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Musical New Orleans lost more than buildings
City has a musical heritage, but will future musicians have a place to grow?
 | New Orleans music great Kermit Ruffins plays on his street -- Ursuline Street -- in the Treme area of New Orleans in a scene from Michael Murphy's film, "Make It Funky." The film hits theaters this month, as Murphy worries that instead of a tribute it may stand as an obituary for the town's musical scene in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. |
AP |
 | Slide shows: Hurricane Katrina |
 AP Residents return Around the Gulf Coast region residents return home to rebuild as power and other services are slowly restored. |
NEW YORK - Filmmaker and New Orleans native Michael Murphy spent the last few years taking cameras through his hometown’s most hallowed musical sites, paying tribute to the place where jazz was born, the blues blossomed, zydeco took root and even rap found a new voice.
But as “Make It Funky” hits theaters this month, Murphy worries that instead of a tribute, the film may stand as an obituary.
“What has made my heart tear apart is that I would hate to think I made a film and the city is no longer there,” Murphy said.
Nashville is the Music City. Chicago is world renowned for jazz and blues. New York is one of the world’s premier artistic stages. Yet no city is as critical to so many musical genres as New Orleans, where the colorful and complex mix of people, from African to French and Creole to Cajun, has created an international music mecca.
Now, as authorities struggle to determine the extent of Hurricane Katrina’s damage, the music community is pondering the future of the places — and people, many of them poor — who make up the Big Easy’s creative soul.
B.B. King, a fixture for decades, perhaps inadvertently used the past tense as he discussed the tragedy. “New Orleans had a sound ... that no one has completely captured,” he said in a telephone interview from Detroit.
“Obviously, New Orleans, from a musical standpoint, is the melting pot when we talk about America,” Wynton Marsalis, whose family of musicians is synonymous with their native city, said from his home in New York.
A special place for music
It’s where Louis Armstrong was born and where Jelly Roll Morton became a legend. Fats Domino, who was rescued by boat this week from his flooded home, pioneered rock ’n’ roll. Randy Newman may love L.A., but he’s from New Orleans, as evidenced by the famous “they’re trying to wash us away” flooding chorus from “Louisiana 1927.” Harry Connick Jr., Dr. John, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Fountain, Terence Blanchard and the Neville Brothers are just a few other talents the Big Easy has produced.
For more than a century, it’s been a constant party, from Canal Street to the tiny dives only a native or true aficionado would know.
Mark Samuels, co-founder of Basin Street Records on Canal Street, home to artists such as Kermit Ruffins, Jason Marsalis and Theresa Anderson, talked about the vibrant scene — how greats will pop into a clubs not to listen, but to perform with house acts. How you might catch a musical “battle” on any given night.
“Having lived in New York City and San Francisco and Austin and Atlanta, Georgia, New Orleans is at the absolute top of those cities to me,” he said, “and I hope one day it will again be.”
He talked about an insider’s haunt called Vaughn’s Lounge. “Kermit Ruffins played there every Thursday night that he was in town for the last 11 years or so, and everyone from Wynton Marsalis to Harry Connick Jr. to Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes would come.”
These are the type of performances in Murphy’s documentary, which will open in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 9 (the date was planned before the hurricane) before being released on DVD.
Murphy, who fled his New Orleans home for his Los Angeles rental before the storm hit, is worried about the fate of landmarks such as Preservation Hall, the museum and performance venue that opened its doors in 1961.
“I woke up this morning extremely emotional about an area of town called Treme. Treme is the cradle of jazz within the cradle of jazz,” he said. “Treme is that hallowed ground where Louie Armstrong ... and all the greats walked and played their music. It’s right outside the French Quarter.”
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