Warning: I am temporarily going off topic. Please vacate the building if you do not like:
- Louisiana
- Jazz
- Jambalaya
I am going hijack my own blog here (try stopping me) to post an update for friends/family on my current whereabouts. It is holiday time and we have embarked on what–for me–is a musical pilgrimmage to the land where life was breathed into crotchets and quavers: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
Bourbon Street
Our hotel was situated just off Bourbon street. Having checked-in and over tipped the porter (I had no single dollars) we ventured forth in determined defiance of long-haul exhaustion and jet lag. Bourbon Street was an unfathomable mulch of multi-cultural/instrumental/denominational madness and triggered near sensory overload. It has strip joints, bachelor and bachelorette parties, music clubs, pizza parlours, preachers, policemen on horse back, and gay revellers in full noisy flow. Only some surreal merger of Dublin’s Temple Bar, London’s Soho, and Amsterdam’s Red Light district could compete.
We were told that we had arrived (by sheer coincidence) for the same weekend as the Decadence Festival. But it was decadence of the musical variety that I was looking for and so, for our second night, we headed to:
Frenchmen Street
Frenchmen Street is what NO is all about – music. There is a string of bars, each with somebody singing or playing something. You can wander from bar to bar, taking in a bit of whatever takes your fancy. Happily, there is no escape on the nearby streets either. Within the vicinity I heard a powerful a capella singer, duo of guitar and violin (playing popular tunes and a spellbinding version of Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love), and a folksy, fair trade, neo-hippy raggle taggle group.
That said, the best sound of all came from what looked to be an ad hoc Treme brass band-style group, featuring a snare drum, bass drum, and plenty of horns. The drummers battered merry hell out of their skins and the horn players blasted with fury. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better (I was fully ready to go marching/parading for whatever cause was suggested) a huge young figure in a red tracksuit marched up the street holding a big old trombone by his side like it was a shotgun. He strode straight to the front of the group and–without the slightest hesitation–joined right in. It was electrifying.
Cuisine
The calories stick to you like your shirt in this city. The food is rich and sweet and vegetarians/weight watchers have nowhere to hide. Jambalaya’s charms are no secret but the dish I have developed a taste for is grits; a simple, savoury ground corn affair that is surprisingly comforting with eggs and bacon for breakfast. Where has it been all of my life?
The sweet sold to tourists seems to be praline (prah-leen). Virtually pure sugar, this is not my thing at all. Unfortunately I had to spend $16 on a small box to find this out.
Another over-rated sweet is the beignet, which is a deep-fried pastry covered in icing sugar. Worth trying (along with the traditional chicory coffee), I suppose, but I certainly wouldn’t travel to New Orleans for it…
The po boy sandwiches, on the other hand, are delicious, especially the version with blackened catfish. Salty and spicy, this is seafood at its best and probably the tastiest seafood sandwich I can think of. The smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, is surely its only rival. It is well worth skipping breakfast to free up stomach capacity for a po boy lunch.
Preservation Hall
Preservation Hall was the fuddies fight-back against the bebop jazz era. Established in the early 1960s, it was set up to preserve traditional jazz music from Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie & co. Personally, I am not convinced that traditional jazz would have died without sending Pres Hall to bat for it, but it was a nice rallying point for the hardcore to gather and mutter quietly about the self-indulgent and overly complicated flights-of-fancy taking place in nearby music venues.
But unlike most reactionary gatherings, Preservation Hall certainly has a great soundtrack going for it and consequently the musicians of Preservation Hall are still preserving happily to full houses night after night. We slipped in on the tail of the queue for the 9 o’clock slot, having expected a 60-minute queue for the 10 o’clock show. The tiny room was packed with enthusiastic tourists and world-weary musicians, but the chemistry worked and it was an enjoyable end to an action-packed weekend in New Orleans. We left with the Saints Go Marchin’ In ringing in our ears.
Next stop Jackson.