Keeping the Beat on the Street Read Free

“Leroy Special” and several blues-based originals.
    None of these bands had that much work on the sparse second line circuit, but they generated a collective style that came to brilliant fruition with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Despite the various members’ modestly claiming that they didn’t really do anything new, the Dirty Dozen changed the whole thing. Their first album (which the members of Rebirth Brass Band call their “bible”) was titled My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now, originally a catchphrase used by the great black dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. The phrase had become a chant from the second line at Sunday parades, the band had made a song out of it, and it had become the anthem of the street. The distinctive thing about the title track is that, apart from a humorous run through the harmonies of “I Got Rhythm” a couple of times, the song has no chord changes—it’s a series of staccato riffs over a fixed bass figure and against a busy pushing rhythm from the snare. It was the precursor of what is now called “funk,” “street,” “urban,” or “simple” music by the musicians, who draw a distinction between “street” and “jazz” playing—the former has a much freer approach to harmony and relies extensively on “open” chords and blues scales from the horns. The faster urgency of modern dance rhythm is achieved by filling in the beat on both bass and snare drum and adding extra percussion in the form of cowbell and tambourine.
    Many of the clubs prefer “street” for dancing to, claiming that it has more soul and feeling—play them something with chord changes, and they stop dancing. Crucial to setting the groove is the bass horn “hook” on which street playing is based.
    Veteran tuba player Walter Payton, for many years the foundation of the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, recognized the skill of the younger players: “I think the young brass bass players are great,” he told me. “I admire what they’re doing, and I couldn’t play with the Soul Rebels or the Rebirth without extensive rehearsals. I mean, they have arrangements, and those bass players, they’re playing a part—they got a line that they’re playing. I’d need a written line, that’s the only way I could do it.” But the older generation often felt less than comfortable with the new sounds. As Tremé businessman Norman Smith observed,
    The dirges were very distinctive—maybe that was a characteristic of the musicians who played them. There was not this jubilant attitude that we see now. Today we see many of the hymns played up tempo, and so you have masses of people who come around to dance to the hymns. We know that these are uninformed people who don’t understand the real significance of what this is.
    The music today is distinctly different—it’s a lot faster and brighter and sharper; it’s a lot more rhythmic in terms of the street dancing today. Those old guys played a different type of music—it was deeply spiritual. It’s changed a lot. But then, we’re all living a little faster than we used to. Everything must change, and it sort of meets the needs of the time. 4
    There are bands who describe themselves as “strictly traditional,” whose approach to both harmony and repertoire is more conservative, notably the Algiers Brass Band and the Mahogany Brass Band. However, neither of these bands, by their own admission, do much work for the social and pleasure clubs, and the Algiers band in particular seems to be gravitating toward the French Quarter, the convention center, and work overseas. The most successful of the contemporary musicians are able to play in both “traditional” and “funk” styles.
    The rise of rap music and hip-hop; their infiltration into the New Orleans brass band scene; their prevailing ethos