In a city where “parade” is a verb, noun and adjective, the Macy’s Parade seems quaint. Still, New Orleanians watched the telecast of last year’s Thanksgiving Day parade with uncommon interest because the 610 Stompers were invited to be a part of it this year. The all-male dance crew started in the summer of 2009 [...]
Krewe of Muses’ Mardi Gras Throws
Plush? “You can never have enough plush.” Coozies? “You can never have enough coozies.” It’s a month from Mardi Gras and Virginia Saussy’s going over the throws for this year’s Muses parade. Saussy’s the creative director for the Krewe of Muses, and she’s fidgeting, trying to relax and talk in the living room of her [...]
New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic Back to Health
When drummer August Jepson got sick in Los Angeles, she didn’t have health insurance or access to affordable health care. “I went to the hospital in L.A. and sat in a hallway for hours,” she says. “A nurse put me on a cot. I was lying there surrounded by crackheads and seriously ill people. The [...]
Best of the Beat Heartbeat Award: Mary Howell
For more than three decades, attorney Mary Howell has been at the frontlines of police misconduct and civil rights litigation in New Orleans. She has represented plaintiffs in the Algiers police rampage of 1980, the killing of Adolph Archie in 1990, and the execution of Kim Groves by order of policeman Len Davis in 1994. [...]
Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music Education Award: John Rankin
For a guy who can be seen playing regularly alongside jazz musicians like Jesse Boyd, Tom Fischer and Don Vappie, guitarist John Rankin has an unusual claim to fame. “I play with the LPO [Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra] when they need a guitar or a banjo,” he says. “Last year I did Mahler’s 7th [symphony] with [...]
Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music Business Award: Scott Billington
It’s hard to explain what Scott Billington has meant to New Orleans and Louisiana music in the past two plus decades. These following words must suffice: Classified. Give Him Cornbread. Funk is in the House. Irma Thomas. Tangle Eye. Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas. The Houseman Cometh. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band [...]
The 40 Best Louisiana Albums of 2011
New Orleans was once a musical oasis, seemingly unnoticed by the world outside. This year, two of our Top 10 albums of the year received Grammy nominations—Rebirth Brass Band, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys—and four of the artists record for companies based somewhere outside Louisiana. Trombone Shorty and Curren$y record for major labels, GIVERS’ [...]
No Limit Forever: Dawn of the Don II?
Recall New Orleans, 1998, around midnight. Your sweaty back cools against the passenger seat of a silver Maxima buzzing along I-10 under a lavender sky. From the carpet of shingles and treetops below the elevated highway, the billboard rises, white with blue block letters. “Thou Shall Not Kill.” A half-mile later, another billboard, a man [...]
A Busy Year for Curren$y and Fiend’s JETS Crew
We begin with your once-every-five-years Fiend update: The ex-No Limit rapper-slash-grizzly-bear-throated drug linguist is still making records—mixtapes, mostly, charming on the whole. If you grew up during the break-up of New Orleans’ rap empires, this news comes as a delight, like an ancient comet spotted orbiting back towards Earth, taken as harbinger of the reemergence [...]
The Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore
One of the sonic jewels to be had at this year’s Festivals Acadiens et Creoles was Best of Festivals Acadiens 2002, released by Valcour Records. Its 14 tracks include such titans as Belton Richard, Walter Mouton and the Scott Playboys, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, and Wayne Toups, and another 10 tracks are available [...]
