“Culture Week”
Book readings, an Opera concert, and the Paramount Jazz Band – what a lively week of cultural events.
The culture kicked off on Tuesday evening. Kenny and Kara joined us at the Garden District Book Shop for a reading by Brian Fairbanks, author of “Waylon, Willie, and the Boys”. Here’s the online summary of the book:
“The tragic and inspiring story of the leaders of Outlaw country and their influence on today’s Alt-County and Americana superstars, tracing a path from Waylon Jennings’ survival on the Day the Music Died through to the Highwaymen and on to the current creative and commercial explosion of Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Zach Bryan, Jason Isbell, and the Highwomen.”
This was a unique reading, in that Brian enlisted local musician Connor Donohue to perform songs after he read a passage about them from his book. The event was well attended and the newly opened bar in the shop did a good trade. A very enjoyable evening.
There was another book reading on Thursday evening – this time at Octavia books. The shop was recently remodeled, doubling the space, and really nicely done. The reading was by Jimmy Nolan from his book “Between Dying and Not Dying, I Chose the Guitar – The Pandemic Years in New Orleans.”
The title is somewhat misleading in that Nolan did not learn to play the guitar during lockdown – rather he posits that creative pursuits were the key to making the most of the time alone.
The book attempts to strike a common theme between the three pandemics that 
Nolan has endured – Polio in his youth, AIDS while living in San Francisco, and the Coronavirus. The talk started out well – Nolan has led a very varied and interesting life around the world – but quickly bogged down in revisionist history, arguing the efficacy of various approaches to slowing the spread of the virus – six foot distancing, masking etc. Diana said she would have liked to ask him what three key points he was hoping to share – given the rambling and somewhat disjointed talk.
I did read another of Nolan’s books this week – more later in the Books section. We were glad we attended the event – this one even came with complimentary wines.
On Friday, I asked Diana to be ready to leave at 6:30pm for an evening of Italian stuff. The details on the “stuff” were a closely guarded secret.
An Uber dropped us at the Piazza D ‘Italia for “Opera in the Piazza.” I had read about this in the Offbeat magazine and thought it sounded like something Diana would enjoy.
We had a very pleasant evening. Three hours of singing. Here’s the program:
And a couple of songs:
Diana seemed to have a very good time. Nor Joe’s was the main food vendor – some very yummy pasta. These are the guys we used to cater our New Year’s Eve party.
Saturday took us to our regular spot on the grassy neutral ground at the Kingpin dive bar. The band was a repeat from several weeks ago, the Paramount Jazz Band – the one I describe as French café jazz music. The clarinet player is the leader of the band and always entertains me.
I enjoyed this video of Irma Thomas backstage with the Rolling Stones at Jazz Fest:
My first book was “Broken Bayou” by Jennifer Moorehead. This was one of those free Amazon reads, so I didn’t have very high hopes. It turned out to be an entertaining murder mystery.
Here’s the online summary:
“In this debut thriller, a troubled child psychologist returns to a small Louisiana town to protect her secrets but winds up having to protect her life.
Dr. Willa Watters is a prominent child psychologist at the height of her career. But when a viral video of a disastrous television interview puts her reputation on the line, Willa retreats to Broken Bayou, the town where she spent most of her childhood summers. There she visits her aunts’ old house and discovers some of her unstable mother’s belongings still languishing in the attic―dusty mementos harboring secrets of her harrowing past.
Willa’s hopes for a respite are quickly crushed, not only by what she finds in that attic but also by what’s been found in the bayou.
With waters dropping due to drought, mysterious barrels containing human remains have surfaced, alongside something else from Willa’s past, something she never thought she’d see again. Divers, police, and media flood the area, including a news reporter gunning for Willa and Travis Arceneaux―a local deputy and old flame.
Willa’s fate seems eerily tied to the murders. And with no one to trust, she must use her wits to stay above water and make it out alive.”
Kenny’s Ninth Ward accent is apparently called “Yat.” This paragraph made me smile:
“They ask questions all at once about living in a big city and how Mama’s getting along and why I haven’t been back sooner, all in slow rolling accents that sound more Brooklyn than southern gulf. The Yat dialect, as it’s called in New Orleans.”
This was an entertaining murder mystery that read very quickly.
I did come across the most annoying phrases that I hear daily from entitled millennials – “Let’s grab lunch” or “I’ll do the shrimp salad.” When did eating together become a “grab” situation rather than time to relax and slow down. And who on earth “does” a shrimp salad. I’m on a mission to stamp it out, but like so many other millennial challenges, it’s rampant.
Next, I read one of Jimmy Nolan’s previous books – “Flight Risk.” This is essentially an autobiography, focused on the various countries and situations that Nolan has had to escape from in his very colourful and rich life. Here’s the online summary:
“Flight Risk takes off as a page-turning narrative with deep roots and a wide wingspan. James Nolan, a fifth-generation New Orleans native, offers up an intimate portrait both of his insular hometown and his generation’s counterculture. Flight runs as a theme throughout the book, which begins with Nolan’s escape from the gothic mental hospital to which his parents committed the teenaged poet during the tumult of 1968. This breakout is followed by the self-styled revolutionary’s hair-raising flight from a Guatemalan jail, and years later, by the author’s bolt from China, where he ditched his teaching position and collectivist ideals. These Houdini-like feats foreshadow a more recent one, how he dodged biblical floods in a stolen school bus three days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
Nolan traces these flight patterns to those of his French ancestors who fled to New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century, established a tobacco business in the French Quarter, and kept the old country alive in their Creole demimonde. The writer describes the eccentric Seventh Ward menagerie of the extended family in which he grew up, his early flirtation with extremist politics, and a strong bond with his freewheeling grandfather, a gentleman from the Gilded Age. Nolan’s quest for his own freedom takes him to the flower-powered, gender-bending San Francisco of the sixties and seventies, as well as to an expatriate life in Spain during the heady years of that nation’s transition to democracy. Like the prodigal son, he eventually returns home to live in the French Quarter, around the corner from where his grandmother grew up, only to struggle through the aftermath of Katrina and the city’s resurrection.
Many of these stories are entwined with the commentaries of a wry flâneur, addressing such subjects as the nuances of race in New Orleans, the Disneyfication of the French Quarter, the numbing anomie of digital technology and globalization, the challenges of caring for aging parents, Creole funeral traditions, how to make a soul-searing gumbo, and what it really means to belong.”
Here he talks about tourists on a vampire tour, who are more interested in the sight of someone who actually lives and operates in the French Quarter. This is after his rant on how suburbs are the “death of society.” He may not be wrong in my experience.
“But the tourists aren’t starting at the balcony where the bloody ghost supposedly appeared. Mystified, they are watching me at my gate, juggling a coat on a hanger, a bottle of wine, a bag of tomatoes, mail, and house keys. I am the real ghost, of how urban Americans used to live.”
A small part of a long rant about the ineptitude of the local and national governments post Katrina:
“The city had at its disposal a fleet of public-transport and school buses, which should have been parked on dry over-rise highways to carry people out of the city in the event of flooding. I grow impatient with city officials’ excuses about the lack of bonded drivers with chauffeur’s licenses, a cover-up, according to historian David Brinkley in “The Great Deluge”, to the unpardonable bungling that actually occurred: these officials couldn’t find the bus keys. Impoverished Cuban and Mexican authorities routinely execute bused based evacuation of their populations whenever a dangerous hurricane approaches. But in the city of New Orleans, the needs of those who fall outside of the able-bodied middle class remained invisible.”
Nolan did evacuate New Orleans three days after the storm, in a bootlegged school bus.
On a last Christmas meal with his mother:
“She wouldn’t be here long, so I’d hung spruce garlands and put on her beloved, scratchy LP of Handle’s Messiah that skipped. We sang along to the Hallelujah Chorus, which I conducted with a wooden spoon from the kitchen. As usual, her eyes watered at the solo “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” as I was bringing in the caramelized yams. “That’s my favorite part,” she said. The next week she turned seventy-nine, and two weeks later was gone.”
I’ve heard “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” in my childhood home many, many times.
Let’s start off with some excellent and funky music from one of Stevie Wonder’s masterpieces, “Talking Book”:
Some beautiful guitar from the very underrated Snowy White:
And finally, the reason that the “Chickie Wah Wah” music club has its name:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!