A week ago, you never would have guessed that Jazzfest would happen. Sure, there were billboards advertising the event with the tagline The Healing Power of Music, but billboards advertise lots of things which are not true: businesses which have closed, politicians who never get to lead, products that never quite live up to their five-foot-tall representation.
Bob and I don’t live far from the Fairgrounds, where Jazzfest splays itself out onto several music stages, dozens of food counters, and numerous tents of artists selling their wares. Maybe inside the Fairgrounds, they were ready. But outside the Fairgrounds, where people swarm the streets and porches after the music stops, it was a dead zone. Walking our dogs, we had to tug them away from curbside trash every few yards. Flood lines ran along the houses, many of which seemed abandoned. Few cars went by. It was hot and silent, and our ears filled with the sound of our two panting dogs.
What a difference a few days make. The city must have hired gnomes (who are, after all, even cheaper than Hispanic labor) to collect the trash and sweep the sidewalks in the dead of night. Liuzza’s By The Track, the bar at ground zero of post-Fest loitering, set up their tents outside. Children with lemonade stands and other ad hoc vendors with coolers were ready on Friday morning when the festival opened. It all looked so normal—in our charmingly abnormal way—that several passers-by were surprised to see that the coffee shop wasn’t fully open for business.
The Fair Grinds, purveyor of free-trade coffee as well as local art, had taken water in the flood and is in the middle of an ambitious renovation project. Without the approval of the health department, they couldn’t open to sell coffee. But they could open to give coffee away, which they’ve been doing since before we returned in late October. They’ve got free wireless internet, too, which has saved me many a time. Most importantly, they’ve served as a non-alcoholic neighborhood center, where friends can touch base with friends and get the most local news around. I can’t say enough good things about Elizabeth and Robert, the proprietors, who run the shop and serve as ersatz parents to the community.
For Jazzfest, Elizabeth and Robert let me display and sell my hats in front of their shop. Better yet, they had allowed a sponsor (
www.neworleans.com) to provide free iced coffee to passersby in hopes that they would sign up for their mailing list. I spent most of the weekend there, hopped up on the free caffeine, luring Jazzfesters with the promise of coffee and hoping they would buy my hats.
In my imagination, sales were great! I couldn’t walk five feet at Jazzfest without spotting one of my satisfied customers wearing their new hat. In real life, sales were not quite as good. Let me just say that I almost picked up the classifieds to look for a job. For as many people who stopped to enjoy free iced coffee, there were ten times as many who didn’t pass the shop, or who strode by too fast to notice the goings-on.
One can learn so much from real life. For example, I learned that many people just don’t like hats. I guess I already knew that, but in my millinery zeal, I assumed that everyone else would magically absorb my hat-madness. I also learned that most people interested in wearing a hat to Jazzfest already have a hat as they walk toward the gate. Fascinating! I also learned some less obvious things, too. Most college-aged women ready to party want cowboy hats, a different style than the straw gambler hats I’d decorated. Also, on a windy day, the importance of having a way to tie the hat onto the head is inestimable. The sun is a hat artist’s best friend, for only the sun can really sell a hat. But alcohol helps, too. (Alcohol is responsible for my happy ending, where I put my hats in a big box, take them to the drunken crowd at Liuzza’s, and finally make a few bucks.)
Spiritually, it was a good experience for me to sit still at the Fair Grinds while the chaos unfurled around me. I got to sit and chat with people I’d seen around for months, for years, but never made the time for. Susan with the little Pomeranian. Peter the grouchy ne’er-do-well with an art-school background. And dozens of people whose names escape me, as I introduced myself to at least ten thousand people in the past three days. But one can only sit for so long, especially if one is Miss Amanda, while the crowd disperses in the direction of a festival. Then the air becomes heavy and the feet start to itch, an itch which only dancing can cure.
When I got inside the Fairgrounds, I was shocked at how familiar everything appeared. It didn’t look like the place had been flooded like the rest of the city, which it had; nor did it look like the Grandstand roof had been ripped off during the hurricane, which it also had. In the maelstrom of the media’s Katrina coverage, the clips of the Fairgrounds were the closest thing we had to gauge the destruction at our house, less than a mile away. But here I stood, on the grounds nine months later, and it seemed as if the vendors and decorations and the stages and the food had all been there since last year’s Jazzfest, had sat dryly and politely through the monster storm and were ready to be enjoyed again. To most people, including my out-of-town guests who had grumbled about the consolidation of some stages, I suppose the Fest seemed quite different. The Blues Tent was gone, replaced by a stage at the east side of the grounds, and there weren’t any Thursday Jazzfest days. Oh, and the ticket price had gone up, too, just like everything else in the city. It was tempting to lash out at complainers, to scream at them: “Do you know how unbelievably lucky we all are to have a Jazzfest at all? Do you know how hard it is to do anything here, let alone pull off this giant event?” But fortunately, I’d realized that people’s complaints were their way of grieving, their way of coping with the many changes here in New Orleans, so I quietly let them vent.
Because the Fest seemed so normal, my own grief took me by surprise. But first we had a rollicking time with Eddie Bo at the Fais-Do-Do stage. For you northerners, the Cajun phrase Fais-Do-Do roughly translates to Get up and Dance, which I did with my new friend Django, a five-month old baby who loves swaying to the music almost as much as sucking on my finger. We left the set early, though, to make our pilgrimage to the Jazz Tent to hear Herbie Hancock play.
Now I am not a big jazz person. I enjoy the masters, Miles and T. Monk and those guys, but contemporary jazz leaves me cold. Herbie, though, that cat lodged himself in my young head from the time when I first heard “Rockit” on a 33-rpm album. It was down in Barbara Klein’s basement dance studio, where I briefly studied jazz dancing, and that tune lodged like a bullet in my brain. Which is to say that it changed me forever. To this day, the mere mention of Herbie Hancock sends me into a “Rockit” trance, and I will hum that tune for hours. (To get your Herbie on, go to
http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/hancock_herbie/artist.jhtml where you can actually watch the Rockit video! Vintage fun!)
Like any pilgrimage, ours was fraught with difficulty. The Jazz Tent was absolutely full, and the ushers weren’t letting anyone block the aisles. Bob and I squished ourselves down on a tiny spot next to the aisle, hoping not to get kicked out. We sat, cramped, for a good twenty, thirty minutes, watching the ushers escort people out as new people filed in.
I decided to call my friend Laurel, who had lived in New Orleans but moved to Austin after riding out Katrina amongst the looting and the chaos. It was her birthday, but she was stuck in Texas instead of being at the Fest where she belonged. Although I couldn’t hear her above the din, I shouted into my cell phone that she should stay on the line to hear Herbie play. It wasn’t the same as being there live, but it was the best I could do.
He began. As his fingers struck the keyboard, I felt it in the pit between my heart and my stomach. You know that place, the spot where deep fear and great love resound. My mouth began to water, and then the tears came. All the grief I lock inside—grief for Laurel being so far away, grief for the devastated world around me, grief for the dead, grief for the living—all of that grief gushed out of me. I bent forward with my head down, like a child trying to hide.
When all the grief had poured out of me, I cried new tears of joy. Laurel had hung up, but I still felt her there. She was there among us, all of us who had been through the worst but still showed up to the Fest, ready to be happy again. What an amazing place to live in, New Orleans, Louisiana, which could experience warlike devastation and still bring in Herbie Hancock to a packed house less than a year later. He’d segued into “Watermelon Man,” known forever in my mind as “Biddy Biddy Bop,” thanks to some pop group who’d covered him with those lyrics. (If you remember who that group was, please contact me immediately. It’s killing me!) Having Herbie there to play for us, evoking such grief and joy within me, was nothing short of a triumph.
Jazzfest is a palace of triumphs. I could type for hours and still not scrape the surface of it. Back at the Fest on Sunday, I witnessed more miracles. In the Gospel Tent, The Mighty Chariots of Fire lead vocalist shared the mike with a young boy, maybe eight years old. “Holy,” they each sang in turn, daring the other to sing it louder until the whole place shook. At Economy Hall, Walter Payton & Gumbo Filé played “Shout!” at top volume, and strangers danced together in an fever. Trombone Shorty’s trumpet screamed from the Jazz Tent, holding one note until jaws dropped and heads got scratched, wondering how such a small guy could hold so much lung.
I ended up in the field of thousands of fans waiting to hear The Boss play on the Acura Stage. It was nearly too much to bear—not only the immense crowd, but the music itself. Playing with the Seeger Sessions Band, the Springsteen sound of the day was folky bluegrass with a Celtic flavoring. The Boss sang about John Henry and Jesse James and about the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. It matched the mud on the ground and the mud in our hearts. He spoke about visiting the 9th Ward, home to the worst destruction, and criticized “President Bystander” before launching into “How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live.” Nearby, a woman sobbed into her friend’s arms.
Later I heard that Springsteen went on to play more emotional tunes, such as “My City of Ruins,” and a somber “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I wish I could have been there to hear it, to feel it, to taste my own tears again. But I had to leave. I had hats to sell.
