Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6:30 a.m. Eastern (and perhaps sometimes earlier!). Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or just once in awhile. With the Auto Publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometimes the diarist du jour shows up much later: that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Volunteer in the comment threads.
Click on the MOT - Morning Open Thread ♥ if you'd like us to show up in your stream.
As the funeral comes to a close and the deceased is laid to rest,
the spirit of the second line begins.
Traditionally the first line is comprised of the deceased's family and friends, accompanied by a brass band engaged as part of the jazz funeral: dirges and hymns before the burial, a more upbeat, joyous, celebratory music following. The second line, thus, forms behind the main line and band as the community is invited to parade and dance in celebration of life. Second lines--with their roots in funerals and community support--may have started out as a transplanted tradition of West African slaves to this country, we don't really know; but the tradition has evolved into a public form of celebration, remembrance, and protest through music and parades.
A local blog on the History of the Second Line gives us a glimpse of what is commonly thought of as the beginnings of second lining, but many of us believe the practice dates back much further than the 18th century.
Jason Berry emphasizes excellently the lack of historical documentation when he states "No one has pinpointed the date of the first jazz funeral and scholars are unlikely to ever find one." However, there is sufficient information to pin down its predecessor. The Perseverance, Benevolent, and Mutual Aid Association formed in 1783 ("Slavery and the Making of America"). Later, following the Civil War, the New Orleans Freedmen's Aid Association would be one of the first amongst thousands of these types of clubs formed. They were based on the tribal concept derived from Africa, of the coming together for the ultimate success of the tribe.
Social aid and pleasure clubs multiplied following the Civil War as means of providing community support for large portions of the population that were intentionally excluded from mainstream society. Providing insurance, loans, and mutual support, these clubs also hosted neighborhood parades to advertise their services and honor community and club members who had recently passed away.
As racial segregation slowly dissolved and insurance and other services became available to black New Orleanians from mainstream providers, the social aid aspect of these organizations diminished. The groups themselves persisted, along with their parades, and today new organizations continue to form with the primary purpose of holding a parade. Reflecting their benevolent roots, however, these organizations are generally still called social aid and pleasure clubs. They have names like the Jolly Bunch, the Sidewalk Steppers, the Money Wasters, the Lady Rollers, the Perfect Gentlemen, the Devastating Men and the Popular Ladies.
Second line parades are led by New Orleans-style brass bands (typically trumpet, trombone, saxophone, tuba or Sousaphone, bass and snare drums) that march through the streets of the city, with anyone so inclined joining the parade behind the band and main organizers. A syncopated, rhythmic style of free form jazz or funk, the second line is quintessential black New Orleans music. Chief Jake Millon described it this way in an interview with filmmaker Maurice Martinez in 1976:
“Some people call it funk,” Millon replied, “but to us it’s strictly second line.” “Funk” has several different meanings in American popular discourse, but since the 1970s it has largely connoted a heavily syncopated, groove-centered style of African-American music. “Second line,” on the other hand, refers to the rhythms of a black parading tradition originating in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Since the 1960s, when James Brown essentially invented funk music by building on rhythms introduced to him by two New Orleans-schooled drummers, the relationship between “second line” and “funk” rhythms has been increasingly symbiotic.
The quote above is taken from the abstract of Benjamin Doleac's "Strictly Second Line: Funk, Jazz, and the New Orleans Beat" in
Ethnomusicology Review--a scholarly article that I would highly recommend for anyone interested in the evolution of the music of New Orleans. Beneath the rhythms and celebratory public expression of loss and joy, one's experience of a second line is as individual as we are unique. For me, it is the awakening of the original language of life seeking to give voice to our innate understanding of the inevitability of death.
Grab your coffee and join us.
What's on your mind this beautiful Friday morning?