Give Up the (NOLA) Funk!

For some time now, I've been wanting someone to call attention to the burgeoning funk scene in New Orleans. I didn't think that that someone was me because I don't live there, don't know where to see the bands, and have to stay on my toes to keep up with the latest releases. I also can't write with any great insight about the finger-popping bass techniques, minor chord progressions, and other trademarks of funk. On the other hand, I know what gets my head nodding and my feet tapping, so maybe I'm as qualified as anyone else.

New Orleans funk is a mad, cross-racial concoction of what one might think of as traditional funk rhythms augmented with R&B, rock, jazz, NOLA brass band, and even blues. The exact mix depends on the band, and each band appears to plunder merrily from whatever styles suit it. They're all different and they're all connected; the groups I've been listening to include Trombone Shorty, Galactic, New Orleans Nightcrawlers, Big Sam's Funky Nation, Groovesect, and Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk. The first four have all have recent releases that display the dazzling array of influences and emphases on NOLA funk.

Trombone Shorty's Backatown, arguably the strongest of the four, favors brief TNT blasts of music that run into each other and form a coherent whole. The 24-year trombonist and trumpeter is a formidable musician, and leads a powerful septet through a series of ensemble pieces that draw heavily on NOLA brass charts laid over a driving beat. Backatown is the most ambitious of these CDs, and meets its own high standards across the board.

Big Sam's Funky Nation holds court with King of the Party. This time around, the Nation is a stripped down quintet with a sound constructed around the soloing of Big Sam Williams on trombone and Takishi Shimmura on guitar. Of the four albums, King of the Party draws the most heavily on rock; it's unique NOLA flavor comes from the joyous, expansive nature of the improvising. Trust me, a centenarian in an Alaska rest home would get up and dance to this one.

I'm usually skeptical of albums with a roster of guest stars. It often hides weak material behind the neon, and half the time the guest material is recorded in a remote studio. But on ya-ka-may, Galactic takes advantage of the deep and wide river of New Orleans talent -- the album includes turns by Irma Thomas, Glen David Andrews, the Rebirth Brass Band, and sissy rapper Katey Red, among man others -- to unify the many strains of NOLA music around a percussive funk sound. Sprawling and always in danger of losing control, ya-ka-may in the end succeeds in offering a new way of listening to the NOLA music.

The New Orleans Nightcrawlers Slither Slice is at once the most traditional and the most eccentric of these offerings. The Nightcrawlers take the traditional brass band sound and explore blues, improvisatory jazz, and funk. In fact, that funky, second-line step is ever present regardless of what byway these guys explore.

This is a quick, incomplete summary of today's NOLA funk scene. You can download an excellent Dumpstaphunk live set from iTunes. Groovesect began as teaming of graduates from the Tulane and University of New Orleans music programs. Englishman Jon Cleary migrated to New Orleans and formed a jazz-funk ensemble featuring himself on piano and vocals. There have to be more, and some day I'll return to NOLA to personally explore this vitality of this scene. Until then, I listen to these albums and eagerly anticipate the next release...

It's Bobby's world...

It's also Corset Friday...

Sometimes, the good guys win...

Wordless Wednesday...

Don't miss these amazing Eyjafjalljokull photos...

Whatever happened to the Republican party?...

A small community park near the Fairgrounds...

Big Sam's Funky Nation is "Hard To Handle":

Masters At Work

Yesterday, I wrote about Roman Polanski's masterpiece, Chinatown. Watch this masterful scene shot in a single take. The camera pans, zooms, and draws back unobtrusively, allowing the movement of the actors (Jack Nicholson and John Huston) to magnetically pull the camera along with them. Polanski heightens the menace of Huston's character by keeping in him the center or leaning into the center while Nicholson comments from the left and looks up at Huston. By positioning the actors as unit slightly off center, he induces a gnawing sense of dislocation in the viewer.

As the scene builds, we become engrossed by Huston's deliberate speech and sinister manner. The subdued peripheral lighting helps illuminate Huston's already bright white shirt; the shirt becomes a means of ensuring that our concentration is complete when he utters the chilling words that "...most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of...anything." The line, of course, is completely at odds the purity of the color white, unnerving the viewer even more. This is superb filmmaking by a major artist at the height of his powers...

Tonight's Mardi Gras parade schedule (with links to fab pix) here...

Friday's Choice: Big Sam's Funky Nation rocks out Voodoo Fest:

Wish I Was In New Orleans...

...sittin' on a candy stand. Thanks to the New Orleans News Ladder for inspiring today's blog!

If you lived in New Orleans, you could start out the morning at the Treme Creole Gumbo Festival and end up tonight on the 3rd annual Very Bad Santa Crawl. Not enough music from John Boutte, Paul Sanchez, and the Treme Brass Band? No prob -- head over to Tipitina's for the Cajun Zydeco Dance Festival.  

If you have Christmas shopping left undone, the Colton School's Holiday Affordable Art Bazaar has what you're looking for. 

To finish up your evening with a little dancing, leave the Santa Crawl for the Mid-City Lanes Rock'n'Bowl, where Big Sam's Funky Nation will hold court. Or if you'd rather hear some world class jazz, you can take the ferry to Algiers for Delfeayo Marsalis' 7 p.m. set at the Old Point and get back in plenty of time for the back end of the Santa Crawl. Le bon ton roulez indeed!...

The Treme Brass Band shows off the art of resistance, supporting a sit-in at St. Augustine's church. The church of the oldest black Catholic parish in the nation was slated for demolition until protesting parishioners successfully intervened.

Stick With Jesus

Premium T. and I went to Portland this weekend and caught New Orleans' own Big Sam's Funky Nation at the Roseland Grill. Big Sam travels light, so we got a stripped-down version of the Nation, featuring drums, bass, guitar, organ, and Big Sam on trombone, vocals, moves, and exhortations. If the video below is any indicator, Louisianans get all this plus sax, trumpet, and a couple of percussionists, but no matter: Big Sam had everyone in Roseland on their feet boogie-ing for his hour-long set. 

This included the seventy-something couple next to us. She must have dropped a hit of Ecstasy, as she was not only one of the more uninhibited dancers, she plopped herself down on his lap for a make-out session. At that point, he got up and began to dance himself. See Big Sam by all means, but be prepared for anything!..

T-shirt slogan of the day: The King And I/Stick With Jesus...

No trip to Portland is complete without a pilgrimage to Powell's, but it was on the four-block walk there that we stumbled across a bibliophile's dream: Reading Frenzy, which describes itself as "an independent press emporium." Reading Frenzy is the polar opposite of Powell's acres o' books. It's a small storefront with inventory in the low three figures, all from independent presses or self-published. While Reading Frenzy's strong suit is graphic novels, it offered a nice selection of local poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and some interesting art books. 

It was the latter that led me to the rediscovery of Jim Flora. Chances are that if are of a certain age -- such as mine -- you know Flora's work without knowing his name. You've seen it on record albums that belonged to your parents or the parents of your friends. You saw it on book covers or in magazines like Parade and Fortune. Flora's whimsical adaptation of Picasso took on a life of its own and today is the very image of the retro aesthetic. Fantagraphics Books of Seattle has now published two excellent retrospectives of Flora's work, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora and The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora. Together, they comprise a fascinating and fun look at Flora's commercial and fine art...

Elizabeth Colbert explores the crooked paths now taken by John McCain's so-called "Straight Talk Express." She also points out a couple of unpleasant truths: That offshore drilling won't do much to alleviate gas prices and that for the purposes of both energy independence and an appropriate American response to global warming, gas prices aren't high enough. Her basis is a simple mathematical reality that Americans have a great deal of trouble accepting, much less confronting and acting upon it: That 5% of the world's population (us) accounts for 25% of the world's oil consumption. In this light, drilling offshore in the interests of energy independence makes about as much sense as building roads to reduce traffic. The plain fact is that we have to use less oil, not more...

Even oilman T. Boone Pickens has gotten on the alternative energy bandwagon (wind farming, in this case). I'm naturally skeptical of T. Boone Pickens evangelizing anything that isn't good for T. Boone Pickens, but on the other hand we're kidding ourselves if we think these things can come to market in a meaningful way without someone making a bundle on them. Premium T. and I saw wind farms at work last month while driving across Donegal. They're not the best thing that's ever happened to the beauty of Donegal's landscape, but on the other hand, we couldn't help but think of the potential economic benefits to one of Ireland's less well-off counties. And if there's one thing Donegal has aplenty, it's wind...

Yesterday, we had breakfast at the condo of some Portland friends. They live in a development that gets much of its energy from other buildings in the area. For example, the air conditioning is powered by the excess cooling generated by the refrigeration units at the nearby Whole Foods...

Big Sam's Funky Nation Voodoo Festival:

Back To Louisiana

As previously mentioned, the recent trip to New Orleans included a wallet-crushing visit to the Louisiana Music Factory. The Factory is part of an amazingly vital music scene, all the more so since Katrina drove so many musicians away from the Crescent City. Everything I review here is a new release; hopefully, it provides a hint of the breadth and depth contemporary Louisiana music.

Exit To Mystery Street, Paul Sanchez. Currently No. 1 on the Citizen K. hit parade! A contagious blend of party rockers ("Hoob-a-Joob" is destined to be a New Orleans classic) and ballads of layered intent, Mystery Street is the New Orleans experience writ large: Enjoy life as it is, because it can come to an end at any time. In Sanchez' New Orleans, brass band musicians and Dixieland horns keep the feet tapping from the onset, a Mexican drinking song appears out of nowhere, then a contemplative trumpet and an acoustic guitar engage the emotions. And when he sings with apparent insouciance that "I don't care who knows/I love you from your head to your toes," he's talking about the great city itself. A wonderful CD from beginning to end. Highly recommended.


La Louisiana Sessions, Roddie Romero And The Hub City All-Stars. Think of a zydeco version of Los Lobos. Roddie Romero hasn't reached those exalted heights yet, but the ambition is there in this 2-CD set of trad, rock, blues, and R&B delivered with a Cajun flavor. The bands jumps nimbly and energetically from one tune to the next, unified by Romero's accordion and slide guitar.


If Dreams Come True, Ann Savoy & Her Sleepless Knights. Savoy sets zydeco aside for this engaging set of Parisian bistro jazz. She and her light-fingered quartet breath new life into familiar tunes by Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, Rodger and Hart, and Jerom Kern, among others. Bewitching, yes, but hardly bothersome or bewildering: When Savoy sings "Reaching For The Moon," she finds its ephemeral light.


Good Neighbor, John Boutte. One of New Orleans' premier jazz vocalists, Boutte show-stopping performance of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" at the 2006 JazzFest updated the lyrics of the song that has become the unofficial anthem of post-Katrina New Orleans. Good Neighbor comprises covers of Neil Young and Johnny Mercer, plus 11 original songs written by Boutte and Paul Sanchez (who produced the album at the same time he recorded and produced Mystery Street). The originals include the title track, which revives a New Orleans tradition: The jazz booty-call song. Sanchez favors light arrangement supported by Todd Duke's acoustic guitar and Herlin Riley's percussion. And, really, that's all Boutte's beautiful tenor requires.


Cedric Watson, Cedric Watson. Fiddler, accordianist, and vocalist Watson brings a subtle African-American touch to traditional Cajun music. While there's nothing overt, the CD's fifteen original and trad numbers have a bit more swing here, a touch of blues there, and dabs of soul all over. The 23-year old Watson shows terrific talent, so much that you can't help but look forward to his future.


Peace, Love, & Understanding, Big Sam's Funky Nation. Big Sam, the former trombonist for The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, leads the Funky Nation through a whirlwind set of brass band jazz-funk fusion. The core group driven by Alvin Ford Jr.'s drumming powers through eight instrumentals featuring excellent solos and ensemble work before guest vocalists like Ivan Neville join them for the closing four rave-ups. These guys must put on an awesome live show, but this will do just fine until I can see them.