LAST CALL: Jazz Coda?
Hillyer, Quin
LAST CALL Jazz Coda? by Quin Hillyer N EW ORLEANS STILL SUFFERS TERRIBLY troubled waters, and it’s time to stop assessing blame and instead start working to preserve the...
...Join me for a quick journey through a pastiche of Jazz Fests past...
...You need the caffeine, and those beignets taste like the sweetest forms of sin—minus the retribution...
...Michael White and Gregg Stafford alternate soulful dirges with the upbeat, syncopated polyrhythms that inspire 10-year-olds and 90-year-olds to join in a “second line,” dancing behind a middle-aged white dude known as Eddie, waiving umbrellas or handkerchiefs while throwing shoulders and hips akimbo...
...Here, next to the gospelmusic tent where the glory-hallelujah chorus is beginning to raise the rafters, you’ll meet the first of several friends with whom you’ve made arrangements...
...We can’t let its city do likewise...
...This being New Orleans, even years before the storm it makes you wistful...
...The sun gets lower...
...Cypress waterfowl, papier mache alligators, handblown-glass sugar cane, leather and jewelry and homemade musical instruments, all are infused with a blend of artistic merit and whimsy...
...Then amble to the heritage village, where local crafts are ingenious and unique...
...You exit past the beignet stand, which already is closed for the evening...
...Some 30,000 people sprawl near that one stage, the scene speckled with colorful, makeshift flags and balloons...
...As it happens, the last week of April and first week of May each year present New Orleans in all its glory, encapsulated in the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival...
...That’s right: Ease into the day with music that’s smooth...
...Singing “The Boxer,” “Kodachrome,” and “The Sound of Silence,” Simon leads all of you through your souls’ fondest lyrics...
...A cold brew awaits...
...The first stop, shortly past the ticket takers, is the beignet stand featuring the café au lait and powdered pastries made famous by specialty restaurants Café du Monde and The Morning Call...
...And as long as you’re heading back into the sun to the beer booth, you may as well grab some creamy Crawfish Monica before food lines get too long...
...On your right, an intoxicating brew of zydeco and vaguely AmerIndian-sounding music wafts over from the Lagniappe stage...
...Everybody...
...Except that, after a half hour, you’re thirsty...
...What the novelist Walker Percy once described as an “odd admixture 78 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2007 of southern-ness and foreign-ness” beckons, and charms, from all directions...
...you enter the gates, right as they open, amidst a throng of happy people, casually dressed but often in brightly wacky colors...
...For today at least, The Morning Call has had its last call...
...by Quin Hillyer N EW ORLEANS STILL SUFFERS TERRIBLY troubled waters, and it’s time to stop assessing blame and instead start working to preserve the city as a cultural treasure...
...Under a stunning springtime sun at 11 a.m...
...You can’t top those sounds or feelings...
...Walking from one music stage and food booth to another—over here, the swamp-rock Radiators, over there the funky Meters, at the far end some 1970s rock by Boz Scaggs—you see other friends at random, perhaps one from California and another now living in Beijing...
...But you can’t linger...
...Aaron Neville’s voice floods the air, joining Simon in the single most memorable performance these troubled waters may ever see or hear...
...Buy the smaller size, to leave room later for other Cajun delicacies...
...You and your friend cross the Fairgrounds racetrack to the infield...
...Finally, Paul Simon is closing the day at the big Acura Stage, and a friend saves you a spot...
...But your schedule says the ethereal contemporary-jazz Astral Project is over at the Jazz Tent, where giant photographs of earlier Jazz Fests by “ethnomusicologist” Michael P. Smith hang from the eaves...
...LAST CALL Jazz Coda...
...He starts into familiar lyrics: “When you’re down and out/ When you’re on the street/ When evening falls so hard/ I will comfort you/ I’ll take your part/ When darkness comes/ And pain is all around…” And then, totally unannounced and unexpected, another voice comes in, a voice at once high and deep, angelic and oh-so-earthy: “Like a bridge over troubled water/ I will lay me down...
...Everybody is friendly...
...You start to circle behind the crowd along the racetrack’s backstretch, determined to get a head start back to your car while still catching Simon’s last song...
...There’s too much other music, and too much other food and drink (stay hydrated with plenty of herbal rosemint iced tea), for you to tarry...
...In the Economy Hall tent where traditional jazz lives, Dr...
Vol. 40 • May 2007 • No. 4
