In part 1 of A Brief Introduction to New Orleans Music we looked at the early days of jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and in part 2 city’s evolution through funk. In part three, we take a look at the development of Metal, Hip-Hop & Modern Jazz in the land of Mardi Gras.
Lester Bangs’ prediction that the death of Elvis was a watershed moment for popular music, that from this day forth we will no longer be united by music, but that you will have your genre and I will have mine, seems to have come true in New Orleans. Some of the acts we’ll look at here in the third and final part of our brief history of the city’s music have slim traces of the sounds of their forbears while others were totally influenced by the sounds associated with other parts of the world. Even among their contemporaries they found neighbouring states more receptive to their personal tastes.
But tradition in New Orleans is neither dead nor stagnant, and enough artists are taking the old familiar sounds and doing new things with them to keep the spirit alive. The city never lost its need to make people dance and even though the kind of music people dance to has changed over the years, New Orleans can still produce floor-fillers, even if it’s no longer at the forefront of the movement.
Crowbar – Waiting In Silence
Funky wah guitar shortly found itself replaced in the streets of New Orleans by the loud distorted explosions of hard rock in the late ’80s. Heavy metal had arrived, but unlike the post-punk head-banging extravaganzas that were sweeping up the longhaired youth of America, the New Orleans sound was slower, more atmospheric. It felt like trudging through an endless swamp in the dark and they called it sludge metal.
Crowbar were one of the city’s earliest pioneers of this sound and featured several members who would work with many of the other hard rock bands that began to pop up around this time. It would be wrong to completely detach the band’s sound from the kinds of music that rocked the city before them, but any native influences are hidden under layers of Black Sabbath, Slayer and Melvins.
On their first album ‘Obedience Thru Suffering’ Waiting In Silence gives a perfect example of what sludge metal entailed. The opening is a long formless howl into which the drums suddenly add form. The guitars come in playing two notes per bar, a number that slowly increases. After this comes the semi-screamed lyrics – “you’re trapped in darkness, life is no more” – to match the desolate sounds. Typical of the genre is the tempo increase midway through the track, giving a sharp burst of energy before slipping back into the languishing swampy sound.
Down – Stone the Crow
The arrival of metal into the New Orleans scene was not just a testament to the influence played by recorded music and the medium of radio, but also to the tendency of the musicians to travel outside their home cities or towns. Sludge metal is considered to be part of the Southern metal scene more so than the New Orleans metal scene and cross-contamination between bands of different cities played a huge role in the developing sound.
Phil Anselmo is probably best known as the vocalist for Texas metal band Pantera, but however bitter the fans of that band may be about the role played by Down in it’s downfall, this supergroup – featuring founding members also found in Crowbar’s line-up among other bands – created a sound that not only utilised the sludgy sounds of the South, but made hard rock accessible to those who felt metal was all loud guitars and screaming voices.
Unlike practically every other genre of music on this list, metal was the only one whose sound was largely formed and standardised by white people. Even the other white performers here were using textures and structures found in black music. Stone The Crow from Down’s debut album ‘NOLA’ is in a tempo somewhere between true grinding sludge and upbeat metal, but it’s melodic guitars and Anselmo’s alternation between screamy and normal singing reveal a leaning towards a genuine interest in melody.
Mia X – Good Girl Gone Bad
Hip-hop was born in New York in the 1970s and was picked up in Los Angeles in the late ’80s. If the South missed out on this growing phenomenon then New Orleans was even further down the chain of command. Almost completely isolated from the mainstream which was part of a coast-to-coast tug-of-war between the remnants of NWA and 2pac and the coming wave of New Yorkers comprising of Nas, Notorious BIG and the Wu Tang Clan, Master P set up No Limit Records in his home city.
The label never offered any real competition to those heavyweights in either popular or critical terms but it was at the forefront of hip-hop in the city and managed to enjoy a few successful years with a couple of platinum-selling hits and even managed to attract Snoop Dogg after his split with Death Row Records. In 1995 the label signed a number of local acts including Mia X.
The track Good Girl Gone Bad features more of the funk instrumentation that was a major influence on the hip-hop aesthetic than most of its mainstream contemporaries, who were leaning more towards sampling and distorting soul numbers at this time. Not unlike Irma Thomas before her, Mia X raps about the travails of a woman in a dire situation beyond her control, the kind of feminism that would die hard in the genre around the turn of the century.
Lil’ Wayne – Hustler Musik
New Orleans hip-hop finally broke through to the mainstream in impressive fashion with Lil’ Wayne who was signed to Cash Money Records at the age of nine. ‘Tha Carter III’ would go on to be a triple-platinum selling album, but before this he released ‘Tha Carter II’ in 2005 which featured the single Hustler Musik, a track he himself considers one of the best he’s done.
The funk and soul influences are obvious here too, but much like the self-fulfilling purpose of early New Orleans music, which lyrically didn’t explore many varying topics, Hustler Musik is a bravado-filled spiel typical of the genre. What makes it stand apart is Wayne’s masterful sense of rhythm, as much influenced by the New York rappers who came before him as by anything by the New Orleans jazzmen.
If Lil’ Wayne adds anything to the narrative of music in New Orleans it is a continuation of the idea that even now that the city has largely ceased creating the sounds that get the world dancing, when they inherit styles from outside the city limits they can still be just as successful and influential as the very best.
Wynton Marsalis – Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
Wynton Marsalis achieved a lot quite early on in his life. In his twenties he shared the stage with Miles Davis and by thirty-five he had become the only jazz musician to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his slavery jazz opera ‘Blood in the Fields’. These are facts of his life but they only partly describe the man, and some would say his achievements are more a testament to his personality than his musical ability.
In his autobiography Davis mentions being unsatisfied with Marsalis’ playing, forcing him off the stage at least twice. Marsalis is often criticised for the soullessness of his sound and his leanings are more towards the classical and the modern, where improvisation is not so much discouraged as forbidden. He is New Orleans born but a practitioner of the European tradition first and foremost.
With recordings covering old Jelly Roll and Thelonious Monk songs, interpretations of Haydn and Vivaldi and sounds varying from ragtime to modernist, Marsalis could be described as being more prolific than versatile. From his 1987 album ‘Carnaval’ this rendition of the old Irish ballad Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms reaches a level of sensitivity that teeters over the precipice of Disney-level sentimentalism, but it’s a finely formed piece of music that calls out to the concert halls of Europe more than the clubs and bars of his musical precedents.
Kermit Ruffins – Skokiaan
Without the worldwide renown of Wynton Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins is the true heir to New Orleans jazz, both musically and in terms of his lifestyle. He appears in ‘Treme’ as himself and when urged by Steve Zahn’s character to chat to Elvis Costello to try and better his position in life – “do you want to spend your life here playing trumpet, cooking barbecue and smoking weed?” – Kermit looks around in disbelief and says “sounds good to me”.
Ruffins co-founded the Rebirth Brass Band, all things considered probably the best of the modern New Orleans brass bands with songs that are both classic and modern like Feel Like Funkin’ It Up and Do Whatcha Wanna. He’s made a name for himself as well and besides the reputation for great music and atmosphere, his shows are famous for the barbecue cooking he does off-stage between performances.
With his group the Barbecue Swingers Ruffins has played at Vaughan’s Lounge every Thursday (give or take) since the early ’90s. His album ‘Live at Vaughan’s’ captures the atmosphere of a typical night in the French Quarter and his recording of the standard Skokiaan is a great introduction to the man. His style of trumpet playing is reminiscent of Louis Armstrong and while his voice isn’t as engaging as that great luminary his personality certainly is.
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – I’ll Fly Away
A funeral in New Orleans is not like a funeral in any other part of the world. The brass band tradition of ‘second lining’ – the musical section of a parade following the first line – is still alive and well in the city, and while they are a popular staple of the city’s everyday tradition their use at funerals are what makes them truly unique. On funeral days mourners march through the streets, but rather than marching in mournful processions they dance and sing in celebration of the life of the departed, waving handkerchiefs or parasols as they go.
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band first came together in the late ’70s when brass bands were losing popularity. Starting off as a means for young musicians to entertain themselves the band – without any clients to please – began to break away from traditional songs in rehearsals playing funk and bebop tunes. This departure from tradition led to the band finding a contemporary fan base and helped reinvigorate the traditional New Orleans jazz form.
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s album ‘Funeral For a Friend’ features a rendition of Alfred E. Brumely’s I’ll Fly Away, a more traditional variation on the brass band aesthetic which is incredibly diverse in its style of music. Currently the brass bands are the most popular acts in New Orleans whose sound is almost entirely derived from New Orleans tradition and that danceability is a large part of this.
Soul Rebels Brass Band – Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These
Where The Dirty Dozens began to incorporate the sounds that existed somewhere in the murky grey area between the birth of New Orleans jazz and the year 1980 into their own sound, the Soul Rebels have always had their ears tuned to the charts. Pop and hip-hop play prominent roles in their set up and for what they lack in soul they make up for in dancefloor-filling.
All the familiar textures are here; trumpet, sax, trombone, sousaphone, percussion, singing that borders on shouting, and this crossover appeal is a notable reason for their success. The fact that they are a New Orleans brass band in the classic sense, yet have a foot planted firmly in the pop charts means they have ended up playing onstage with the likes of Metallica, Snoop Dogg and Alabama Shakes yet are as likely to be found in their weekly residency in Upper New Orleans’ Le Bon Temps Roulé as on the stages of the world.
This rendition of Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams Are Made of These was what caught the attention of James Hetfield and co when the Soul Rebels performed on Later with Jools Holland. This led to them opening for the band’s four anniversary gigs in the Fillmore in San Francisco in 2011. The band’s crossover appeal is remarkable, and while they’ve not shown any signs of crossing into the mainstream themselves, they come about as close to breaking Bangs’ prediction, drawing the music-lovers of all genres together, as any of the acts on this list.
Frank Ocean – Thinkin Bout You
Proving New Orleans artists are still on the cutting edge of music over a hundred years after ragtime music rolled through the streets of the city and into the hearts of the world, Frank Ocean has had a profound impact on the ever-changing world of rhythm and blues. His 2012 debut album ‘Channel Orange’ was praised for its unusual song structures and spare electronic instrumentation and in both his influences (Marvin Gaye, R. Kelly) and his collaborations (Odd Future, Kanye West) he is every bit the modern city-hopping innovator.
Despite some controversy with The Eagles following Ocean’s liberal sampling of Hotel California from his debut EP ‘Nostalgia, Ultra’, ‘Channel Orange’ dispels any potential claims that he is just another hip-hop artist making his name sampling existing tracks. The album experiments with mid- to low-tempos and uses a rather cold electronic surface as a means of communicating his own personal brand of soul.
Thinkin Bout You features a simple electronic drum beat with keyboard sounds layered over, creating a rather inconspicuous backing track on its own. But Ocean’s lyrics and vocal melody use this spare surface like a plain canvas upon which his voice paints, leaping from rap-like verses to a soulful falsetto chorus, showcasing a kind of inventiveness that is typical of the album. Unlike the very best New Orleans artists Ocean barely references his hometown in his lyrics opting for personal revelations and poetics more common to music from outside the city limits.
All the innovation and tradition we saw in Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong still exist in New Orleans. The difference now is that it exists in many different forms. The Dixieland jazz bands who filled dancefloors across the city with trombones, banjos and clarinets are drowned out by metal guitars, by sousaphones and by electronic drumbeats. This type of change is inevitable but it’s a testament to the musical culture of the city of New Orleans that even though the sounds are different than they were a hundred years ago, the city’s artists still manage to place themselves at the forefront of whatever genre they choose to perform in.