Treme Wrap-Up: David & Roselyn Get Their Wish

A few more Treme notes from this week’s episode.

– Last year, street musicians David and Roselyn started a Facebook campaign to be on the show. They got their wish this week when they appeared as part of the tribute to Harley in the park. (Though they’re not in this picture, they’re in this scene.)

– Earlier this season, we saw Wilbert Rawlins, Jr. directing the marching band at Desiree’s high school. Members of the To Be Continued Brass Band were students of Rawlins in high school, and he helped them learn to improvise and play as a brass band – a path that it looks like Antoine’s heading down with his student. (Rawlins is one of the figures in Dan Baum’s Nine Lives, so you can read more about this there.)

In a blog post at NPR’s “A Blog Supreme,” Patrick Jarenwattananon asks Josh Jackson the point of scenes with Harley, Spider Stacy and Jon Cleary “is that even though New Orleans regenerates its own scene, a sizeable number of its musicians are from somewhere that isn’t Louisiana.” Actually, that’s one of the uncomfortable realities about the New Orleans music community – the degree to which non-native New Orleanians are a part of the scene. Anders Osborne, Theresa Andersson, Galactic (with the exception of Stanton Moore) and Susan Cowsill are just the starting place of a list that grows yearly. Many of the Bywater musicians drifted in as well, all drawn by the same passions that Hector dives headfirst into, but that makes the question of what constitutes “New Orleans music” a complicated one.

– … and a great line from David Simon. I wondered during Dr. John’s scenes how they wrote for him. Raynola asked that question at the Back of Town blog, to which Simon replied:

You write what you think Mac might say if he had to say what you need him to say for the scene. Mac then looks at it and takes it to another whole level.

And later, we watch the dailies with shock and awe.

–Alex Rawls