new orleans war on music

[alocispepraluger102]

http://www.vice.com/read/neither-big-nor-easy-new-orleanss-war-on-music

"While running for mayor of New Orleans, Landrieu continued to pay lip service to the cultural economy, and when he was elected in 2010, he created the Office of Cultural Economy. But his policies are playing out differently than the arts community imagined they would. Soon, his administration began to enforce many previously-ignored law, which helped to kill off nightclubs like jazz staple the Funky Butt and Donna’s brass band club, both on Rampart Street in the French Quarter. Landrieu also moved to decrease the presence of traditional brass bands in the French Quarter and on Frenchmen Street. The city made the Circle Bar—which had harbored “illegal” music since 1999—cease live entertainment for months while it acquired the correct permits, then went after Bacchanal, a popular outdoor jazz spot. One night during peak business hours, Bacchanal was invaded by NOPD’s Quality of Life officers, the Fire Department, and the Department of Health. Shit got so intense that Mimi’s in the Marigny (which had hosted “illegal” music seven nights a week since Katrina) voluntarily halted its bands and DJs."

Edited April 7, 2013 by alocispepraluger102

[papsrus]

Interesting article. A little long on whining and short on input and detail from actual club owners, musicians, patrons, cultural groups, city officials, etc. Basically it's the writer saying, "Here's what's going on. Trust me."

For instance, talking about mayor Mitch Landrieu, the author says: "Soon, his administration began to enforce many previously-ignored law, which helped to kill off nightclubs like jazz staple the Funky Butt and Donna’s brass band club, both on Rampart Street in the French Quarter."

A kind of vague and sweeping accusation that may or may not hold some truth. Jeff might know more about this, but I think Donna's closed primarily because the owners simply wanted to retire. Health issues, I believe, were the primary reason, not the enforcement of onerous regulations.

The article talks about a hearing at which the club St. Roch was fined $10,000 (an enormous amount, seems like) for some violations having to do with permits and because tourists were pissing in the street. The article states: "At the hearing's end, St. Roch employees were ordered not to disparage the plaintiffs on social media, under penalty of law."

I found this astonishing. Unless I'm misreading things, the "plaintiff" is the city. So St. Roch employees are being ordered not to disparage their city government on social media? Under penalty of which law, exactly?

Edited April 7, 2013 by papsrus

[Scott Dolan]

That would be a definitive First Amendment violation if true.

[seeline]

I did a search on the author - Michael Patrick Welch. He's a local musician and has written a book on NOLA.

Whether that does (or does not) have anything to do with the accuracy of the article, well...

I wonder what would show up via the NOLA newspapers (online) re. these issues?

Edited April 7, 2013 by seeline

[jeffcrom]

Well, there is something of a "war on music" going on in New Orleans right now - led, as far as I can tell, by residents who moved into neighborhoods that already had bars with music.

But, yeah - the article is kind of over the top. The closing of Donna's and the Funky Butt had more to do with landlord issues (both buildings were owned by the same person), exacerbated in the former case by Charlie's (Donna's husband) health and in the latter case by Katrina. The link in the article refers to a short-lived attempt to revive Donna's (which I was not even aware of). It sounds like the new owners were not the good neighbors that Donna and Charlie were.

But it's a real issue down there - gentrification is not always a good thing.

[JSngry]

gentrification is not always a good thing.

I don't know that I've ever seen it be good, at least not in the sense of solving anything vs. just relocating it. Dallas has had this going on for several decades now, and no, not good.

[PHILLYQ]

gentrification is not always a good thing.

I don't know that I've ever seen it be good, at least not in the sense of solving anything vs. just relocating it. Dallas has had this going on for several decades now, and no, not good.Brooklyn, too, with lifelong residents displaced for hipsters with lots of $$

[JSngry]

This is one of the biggest cultural fucks I've ever seen in real time, and it's been going on in some form or fashion for about 30 years now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown,_Dallas

This is particularly galling:

All that remains of Freedmen's Town is the Freedmen's Cemetery, which gained national recognition when Central Expressway reconstruction revealed over 1,100 graves beneath existing and proposed roadways.

What they don't tell you is that there was a bit of, shall we say, disagreement over what to do about that. It was a not particularly pretty disagreement, either....

[John Litweiler]

Gentrification is what drove jazz musicians out of Manhattan.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Gentrification is what drove jazz musicians out of Manhattan.

I think I've just got to ask, does it matter where jazz musicians live? Does it matter where folk singers live? Or first trombonists in symphony orchestras? Or rock guitarists? Or systems analysts? Or bus drivers?

MG

[robertoart]

Gentrification is what drove jazz musicians out of Manhattan.

I think I've just got to ask, does it matter where jazz musicians live? Does it matter where folk singers live? Or first trombonists in symphony orchestras? Or rock guitarists? Or systems analysts? Or bus drivers?

MG

i think it is important that bus drivers live close to their depot. I don't want my bus to be late.

[papsrus]

Gentrification is what drove jazz musicians out of Manhattan.

I think I've just got to ask, does it matter where jazz musicians live? Does it matter where folk singers live? Or first trombonists in symphony orchestras? Or rock guitarists? Or systems analysts? Or bus drivers?

MG

It may.

When a group of artists/musicians/deli owners living in a community is displaced and dispersed, they don't collectively relocate and continue their community in another location. They are gradually displaced one by one. Their connections are severed, to some degree -- maybe entirely. They no longer share a community, bump into one another at the deli and make those continuous random connections that communities generate.

Instead of bumping into that bass player at the coffee shop who you jammed with a few months ago and saying, "Hey, I need a bass player for my set next week at Club X," you're bumping into stock analysts and physicians -- so you end up with a more risky retirement plan and some new medications to try.

Which in the end, may not be an entirely bad thing for you (the collective 'you'), but not so good for the bass player.

[JSngry]

Never underestimate the impact of just randomly hanging out with your neighbors.

[Blue Train]

gentrification is not always a good thing.

I don't know that I've ever seen it be good, at least not in the sense of solving anything vs. just relocating it. Dallas has had this going on for several decades now, and no, not good. Brooklyn, too, with lifelong residents displaced for hipsters with lots of $$

It's spreading deeper into Brooklyn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/realestate/moving-deeper-into-brooklyn-for-lower-home-prices.html?pagewanted=all

A pretty interesting map.

http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps?map=nyc2&x=0.5316666666666666&y=0.6848333333333333&zoom=1&basemap=bknhincrease&tab=themes&ll=40.627135894237,-73.9436368646481

Edited April 8, 2013 by Blue Train

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Gentrification is what drove jazz musicians out of Manhattan.

I think I've just got to ask, does it matter where jazz musicians live? Does it matter where folk singers live? Or first trombonists in symphony orchestras? Or rock guitarists? Or systems analysts? Or bus drivers?

MG

It may.

When a group of artists/musicians/deli owners living in a community is displaced and dispersed, they don't collectively relocate and continue their community in another location. They are gradually displaced one by one. Their connections are severed, to some degree -- maybe entirely. They no longer share a community, bump into one another at the deli and make those continuous random connections that communities generate.

Instead of bumping into that bass player at the coffee shop who you jammed with a few months ago and saying, "Hey, I need a bass player for my set next week at Club X," you're bumping into stock analysts and physicians -- so you end up with a more risky retirement plan and some new medications to try.

Which in the end, may not be an entirely bad thing for you (the collective 'you'), but not so good for the bass player.

You're right, but when people are displaced - yes, one by one - they often tend to wind up in places where they already have friends, or at least know some people.

MG

[John Litweiler]

I was thinking of the apparent decline of the number of jazz venues in Manhattan, which a very fine musician recently called The Rotten Apple.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I was thinking of the apparent decline of the number of jazz venues in Manhattan, which a very fine musician recently called The Rotten Apple.

That's a very interesting point, and isn't what I thought you were talking about.

I raised the issue of the effect of land use policy on music a few years ago.

I didn't really get any clear relationships between land use planning and jazz from the books recommended about KC and St Louis (the other not available in the UK library system). But I'm still interested in the impact that land use makes on jazz (or any other kind of music).

The only kind of thing I've been able to find where there was a definite effect was in the decline of soul jazz and the organ rooms in the seventies. It was, of course, complex, but land use played an important part in several ways:

• population shift out of the ghetto to the suburbs reduced the numbers of potential customers for organ rooms;
• common to all the western world, the shift of manufacturing industry from city centres to peripheral sites reduced employment opportunities for the less skilled in the ghettos and consequently impoverished those areas somewhat;
• the development of Disco music (which many soul jazz musicians made good money out of recording) brought discotheques into being which competed with the organ rooms;
• Blaxploitation films also competed with the organ rooms, for spare entertainment money (at this time, the black audience was the only part of the cinema audience that was growing);
• R&B objectives (always important in the development of soul jazz) shifted with the development of Hip Hop in a way that jazz musicians could not (or didn't wish to) match;
• Specifically in Newark, Kenneth Gibson, elected Mayor of Newark in 1970 on a reform ticket to deal with a number of what Bob Porter (in the sleeve notes to Lou Donaldson's 'The scorpion') describes as ‘peripheral activities that made the Newark jazz scene possible’.

In land use terms, the more prosperous residents of inner cities were able to leave - an effect of the civil rights struggle, of course - and the less prosperous were earning even less money because manufacturing was also moving out.

Of course, the organ rooms were mainly patronised by the local black population. The jazz clubs you're talking about were (I guess) mainly patronised by whites and tourists. As jazz has declined as a popular medium of entertainment, it seems to me that jazz clubs have simply become less economically viable. It would be interesting to me to know how the gentrification issue has impacted and why.

MG

[papsrus]

Going back further, there was also Storyville, of course. Not a gradual process of gentrification, but rather a more direct crackdown. It seems the decline of the district still took about a decade or more nonetheless.

And it was the military that wanted Storyville shut down, not the city government of New Orleans.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Going back further, there was also Storyville, of course. Not a gradual process of gentrification, but rather a more direct crackdown. It seems the decline of the district still took about a decade or more nonetheless.

And it was the military that wanted Storyville shut down, not the city government of New Orleans.

Yes, I'm not well up on this but I've heard that this was the impetus for spreading jazz musicians all across the USA, and what followed from that.

MG

[papsrus]

Going back further, there was also Storyville, of course. Not a gradual process of gentrification, but rather a more direct crackdown. It seems the decline of the district still took about a decade or more nonetheless.

And it was the military that wanted Storyville shut down, not the city government of New Orleans.

Yes, I'm not well up on this but I've heard that this was the impetus for spreading jazz musicians all across the USA, and what followed from that.

MG

I enthusiastically endorse the forced dispersion of all artists (and prostitutes, possibly deli owners) from any area where they become too concentrated!

[JSngry]

The line I've always heard was that the Navy but the kibosh on Storyville because of all the VD. That may or may not have been just a "cover"? Or at least a "convenient excuse"?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The line I've always heard was that the Navy but the kibosh on Storyville because of all the VD. That may or may not have been just a "cover"? Or at least a "convenient excuse"?

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter what the reason for it was; from the point of view of jazz history, what it led to is the important point, isn't it?

MG

[jeffcrom]

The line I've always heard was that the Navy but the kibosh on Storyville because of all the VD. That may or may not have been just a "cover"? Or at least a "convenient excuse"?

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter what the reason for it was; from the point of view of jazz history, what it led to is the important point, isn't it?

MG

A timeline from the book Storyville, New Orleans by Al Rose (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting directly):

August, 1917: Open prostitution is banned within five miles of any US army or navy installation. A representative of the War and Navy departments tours Storyville and orders Mayor Martin Behrman to close it.

September 10: Behrman travels to Washington to protest the ruling, without results.

September 24: Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels sends a message to Behrman: "You close the red-light district or the armed forces will."

October 2: Behrman presents an ordinance to close The District to the City Council.

October 9: The ordinance passes, to take effect at midnight, November 12.

November 11: Madame Gertrude Dix's request for an injunction blocking the ordinance is rejected by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

November 12: Storyville closes, although most of the houses are already closed, and a few madames pay off the police and continue to operate for a time.

I think that the notion of a single event scattering New Orleans musicians to other cities is exaggerated, although the closure of The District probably convinced some musicians that it was time to leave. The houses themselves employed piano players (and occasionally string players), not jazz bands. The many bars in The District gave employment to jazz musicians, but there were still plenty of bars and dance halls in the city.

The main reason musicians left New Orleans was money. The cost of living was low in New Orleans, and, then as now, there was an over-abundance of musicians, so wages were low. Word got out that a musician could make far more in California or Chicago, so musicians went where the money was. Of course, life was attractive enough in New Orleans that plenty of good musicians stayed - the myth that all the good players left and only the inferior one stayed doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. The unrecorded Buddy Petit and Chris Kelly were considered by many to rival Louis Armstrong and King Oliver in ability, for instance.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The line I've always heard was that the Navy but the kibosh on Storyville because of all the VD. That may or may not have been just a "cover"? Or at least a "convenient excuse"?

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter what the reason for it was; from the point of view of jazz history, what it led to is the important point, isn't it?

MG

A timeline from the book Storyville, New Orleans by Al Rose (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting directly):

August, 1917: Open prostitution is banned within five miles of any US army or navy installation. A representative of the War and Navy departments tours Storyville and orders Mayor Martin Behrman to close it.

September 10: Behrman travels to Washington to protest the ruling, without results.

September 24: Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels sends a message to Behrman: "You close the red-light district or the armed forces will."

October 2: Behrman presents an ordinance to close The District to the City Council.

October 9: The ordinance passes, to take effect at midnight, November 12.

November 11: Madame Gertrude Dix's request for an injunction blocking the ordinance is rejected by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

November 12: Storyville closes, although most of the houses are already closed, and a few madames pay off the police and continue to operate for a time.

I think that the notion of a single event scattering New Orleans musicians to other cities is exaggerated, although the closure of The District probably convinced some musicians that it was time to leave. The houses themselves employed piano players (and occasionally string players), not jazz bands. The many bars in The District gave employment to jazz musicians, but there were still plenty of bars and dance halls in the city.

The main reason musicians left New Orleans was money. The cost of living was low in New Orleans, and, then as now, there was an over-abundance of musicians, so wages were low. Word got out that a musician could make far more in California or Chicago, so musicians went where the money was. Of course, life was attractive enough in New Orleans that plenty of good musicians stayed - the myth that all the good players left and only the inferior one stayed doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. The unrecorded Buddy Petit and Chris Kelly were considered by many to rival Louis Armstrong and King Oliver in ability, for instance.

Ah, that's interesting, thanks Jeff.

MG