Hip-hop genres flare up and become passé in the blink of an eye, but no style ever truly dies in New Orleans.
Late last year, six people were arrested in New Orleans for tagging the graffiti message “Free Lil Wayne” in the French Quarter. It was an odd message of support given [...]
A Lucky Bounce
MyNameIsJohnMichael: What’s in a Name?
It all started with a bet.
John Michael Rouchell was having lunch with a friend who, midconversation, told him that he was the laziest songwriter he’d ever met and bet Rouchell that he could not write a song a day for an entire year. “You know, you’re probably right,” Rouchell said, “but I could probably write [...]
Foburg Music Festival: Spelling Doesn’t Matter
The New Orleans Indie Rock Collective, more commonly known as the NOIR Collective, has been cultivating and supporting local indie rock for the past two years. They’ve created sampler CDs and organized mini-music fests, but most importantly, they’ve been knitting together the seemingly disparate indie scenes throughout the city—Tulane, Loyola, Marigny, Mid-City—and they’re about [...]
Preservation Hall Jazz Band: The A List
For its new album, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band made some high-profile friends, but who learned from who?
Since Preservation Hall opened in 1961, it has been the great name in traditional
jazz. The venue continues to let the music speak without amplification, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band has been iconic, representing [...]
Music Without Bars
It was the most safe I ever felt in a pitch-black abandoned warehouse out by the train tracks. All I could see were silhouettes out the door against the foggy outline of the Crescent City Connection. All I could hear were the murmurs of the crowd and the occasional train horn.
Suddenly, the puttering of the [...]
Helen Gillet: A Good Fit
Helen Gillet steeled herself against the January chill as she stood on a bright Marigny street corner right down Dauphine Street from Hubig’s bakery. Despite the cold, Helen was having too much fun trying out various costumes for a photo shoot to complain. “I really love dressing up,” says Gillet in a faux French outfit, [...]
Fake Dogs, Bellies, and Big-Ass Amps
Anyone who visits New Orleans during Carnival season will have a plethora of stories to pack their bags with and bring home. But for us locals who have been immersed in the traditional beads, booze, debauchery, king cake and Mardi Gras Mambo, our tales of Carnival experiences are unique. They’re similar to the tourists’ stories, [...]
The Best of the Beat 2009 Winners
When Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi was released, we said, “(Producer Joe) Henry treats these recordings not as pop, jazz nor R only ones who feel that way &B but as art song—an elevated, sophisticated thing that draws from vernacular traditions. As an American treasure, it’s the sort of treatment Toussaint merits, and it’s a [...]
Framed: Quintron and Miss Pussycat
Quintron and Miss Pussycat have been keeping New Orleans weird for years now with their respective art—Quintron as electro-musician/inventor and Panacea Theriac, a.k.a. Miss Pussycat, as puppeteer. The husband/wife duo help each other with their creations—the background music to her puppet shows and videos is composed by Quintron, while Miss Pussycat adds colorful flair to [...]
Meet De Boys
Let’s face it, music is as much a part of Mardi Gras as Zulu, Rex and hangovers. Not surprisingly, the majority of classic Mardi Gras songs were recorded during the golden era of New Orleans rhythm and blues, roughly the late 1940s to mid-1960s. The brass band revival of the 1980s provided a few Carnival [...]
