Jazz, The Second Line, and African American Religious Internationalism in New Orleans

Abstract

This article explores the history and contemporary significance of African American religious internationalism in New Orleans through the popular religious traditions, identities, and performance forms celebrated in the second lines of the city's jazz street parades. The second line is the group of dancers who follow the first procession church and club members, brass bands and Black Indians. The second line theme allows me to investigate how African diasporic religious and musical identities from Haiti and West and Central Africa are re-imagined and circulated globally in New Orleans jazz and popular religious performances.

Keywords:

• Black Indians
• Carnival
• Congo Square
• jazz
• second line
• Treme
• Vodou

Notes

Richard Brent Turner, Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), backflap. Mitchell Reid, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). Barbara Mauldin, ed., Carnival! (Sante Fe, NM: Museum of International Folk Art and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).

Ibid., 6.

Ibid.

Kalamu ya Salaam, liner notes, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Live, Mardi Gras in Montreaux (Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records, 1986).

Turner, Jazz Relgion, 7, 43.

Ibid., 5.

Ibid., 6.

Ibid., 24; Daniel E. Walker, No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 8; Dele Jegede, “‘Art for Life's Sake': African Art as a Reflection of Afrocentric Cosmology,” in The African Aesthetic: Keepers of Tradition, ed. Kariamu Welsh-Asante (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 224.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 24. Walker, No More, No More, 9–13, 45.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 53; Reid Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 114; Jason Berry, “African Cultural Memory in New Orleans,” in Black Music Research Journal, 8, paper, National Conference on Black Music Research, New Orleans, October 15–17, 1987.

Cherice Harrison-Nelson, “Sewing behind the Scenes: Indian Wivies,” lecture, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, June 29, 1999. The oral histories do not support Michael P. Smith's thesis on the origins of the black Indian tribes in the New Orleans Buffalo Wild West shows in the 1880s. See Michael P. Smith, “New Orleans Carnival from the Underside,” Plantation Societies in the Americas (1990): 11–32.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 54. Berry, “African Cultural Memory in New Orleans,” 8. See also Florence E. Borders, “Researching Creole and Cajun Music in New Orleans,” Black Music Research Journal, 18–20, paper, National Conference on Black Music Research, New Orleans, October 15–17, 1987.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 54. See Allan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz” (New York: Pantheon Books, 1950), 17–19; Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day, 17–18; Anna Maria Alonso, “Men in ‘Rags’ and the Devil on a Throne: A Study of Protest and Inversion in the Carnival of Post-Emancipation Trinidad,” Plantation Societies in the Americas (1990); 73–120. Errol Hill, The Trinidad Carnival; Mandate for a National Theater (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972); Maurice Martinez, Jr., “Two Islands: The Black Indians of Haiti and New Orleans,” Arts Quarterly (July/August/September 1979): 5–17, 18.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 58.

James Hinton and Maurice Martinez, Jr., The Black Indians of New Orleans, video, Chalmalma Media Institute, 1976.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 58–59; Keith Weldon Medley, We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2003).

Turner, Jazz Religion, 59.

Ibid.; Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 207.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 48–49; Jason Berry, Jonathan Foose, and Tad Jones, Up from the Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music since World War II (New York: Da Capo, 1992), 4–5, 9.

Ibid., xii–xiii; Turner, Jazz Religion, 50.

Ibid.; Loyce Arthur, “Captivated by Carnival: Cuban Carnival Conveys Fascinating Blend of Old, New Cultural Elements,” International Accents 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer): 1.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 50; Claudine Michel, “Of Worlds Seen and Unseen: The Educational Character of Haitian Vodou,” Comparative Education Review 40, no. 3 (August 1996): 280–294.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 50; Frederick Turner, Remembering Song: Encounters with the New Orleans Jazz Tradition, exp. ed. (New York: Capo, 1994), xi, 14, 18; Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, 2002), chapters 1–4.

Douglas Henry Daniels, “Vodou and Jazz: Jelly Roll Morton and Lester ‘Pres’ Young: Shadow and Substance,” Journal of Haitian Studies 9, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 115–116. See, Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll; Howard Reich and William Gaines, Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton (New York: Da Capo, 2003); Phil Pastras, Dead Man Blues: Jelly Roll Morton Way Out West (Berkeley and Chicago: University of California Press and Center for Black Music research, Columbia College, 2001).

Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong's New Orleans (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

Turner, Jazz Religion, 89; http://www.gede.org/LWAS/gede.html (accessed 2008).

Turner, Jazz Religion, 89–90.

Ibid., 124; Michael P. Smith, “Jazz Funerals: Joie de Vivre, Joie de Morte,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas (Spring 1996), 37.

Turner, Jazz Religion, 124.

Ibid., 66.

Ibid., 66–67; The Neville Brothers, The Wild Tchoupitoulas (New York: Mango Island Records, 1976). See also, Art, Aaron, Charles, and Cyrill Neville and David Ritz, The Brothers Neville (Boston: Little Brown, 2000).

The Neville Brothers, Live on Planet Earth (Hollywood: A&M Records, 1994); The Meters, The Essentials (New York: Warner Brothers Records, 2002); B. R. Hunter, “The Meters,” Vibe 4, no. 1 (February 1996): 104.

Michael P. Smith, New Orleans Jazz Fest: A Pictoral History (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 1991); Brian Frederico, The Origins of New Orleans' Greatest Music Festival (New Orleans: New Orleans Scriptorum, 2001).

Ibid.; The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Voodoo (New York: Columbia Records, 1989) and Medicated Magic (New York: The Ropedope Music Company LLC, 2002); The Rebirth Brass Band, The Main Event: Live at the Maple Leaf (New Orleans: Louisiana Red Hot Record, 1999).

Turner, Jazz Religion, 67; Los Hombres Calientes, Volume 3: New Congo Square (New Orleans: Basin Records, 2001), Volume 4: Vodou Dance (New Orleans: Basin Street Records, 2003), and Volume 5: Carnival (New Orleans: Basin Street Record, 2005).

Amnesty International, Un-Natural Disaster: Human Rights in the Gulf Coast (Washington, DC: Amnesty International, 2010), 1.

Lynn Weber and Lori Peek, eds., Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012), 1, 13.

Ibid., 2.

David Simon, “HBO's Treme creator David Simon explains it all for you,” The Times Picayune, April 11, 2010.

Katy Reckdahl, “Treme Anticipates Life in “Treme Spotlight,”” The Times Picayune, April 10, 2010; Matt Sakakeeny, Roll with It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Lewis Watts and Eric Porter, New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

Weber and Peek, Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora, 3.

Turner, Jazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans, 128.

Michael Ventura, Shadow Dancing in the U.S.A. (New York: St. Martin's, 1985).