musicians -- best exemplified by Red Tyler and Ellis Marsalis, but also include the likes of Harold Batiste, Ed Blackwell, Earl Palmer, Alvin Batiste, Kidd Jordan, James Black, Earl Turbinton, George Davis, and others too numerous to list in this context.
I call them the "lost generation" not because they are literally lost, but rather because they were for the most part lost to traditional New Orleans jazz, even though, at one time or another all of them played some traditional jazz. Although pianist and modern jazz sire Ellis Marsalis played more trad jazz than most of his peers through long stints with Al Hirt and with other trad bands in the city, still even in his case, his heart, just like his peer colleagues, was firmly planted in the modern jazz camp.
The young musicians of that period were overwhelmingly either enamoured of bebop and wanted more than anything to play modern jazz (e.g. Ellis Marsalis, Ed Blackwell, the late Nat Perilliat, and Earl Turbinton) or else they ended up splitting their affections between major careers in R&B and side careers as jazz artists (e.g. Red Tyler, Harold Batiste, Wallace Davenport -- who was Ray Charles' musical director for a number of years, Dave Bartholomew -- who has been Fats Domino's band leader since the beginning of Fats' success, Wilson "Willie Tee" Turbinton, and James Rivers).
An interesting footnote is Red Tyler's contribution to R&B as a baritone saxophonist who translated the tuba-like bass riffs to the baritone saxophone on a plethora of 1950s and 1960s New Orleans R&B hits. This duality of playing both R&B and jazz happened partly because there has never been a rigid separation of music in New Orleans. Additionally, most professional New Orleans musicians are required to competently play in at least two or three different styles of music. Finally, the financial rewards were much higher in R&B than in modern jazz.
Reductively, if a young musician wanted to make a living as a musician in New Orleans during the 50s & 60s, the most prudent course of action was R&B. Although the trad rival was in full swing, most trad jazz audiences insisted on "authentic" New Orleans jazz which meant music played by the older musicians and not by the young musicians. Compounding the "authenticity" aspect, was also the social climate of that era during which some musicians looked on traditional jazz as "old timey" at best and "Uncle Tom" music at worse. This is the context within which the Dirty Dozen Brass Band struck a new course.
While it is difficult and unfair to single out any one individual musician among the band members to say that they were the major influence on the new direction of the music, undoubtedly Roger Lewis is a key figure in the band's stylistic evolution. Roger Lewis was of that generation which had been turned on by bebop and he also held down a full time chair as the baritone sax player with Fats Domino. Roger is responsible for advancing a bebop base for Dirty Dozen experimentations.
Sousaphonist Kirk Joseph, the son of traditional jazz trombonist Waldren "Frog" Joseph, Sr. who played with Louis Armstrong, was directly influenced by Roger Lewis. Eventually Kirk Joseph developed a style of sousaphone playing that is based not on the traditional New Orleans tuba style but rather on the rapid fire bebop string bass line.
Kirk Joseph has noted that in order to play like he does he had to figure out new "breathing techniques and fingerings." His technical competence is absolutely astounding as he plays with a swiftness even some string or electric bass players can't match. Kirk's sound is aggressive in all registers of the big horn, from the gruff bottom notes to pristine sparkling high note forays.
Mirroring the difficulties inherent in playing bebop for swing musicians, the Dirty Dozen's departure from the old style was not only innovative, it also required a level of technique in terms of speed, stamina and mastery of chord changes that had not previously been necessary in playing traditional brass band music.
I do not mean to imply that traditional brass band music is easy or does not require technical mastery. Quite the opposite is true. In fact, musicians who were not reared in this culture often find it difficult if not impossible to master the subtleties of trad jazz which emphasize timber, tone, attack, and collective improvisation more than dexterity and harmonic complexity. The point here however, is that the Dirty Dozen have been singularly responsible for introducing the language of bebop into traditional New Orleans brass band music.
THE THREE SCHOOLS OF MODERN BRASS BAND MUSIC
By the late 80s three distinct schools of modern brass band music had developed among the young musicians. Each of the three schools has its own flag bearer.
DIRTY DOZEN -- BEBOP BASED. We have already discussed the development of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and their incorporation of bebop into their musical style. Gregory Davis comments that "when we first started doing different styles and different compositions some of the older musicians said 'That's not right. Ya'll shouldn't do that.' But the secondliners loved it and they would keep asking us to do our special numbers." So then not only did the Dirty Dozen make a stylistic break, they also began to attract a younger audience to the music, as well as influence technical developments among younger musicians who wanted to learn how to play like the Dirty Dozen. The best recorded representation of the Dirty Dozen is LIVE AT MONTREAUX (Rounder Records).
THE YOUNG TUXEDO -- TRAD BASED. Gregg Stafford and Dr. Michael White, along with drummer Stanley Stephens, trombonist/tubaist Lucien Barbarian, and bass drummer Charles Barbarian represent leading elements among those whom I consider the "young traditionalists." These are young musicians who are emotionally and intellectually committed to traditional New Orleans jazz. They play mainly the traditional repertoire and use the traditional styles of horn playing. Although there are numerous recordings in the traditional context, there are no recent recordings which truly represent the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. Over on the west bank in Algiers, the Algiers Brass Band also plays in the traditional style. The Algiers Brass Band is particularly adept at capturing the emotional authenticity of the traditional style even though they are not as technically proficient as The Young Tuxedo. In all fairness we must point out that with Dr. Michael White holding down the clarinet chair and leader Gregg Stafford blowing a strong, strong cornet, other bands composed of young musicians really do have a tough time matching up to the technical excellence of The Young Tuxedo.
REBIRTH BRASS BAND -- FUNK BASED. The Rebirth Brass Band, although a relatively young band, is already in its second major phase and is firmly committed to mating the traditional brass band repertoire with popular Black dance music (i.e. funk), thus one song will be the traditional "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" and the very next song will be Michael Jackson's "Shake Your Body Down To The Ground." They approach their music with a youthful vigor that is infectious and the blend is not as odd as it may sound on paper, particularly as Rebirth develops a distinctive use of riffs and ensemble (both instrumental and vocal) parts as the major elements rather than bop influenced individual solos like the Dirty Dozen. FEEL LIKE FUNKIN' IT UP (Rounder Records) is an outstanding example of this approach.
The above differentiations refer in the main to the younger brass bands active on the streets of New Orleans today. Of course, bands such as The Olympia Brass Band under the capable leadership of Harold "Duke" Dejean continue to carry on the tradition using older musicians for the most part.
The Olympia has it's own style which in many ways resembles the music of Louis Armstrong's Allstars. In much the same way that Louis Armstrong did, The Olympia includes pop show tunes in their repertoire.
Also noteworthy is Olympia lead trumpeter Milton Batiste's major influence on younger musicians. As a music producer and mentor, Milton Batiste exerts significant impact in trying to keep upcoming musicians respectful of the traditions as upheld by The Olympia and at the same time encouraging them to incorporate modern elements into the music.
Milton Batiste has produced an anthology release which accurately represents not only The Olympia Brass Band but also offers cuts from The Chosen Few Brass Band, Rebirth Brass Band, and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The anthology is called NEW ORLEANS BRASS BANDS DOWN YONDER (Rounder Records) and is an excellent starting point in understanding modern brass band music.
Dr. Michael White identifies a fifth critical front in the development of modern brass band music, and that is bands which play away from New Orleans or only for special occasions. Bands such as The Excelsior Brass Band, led by Teddy Riley, and the Liberty Brass Band, led by Michael White do not function on a day to day basis in New Orleans but are significant in representing the music outside of New Orleans. These bands all concentrate on the deep traditions of brass band music and have an influence that transcends the contemporary New Orleans street scene.
The best example of this often "overlooked" influence is that one of the major considerations in Wynton Marsalis' decision to record "The New Orleans Function" on his MAJESTY OF THE BLUES release was an Excelsior Brass Band album called JOLLY REEDS & STEAMIN' HORNS. The front line of Teddy Riley, Michael White and trombonist Freddie Lonzo heard on this 1983 recording is the same front line that Wynton Marsalis decided to use on his recording. They are also the same front line used for a Lincoln Center feature concert on the music of Jelly Roll Morton which was held in August 1989. The concert was under the direction of Dr. Michael White and the series of which the concert was one part was under the artistic direction of Wynton Marsalis.
This is the rich tradition and blossoming contemporary scene that comprises brass band music in New Orleans as we close out the 20th century, a century which musically has been dominated by jazz and its influences on world musical culture.
—kalamu ya salaam
#30
Kalamu ya Salaam, winner of two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music, is a writer/editor, arts administrator and music producer. This essay was written in the early 1990’s.