WWOZ radio is back online. For those who may not know, WWOZ is a public station formerly in New Orleans that plays pretty much only regional NOLA music, and they have done so much over the years to promote that culture and keep it alive. They have a list of N.O. musisicians who are known to be OK:
http://www.wwoz.org/music.php
It's also worth tuning into their streaming broadcast.
Of interest are the comments of WWOZ station manager David Freedman. His remarks regarding the potential destruction of New Orleans culture resulting from the flooding are worth reading:
(more below)
Here is a pertinent excerpt from his blog at
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/09/report_from_wwo.html
I can't tell you how deeply I appreciate your e-mail, and I think the situation is so huge that it would be selfish of us not to share the challenges ahead. This is much bigger than WWOZ, although this station feels like it needs to be at the forefront of the bigger issue: the decimation of a culture. As I explained to Greg, it seems to me that the "roots culture" of New Orleans is itself greatly imperiled.
We don't yet know their names, but there can be no doubt that there are musicians who have perished in this disaster. Most will survive, but then they won't be able to come back into the city for perhaps up to a year. If they all stayed in one place in exile, they could come back as a group. Perhaps Baton Rouge will be the new cultural center of levity. If they can find housing! The population of Baton Rouge has already doubled overnight and the situation promises to get much tighter. So, some percentage of New Orleans' musicians will be scattered around the country and will end up rooting somewhere else -- perhaps with family and certainly with jobs in or out of the music business. Whoever is left and returns to New Orleans will be coming back to a vastly different place. A few clubs such as Tips and House of Blues will re-emerge. But the funky holes in the wall will not. Can Antoinette K-Doe possibly resurrect the Mother-in-Law Lounge? It was under 10 feet of water, from what I saw on CNN.
New neighborhood clubs could emerge, but only if they have the critical mass to support them. That will probably happen, but my guess is that it will be a very slow process and will not reach the previous scope for many years to come, if ever. As you saw on TV, the underclass is coming out of the woodworks---that same underclass in which much of our roots music is rooted. I have to wonder if those people being shipped to the Astrodome will ever make it back to New Orleans. And with the complete evacuation of New Orleans now on order, I have to believe only a small fraction of those folks will return as well. In 4 to12 months from now, or whenever it is that people can return, housing will be at a premium.
Rental property will be the last to be rebuilt. I heard FEMA's Michael Brown talking bravely of a huge building program to replace low-income housing, but when push comes to shove will a Bush administration really be there for an urban, historically Democratic, African-American city? It will be unprecedented, to say the least, if they are willing to step up to that plate. I call to mind the promises to NYC after September 11. The archictectural character of the city will also be diminished. TheFrench Quarter and the uptown mansions will survive as circumscribed "tourist zones." But that's about it. The housing replacements in Bywater, 9th ward, Mid City and Gentilly will all be standard cookie-cutter 8' x 4' sheetrock boxes (requiescat Malvina). Even if they wanted to do better, America doesn't have the craftsmen around any more.
Those who have a sentimental or economic reason to return to New Orleans will do so. But the vast majority of people with portable skills will be too rooted down and understandably discouraged to return once the gates to the city are re-opened.
I see a lot of rebuilding, but it will be more gentrified, and will undercut the inherent culture and the breeding ground for that culture.
Sadly, I believe there is much truth in this assesment - that this disaster could be the end of a vital and unique musical culture in this city, one that remained vibrant and evolving for so many years, against all odds. No matter what fads permeated popular music, New Orleans always kept its own thing, it's own beat and feeling. It's possibly the only American city remaining with a distsinct regional musical tradition and style... a curious holdout against the onslaught of mass-marketed, homogenous corporate popular music. As a musician myself it brings me to the point of tears to realize that this living musical heritage may be ending. I watched an interview with Wynton Marsalis tonight on PBS and he spoke optimistically that people will return (and N.O. people do indeed have a lot of spirit). But the economic realities of the situation are going to be hard to overcome.