Memorial Day weekend brings with it the coronation of summer as well as a time to commemorate the country’s men and women who have served in its military. This Memorial Day weekend (May 24-27), the Marine Crops Band New Orleans will host concerts on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to ring in the holiday. Founded [...]
Displaced in New York nine years ago following Hurricane Katrina, Mid-City evacuee Jared Zeller, inspired by the Mardi Gras Indian’s Super Sunday tradition and the legacy of Bayou St. John, initially conceived the Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo, a music, arts and culture festival celebrated on the bayou’s banks. But it was more than just the idea [...]
“All my life, I been a jazz, bebop drummer,” says 79-year-old Pigeon Town native Tony “Oulabula” Bazley in this week’s episode of OffBeat’s Look-Ka Py Py Podcast. Over the course of his six-and-a-half decade career, Bazley has manned the kit for jazz legends such as Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon and Wes Montgomery as well as [...]
Long before his trademark howl echoed in the Crescent City’s streets, Walter “Wolfman” Washington was a hungry, young guitarist cutting his teeth on the Dew Drop Inn stage. In the mid-Sixties, he fell in line with New Orleans soul-funk pioneer Lee Dorsey and found his strut, stirring “Ride Your Pony’s” slinky groove with his stinging [...]
For a New Orleans jazz group, the Panorama Jazz Band has a very reliable lineup. Four years after the release of their last studio album, Come Out Swingin’, Charlie Halloran continues chugging away on the trombone. Walt McClements’ accordion, Aurora Nealand’s saxophone, and John Gross’ tuba are right where we remember them, while group leader [...]
“We’ve all had that moment in our lives where we’ve had to ask ourselves, ‘Who am I? What am I doing,’” says trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard in this week’s episode of OffBeat’s Look-Ka Py Py Podcast. He’s describing the concept behind one of the scenes in his recently completed opera Champion, which focuses on [...]
Upon retiring in 2002, Lower 9th Ward resident Ronald W. Lewis opened the House of Dance and Feathers, a DIY museum and cultural exhibit chronicling Mardi Gras Indian history, in his Tupelo Street garage. Three years later, Hurricane Katrina claimed the former streetcar repairman’s extensive collection of costumes, beads, photographs and memorabilia. In the storm’s [...]
A folkie in spirit and a bluesman at heart, six-string sage Spencer Bohren made the Big Easy his home in the mid-70s. In the time since, Bohren’s songbook has sewn 16 solo albums, his matchless fretwork, steering each sojourn. Bohren’s most recent effort Tempered Steel marks the songman’s first disc devoted entirely to his beloved [...]
With the sound of New Orleans forever linked to the rambling cacophony of traditional jazz, getting a leg up on the city’s contemporary scene presents a unique challenge to its up-and-coming purveyors: getting their feet in the door. “You either give up, or you go to New York. Or, you do something else and go [...]
The stained-glass motif of the cover photo of Tommy Sancton and Lars Edegran’s Hymns & Spirituals is modeled on that of George Lewis’ 1954 Jazz at Vespers. Buy on AmazonSix decades separate the two albums, but you wouldn’t know it from the repertoire. Sancton (a Lewis disciple) pays tribute to his mentor’s “un-fussy” approach to [...]
