Jazz doesn't derive completely from New Orleans, in all its particulars, but there's no question that it draws much of its impetus from there. The instrumental blues that came out of that city, drawing upon marching band instruments left over from the French military presence, is crucial to the way that the music we call "jazz" has taken shape.
But if jazz comes largely out of New Orleans (with a shout-out to New York stride piano), New Orleans jazz owes much of its energy, its drive, to the tradition of the "Second Line."
As I was thinking about New Orleans, and what it is going through, I wanted to take a moment to think about the Second Line and its meaning.
Not being a native of New Orleans, people might have to correct me, but I think the gist of it is this: following the funeral procession is a band of musicians accompanying the mourners, who follow in a procession. I believe this dates back to at least the mid-19th century, and continues to this day.
The music leading to the grave site is immensely somber, with low, scooping slides and portamentos (er, slides), set in a minor key. The music returning from the site is of an altogether different order: twice as fast, it sets a jovial, exuberant pace, with all of the instruments improvising collectively. The bass drum that had laid out the pace of the dirge on the way there is now laying down a funky, syncopated pattern; as the trumpet lays down the melody, it intertwines with screaming clarinet lines and bending trombone phrases, all of which imitate the irrepressible energy of the human voice.
In other words, the second line is about resiliance. This resiliance is there on so many levels: it is there in the triumph of life over death, the realization that if the individual must invariably succumb, the community that draws upon his or her spirit will always move on. It is about the resiliance of New Orleans' diversity -- its European immigrants, its creole gens de couleur libre, and its descendents of freed slaves migrating to NO from elsewhere in the South -- and a testament to the creative tensions that those communities brought together. In this sense, it is also about the resiliance of New Orleans in the face of Jim Crow, where it found itself resisting many of the most draconian aspects of segregation in the post-Reconstruction South. (This is an oversimplification, but I think largely accurate.) It is about resiliance in the face of adversity, as the very same tradition of the blues that gives us the dark choruses of Robert Johnson, full of dread, is here transformed into a music that basks in light, energy, catharsis, the spirit of living.
And so I thought it would be fitting here, as we watch the water levels rising, to think about all that New Orleans music, second line or not, has given us:
Sidney Bechet
"Jelly Roll" Morton
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band
Louis Armstrong
Johnny Dodds
Baby Dodds
Fats Domino
the Meters
the Nevilles
Harry Conick, Jr.
Wynton Marsalis
(Branford Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, Delfayo Marsalis...)
Terence Blanchard
the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
... tell me who I've left out!