Chris Bickford

Spike Lee is back, with more tales from the ravaged Gulf Coast.

His documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts“ aired in 2006 on HBO and remains to this day one of the most thorough, personal, and powerful records of how Hurricane Katrina directly impacted the lives of the people of New Orleans.   A 4-hour tour-de-force composed of interviews, disaster footage, and reportage of families who were dealing with loss, displacement, government ineptitude and apathy, and just plain shock, “Levees” unveiled stories and information that not even the US government was aware of.  But most importantly, as Spike says when talking about the movie, it allowed the people of New Orleans to tell their stories to the world.

Spike vowed to do a follow-up to the story five years after the disaster, and true to his word, he and his crew have spent the last couple of months filming around the Gulf Coast, interviewing displaced New Orleanians as well as those who have returned home, following the Saints’ victory march to the Super Bowl and the resultant high that the city is still coasting on…He has also probed into the rise of the charter school movement in New Orleans and the state of the reconstruction efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward and elsewhere.  The news is not all good, and I’m sure we can expect that Spike won’t pull any punches in his new film, but there is hope in the air here, and it’s impossible not to smell it.  The new documentary, entitled If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, will no doubt be equal parts hope, despair, frustration, and surprise.

As luck would have it, Fede and I were in the Lower Ninth having a peaceful-but-somber afternoon photographing abandoned houses on the day that Spike and Company were shooting their final wrap scene for the film.  I have to give credit to Fede for sniffing out the lead, as I was content to be shooting far from the maddening crowd of Sunday tour buses coming to gawk at Brad Pitt’s space-age Make it Right houses and get the “Katrina Disaster Tour”…But she wanted to shoot the new houses as part of her own personal project, and as a shiny red Ferrari rolled past, she followed it to the heart of the action, up by the levee, where a film crew, members of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the Baby Dolls, local volunteers, and neighborhood residents, were all gathered for a parting shot from New Orleans.   The Baby Boyz brass band was standing by the levee blasting out the Saints’ fight song, and a few of the Common Ground volunteers were sitting on top of the levee, along with two volunteers waving New Orleans flags. Folks were gathered in front of them, on the grassy slope that leads up to the levee, in preparation for a shot that would have them all dancing and waving their hands in the air and singing the “Who Dat” chant along with the Baby Boyz’ music.

We whipped out the press pass and started wandering around asking questions, photographing the action, and just generally being a part of it all.  There were a lot of spectators and it was difficult on some level to tell who was who, as it was a very mixed crowd, with lots of Saints’ Jerseys, parasols, big cameras, and badges and credentials, as well as a lot of folks with pocket cameras trying to grab pics of Spike, or pics of the spectacularly sexy Baby Dolls decked out in their full glory.   At some point, after getting the shot he had planned, Spike turned to the crowd of gawkers and said “Okay, everybody, get on in!  Now’s your chance, come on and get in the picture!”

So, joining the somewhat confused but elated group of bystanders, we slipped right into the middle of the crowd and, on cue with the “dat, dat da-dat” of the Baby Boys, started waving our hands in the air, shouting, “Who Dat!  Who Dat! Who Dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints!”  I slid around the crowd snapping photos as I chanted along, and ended up at the opposite end from where I started, waving my left hand in the air holding my flash.   If any of that footage ends up in the final cut, you may see my flash going off here and there.  Sorry about that, Spike.  Couldn’t help myself.   Dem Baby Dolls was just too damn fine…

If God is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise will air on HBO on August 28, 2010 (or thereabouts), on the 5th anniversary of Katrina.  Mark your calendar.  You’ll probably be surprised and somewhat shocked at how little progress has been made in terms of reconstruction and preparation for future disasters, and yet on the other hand, if Spike does it right, you’ll get a sense of the budding hope, optimism, and new ideas that have arisen from the disaster which will, with any luck–keep your fingers crossed–re-invigorate this most treasured and troubled city in America.

Please click on the thumbnails below to see full-sized photos in slideshow format.  “Forward” and “Back” buttons are located at the bottom.

St. Patrick’s Day, New Orleans

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I tell ye, the Irish never get their due.  Here in New Orleans, it’s all about the French, the Spanish, the Creoles, the Haitians, the Senegambians and Congolese, and the “Americans”–by which they mean the Protestant folk who come down from Virginia and Carolina and “Kaintuck” after the Louisiana Purchase and eventually became the bastions of old-line “uptown” society.  Ye’d hardly know, if ye didn’t know, that the Irish have had more than a wee presence in New Orleans since the 1700’s, and that during the famine years of the early-to-mid 1800’s, the Paddys arrived here by the boatload and carved out their own section of the city, still known as the Irish Channel.  They worked on the waterfront and in the shipyards, and built some of the first canals and waterworks systems in the city.  They’re responsible for that particular accent you hear in N’walins that sounds more like something out of Brooklyn or Hoboken than anything remotely resembling a “southern” accent.

The Irish channel was a bustling place, but notoriously dangerous.  If you weren’t from there, you wouldn’t dare go there, unless you were a riverboat gambler or had other commerce to do with the fiercely clannish Irish, or if you were just looking for a fight.   What it is that turns the native Irish from poets and music-makers with legendary hospitality to hard-working, belligerent tough-guys when they migrate to America, I don’t know.   But that’s what the Irish in the channel became.  Jobs were generally plentiful, money was usually good, but the Irish were known to be drinkers and fighters who spent their money as fast as they made it on alcohol and gambling.  Race relations between the Irish and the blacks were notoriously bad, perhaps because they competed for the same work, and the Irish were resentful for being treated the way that they were generally treated in America at the time–that is, not much better than the blacks.   But the point is, New Orleans has a huge Irish legacy.

And yet, for all that, you don’t hear much about the Irish in New Orleans.

Except during the week leading up to Saint Patrick’s day, when just about everyone in the city seems to be, or claim to, be Irish.   Even the black girls come out to the parades dressed in green, joking about being “black Irish”…And in a town that loves a parade, there are more Saint Patrick’s parades than anybody has time for.  There’s one on Friday night in the Quarter, that ends up at Molly’s with a big blowout.   There’s the Irish Channel Parade on Saturday– the big one–that rolls down Magazine Street, the heart of the Irish Channel.  Then there’s Metairie on Sunday for the kids and families, and on the actual Day Itself there’s yet another parade in the Marigny for the bohemian crowd.  And that’s not even all of them…

And we’re not talking your vanilla 5th Avenue parades with a lot of spectators on bleachers and marching school groups dressed up in curlicues and hardshoes, trying to keep their bare legs warm in the freezing cold….No my friend, we’re talking New Orleans style parades, where it’s hard to tell who’s parading and who’s just hanging outside the pub in a sexy green skirt and a painted face, waiting for a plastic flower and a kiss from an old man in a kilt.   We’re talking interactive parades, where beads and cabbages and flowers and kisses become erotic articles of exchange in a big green swaggering sexy throng of revelers enjoying the miraculous change in weather that hits right around this time in New Orleans.

It’s all innocent, it’s all in good fun, you could even say it’s a family event, but LORD you’ve never seen so many fine lookin’ Colleens and Erins and Mollys in your life…and with weather like we had this weekend, quite a few of them took the opportunity to shed a layer of winter and give us a peek of what they got going on underneath.  And we were all happy to see it, let me just say.   Now I get why all those guys join these marching clubs, so they can walk down the street with staffs full of flowers and bags full of garters for the ladies.   It’s all clear to me now.

I suspect that part of the reason there are so many Paddy’s day parades is that, after enduring all those freezing cold Mardi Gras parades, folks just want to be outside in the sunshine and enjoy the rebirth of spring.  It gives them one more opportunity to try on a new costume, dance and drink in the streets, and just generally celebrate being New Orleanians.   And if the theme for the party is green, well, so much the better.  We can do green.  Saints be praised, can we do green.

My only complaint–and it’s with all due respect here–is where is all the Irish music?  I mean the floats were playing Fat Ammons and “Who Let the Dogs Out” for crying out loud…Sure, here and there some sound system was playing some old Clancy Brothers record from the sixties, but seriously now….  What happened to Irish music in this town, when around the world it is a thriving contemporary phenomenon with legions of devoted aficionados?   Could it just not compete with jazz?

Those of you who know me well enough know that I’m a bit of an addict when it comes to the “trad”, the old “diddley-di” as they say in Ireland…but despite my prejudices, I still can’t believe that with all this Irish heritage and pride I saw this weekend, there’s not one single traditional Irish music session here in New Orleans.    Not even on Saint Patrick’s Day weekend.  Somebody needs to fly in Lunasa, or Dervish, or Solas, or some hot trad group in here to fire things up a bit.  Oh, but wait, they’re all booked up in NYC and Dublin, ’cause it’s Saint Patrick’s day.

Aye well, for f-cks sake, let ‘em have it.  I’ll take the girls dressed in green and go home and play them some Frankie Gavin and Tommy Peoples on my iTunes…

For those of you who weren’t able to be part of the festivities, you have my sympathies.   Let these photos warm your spirits a little, along with a wee dram of Jameson’s and a little Guinness to chase it down with.   Erin go Bragh!

Please click on the thumbnails below to view full size images. “Next” and “Previous” buttons at bottom.

The photo above was taken at a funeral procession for Lawrence Robert, a longtime member of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, outside the Zulu club house on Broad Street in Mid-City.   Robert died a few days before Mardi Gras.  He was 76 years old.   He reigned as King Zulu in the year of 1997, riding at the head of the famous Zulu Mardi Gras parade, placing him in a lineage that includes the great Louis Armstrong, who reigned in 1949 and was featured in Time Magazine in full Zulu regalia.

“He lived a good full life,” said a friend of Robert’s after the hearse and limos headed for the cemetery.  “But that ain’t what I’m gonna be sayin’ when I get to that age.  I’ll be like, can I get 35 years or so more?”

The Zulus are one of the oldest and most respected Social Aid and Pleasure clubs in the city.  Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs are the modern descendants of what were known as “Benevolent Societies” in the nineteenth century.  Benevolent Societies were organizations of neighborhood groups that would pool their resources to help out other members in the community who were in financial or medical need, since blacks were unable to purchase insurance in those times.  The most famous legacy of the Societies is the “Jazz Funeral”, which gave birth to the tradition of the second-line parade, the upbeat, celebratory parade that was staged once the body was entombed.   The whole community would fall in line behind the musicians to honor the deceased’s life with joyful music and dance.

There was no second-line after Lawrence Robert’s funeral.  It was a quiet service, mainly just family.  Nowadays second-lines are held independent of funerals, usually on Sunday afternoons.   Of course, “second-line” has also become a verb in contemporary parlance, and a second-line can break out at any time there is reason to dance in the streets.  And upon the death of a famous black musician or community leader, there is a good chance the old second-line will follow the funeral.

Mister Robert, I never knew you, but may they be sec0nd-lining for you upon your arrival into the pearly gates.   And may Satchmo himself be leading the brass band.

Louisiana, 2010

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It was a horrible place to build a city.  Malaria-ridden swamps, unbearably humid summers, ground so soft you could barely sink a post into it without it keeling over; prone to flooding from the Mississippi and storm surges from Gulf Coast hurricanes.  A network of bayous, delta sludge, and barrier islands so complex and shallow that only the smallest boats could float in them, and only the canniest of pilots could navigate them.   And yet it was the best place to build the city that had to be built there.   In the short bend of the Mississippi that brings it within a couple of miles of Lake Pontchartrain, a broad saltwater estuary that opens into the Gulf of Mexico, on ground supported by natural levees built up from thousands of years of silting, the Crescent City of New Orleans was built as the final continental destination for the abundance of goods that flowed downriver from the incomparably rich land to the north, a watershed that stretches from the Appalachian Mountains in the East to the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains to the West, with fingers reaching as far north as Minnesota, as far East as Virginia and North Carolina,  and as far west as Montana….Further downriver from New Orleans, the Mississippi becomes an unnavigable mess of delta and bayou, so the early rafts and barges that floated down the Mississippi with furs, produce, timber, sugar, and cotton would stop at the crook in the river, and unload their cargo in the port area around what is now the French Market.  The rafts would be dismantled for timber to build houses, and the goods would be portaged up Esplanade Avenue and out to the ships moored in Lake Pontchartrain; from there they would make their stops in Havana and Hispaniola before heading through the straits of Florida, and up the Gulf Stream to Charleston, Norfolk, New York, Lisbon, Seville, London, and Le Havre.

For the first two hundred plus years of her existence, New Orleans’ boundaries were defined by the bayou.   The Vieux Carré, now known as the French Quarter, was the highest ground, and was thus settled first.  The Protestant Anglo-Saxons from the north who moved down after the Louisiana Purchase settled the land west of Canal Street, which was a little soggy but high enough in places to support their grand antebellum mansions.  Eventually land was filled in to form plantations, which were later divided up into “Faubourgs” by the plantation owners to create the first suburbs, Faubourg Marigny and Faubourg Tremé.   But these low-lying areas were still subject to flooding, and thus became the domain of Irish, Croatian, and Italian immigrants, as well as the large population of free blacks that continued to grow and flourish in tolerant New Orleans.

The outlying areas of the city, by necessity, remained unbuildable, uninhabitable wetlands.  Little by little the swampland was drained by primitive pumping systems and filled in, and small communities of African-Americans, Irish and German Immigrants, Creoles, and other families too poor to live in the safer, drier areas of the city began to populate the area east of the city.   The area, known as the Ninth Ward, became a stronghold of black culture in the early part of the twentieth century.

In the early 1920’s an industrial canal was cut through the heart of the Ninth Ward to connect the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain.  Along with the canal came an extensive levee system and a more reliable drainage and pumping system, but it bisected the Ninth Ward into two parts, “Upper”, meaning upriver, and “Lower”, meaning downriver.

The Lower Ninth Ward flourished in the middle part of the century, an almost rural outpost of tightly-knit families that grew corn and raised chickens and looked after each other.  Jobs on the waterfront were plentiful, and social clubs and schools provided for strong community activism.   But as the shipping industry became more and more mechanized, jobs in the area became harder and harder to find, and the neighborhood began the all-too familiar sink into urban decay that has plagued so many African-American communities in the contemporary era.  Still, it remained home to a strong and vital community.  Home-ownership in the Lower Ninth Ward at the time of Katrina was higher than in any other neighborhood in the city, and the neighborhood continued to produce some of the finest jazz and R&B musicians in the country.

Now all that is gone.   Walk through the section of the Lower Ninth Ward north of Claiborne avenue which was hit hardest by the storm, and you will see blocks and blocks of abandoned lots, tall grass and oak trees swaying in the delta breeze.   Here and there a gutted house, a lone cement stoop, a stack of old tires surreptitiously dumped in the middle of the night.   Only two houses in the roughly three-square-mile area survived the flood intact, and rebuilding has been slow and hampered by insurance wrangles, government ineptitude, legal battles, and contractor fraud.   Currently the occupancy rate is less than one house per city block.   The once tightly-knit community has been scattered to the winds, to Baton Rouge and Houston and Chicago and Boston; and though many are determined to return home, some have already spent five years putting down roots elsewhere, and in all likelihood could not afford or stand to uproot their families again, even to return to their old home, which right now looks more like an abandoned city park than a community.

And yet, change is coming, growth is happening, and people are returning.  Some folks have rebuilt their houses thanks to good insurance and plain old hard work.   Others are being aided by forward-thinking non-profit groups such as Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Initiative and the Common Ground Collective, which are taking the opportunity to build safer and more sustainable houses, and are developing earthworks systems to address some of the geographic and ecological issues of the Lower Ninth with permaculture-style engineering.   Some have sold their land to independent contractors who are building houses with stricter covenants.  And some have been aided by religious and charitable groups and school volunteers from all around the country, who have contributed untold amounts of time and money to help the Lower Ninth become home again.

There were many mistakes made before, during, and after Katrina, all of which have been well-documented and beyond the scope of this post.  And it may seem outrageous to some that so little progress seems to have been made over the last five years.  But as a very wise man once said, “only bad change happens quickly”.    Good change takes time.   And what is happening now in the Lower Ninth, is good change.  And it’s taking time.

Mimi’s, Friday Night

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In 1812, Amos Stoddard wrote that Louisianans “are particularly attached to the exercise of dancing, and they carry it to an incredible excess”.  Reid Mitchell, quoting Stoddard in his book All on a Mardi Gras Day, writes, “According to Stoddard, balls lasted from early evening to early morning, and the irrepressible, apparently inexhaustible Louisianans would attend balls two or three nights in a row.”

Little seems to have changed in New Orleans in that regard.  Though the town is known throughout the world for its music, it often goes un-noted that the musical forms indigenous to New Orleans and greater Louisiana were created for dancing, and that, when anybody in decent health is exposed to the “real thing”, it is almost impossible to refrain from getting down in time to the heavy syncopated beats and heady contrapuntal melodies being generated by the band…and that means dancing, dancing, dancing.  Dancing in the streets, dancing in the bars, dancing in the house to old records…dancing just about anywhere there is space.   New Orleans is a town that is mad for the dance.

I’m not talking about your ordinary night-club shake-your-booty dancing (though there is plenty of that too).   What I’m talking about is something more sophisticated, more spontaneous, more beautiful.   Walk into the tiny Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street and chances are you’ll catch a pair of twenty-somethings cutting a rug to an unamplified brass band, doing the Lindy Hop like they were born in the ’30’s and dancing at a postwar victory ball.  Wander down the street and you’ll find young Cuban and Puerto Rican expats salsa-dancing with such ease and sensuality you’ll want to hop on a plane for Old San Juan and never leave until you’ve mastered the dance and found yourself a permanent dancing partner.   Around the corner at BMC on a Sunday night, you’ll find couples in jeans and cowboy boots country-dancing to a rockabilly band.   If one of the city’s famous rag-tag hippie jug-bands is playing on a street corner or closed storefront alcove, you can bet there will be a few swing dancers stepping out on to the street.   Out towards the Bywater, upstairs at Mimi’s, a DJ is playing an inspired mix of Clifton Chenier, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Carl Perkins, and folks are jitterbugging like no tomorrow.

And then of course, there are the Second-Lines, part parade and part street dance, which roll through the back neighborhoods on Sunday afternoons, put on by various social clubs; or which erupt spontaneously just about anywhere if there is cause for celebration.   Everyone is welcome to join in, and everything in the dancers’ path–mailboxes, street lamps, cars, garbage cans–become stages and props for the endless improvisatory steps of the avid second-liner.

There is no end to the dance in New Orleans.   It is, I suppose, what keeps the place going in spite of all the tragedy, injustice, corruption, violence, and decay that keep threatening to destroy the city.   Somehow, after three regime changes and countless waves of immigration; after malaria and spotted fever and fires that burned half the city to the ground; after Reconstruction, the decline of the Gens de Couleur Libres, and the insidious enactment of the Jim Crow laws; after de-segregation, white flight, and urban decay; and after Betsy and Katrina and Gustav; after over thirty feet of water submerged the city and laid waste to the strongholds of some of the greatest jazz, funk, and blues musicians in the country; somehow, the city continues to rise up out of the water, dancing, waiting for the sound of the brass band to round the corner to join in with the second-line.