Word: jazz
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...things about post-Katrina New Orleans that weigh heavily on the souls of New Orleans musicians, it's the city's silence. It was the first thing legendary jazz pianist Henry Butler noticed when he returned to his hometown after Katrina. Blind, Butler relied on friends to detail the devastation of his Gentilly home, but his other senses served up a potent picture of what had befallen the city...
...storm has certainly bolstered international interest in the city's greatest cultural asset, already strong in Europe and Asia, and New Orleans musicians are being invited to jazz festivals in Chicago, New York and Washington. But it has also exposed a dark side of the Big Easy, a place critics say where leadership was lacking and corruption endemic, where sustenance for the arts was nonexistent, and it's not at all clear that authentic New Orleans music will survive the storm in the long...
...Those community groups that kept the flame alive, the social aid and pleasure clubs, the Mardi Gras Indian bands and brass bands that played at jazz funerals, have been scattered. Even before Katrina, New Orleans music was in danger as venerable nightspots in the French Quarter were replaced by tourist bars. Music was touted, "Disneyfied," Butler said, but not supported, and Katrina blew apart the social fabric that kept the traditions alive. Michael White, a clarinetist and musical historian at Xavier University, said it was shameful that so many valuable musical collections, like his own, were in private homes...
...collective improvisation" that worked to create New Orleans jazz is not a model for the new city, Butler said. "What happens in music doesn't always translate positively and constructively to the rest of life," he said. The city should nurture the arts like other cities do - Chicago's jazz festival, Austin cable music channels, tax incentives for club owners - Butler said...
...City officials do have some real successes to point to: Mardi Gras, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and a series of smaller festivals went on as planned. Meanwhile, the city's major museums have reopened, and its big-name restaurants have either reopened or announced plans to do so this fall. Popular tourist attractions like the Aquarium of the Americas and Audubon Zoo are up and running, and the cruise ships that use New Orleans as a home port - and carry more than 700,000 passengers a year - will be back in service...