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Jazz, along with blues, shrimp gumbo, po-boy sandwiches, world-famous steakhouses in the French Quarter, and tantalizing desserts like Mama’s bread pudding and Café du Monde’s beignets, came to symbolize the pulsating life of New Orleans. Accessible to ships from Africa, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, the city’s fusion of Spanish, West African, and European cultures shaped not only New Orleans’s Creole identity but contributed to the evolution of jazz. The sound of jazz likely emerged out of the field hollers and spirituals developed by enslaved African peoples in the swamps, lowlands, fields, churches, and houses (away from the penetrating gaze of slaveholders) of the U.S. South.1 Born of cultural exchange, early New Orleans jazz was a mixture of various musical genres, including blues, ragtime, and spirituals. Jazz consisted of a much wider range of musical instruments—including brass and reed instruments in particular—than the earlier piano ragtime bands. Improvisation and call and response became key elements of early jazz, creating space for individual and, in a broader sense, group expression.2 The history and culture of New Orleans is also closely linked with the jazz funeral, a unique and ritualized ceremony of mourning and celebration. The process of celebration and rejuvenation in a jazz funeral is called the “second line,” and I use this term as a model for how we can apply the lessons of Katrina to bring change. The jazz funeral is both a metaphor for dealing with the losses caused by Katrina and a window into the culture of New Orleans. Jazz funerals offer a way of understanding the psychological and physical pain of bereavement in New Orleans and provide a model for the regeneration of the city and its people’s spirits. I essentially make three points in this chapter, in relatively quick and short order. First, the history and resiliency of jazz funerals throughout the twentieth century is an important part of the people and culture of New Orleans. Second, many people have evoked the symbol of the jazz funeral to 69 6 VVVVVVVVVVV Second-Lining the Jazz City Jazz Funerals, Katrina, and the Reemergence of New Orleans RICHARD MIZELLE JR. RICHARD MIZELLE JR. 70 describe the loss associated with Katrina, but loss is not only about death. The jazz funeral can provide an alternative lens for us to look at other, less measurable , concepts of deprivation and Katrina. Last is my theoretical use of secondlining and how we can apply this process in practical ways now. In these widened conceptions of loss, the theoretical concept of second-lining the jazz city becomes an important marker for affecting public policy. The Jazz Funeral Like jazz itself, the tradition of jazz funerals is a cultural hybrid uniquely embedded in the culture of New Orleans. As Jason Berry explains, the origins of the jazz funeral “lie in the colonial era, as French brass bands played in large processions honoring generals and politicians. At the same time, in a public park called Congo Square, African slaves gathered in large concentric circles, ring dances, honoring ancestral spirits. Gradually the two traditions came together— the line and the ring—creating a new form of burial ceremony.”3 During a jazz funeral, a brass band traditionally awaits outside of the church or funeral home for the services to be completed, then begins to play processional or mournful music like “Nearer My God to Thee.” Before older cemeteries in the city became full, the entire procession, including the band, would proceed to the gravesite. Now, because the newer sites are so far away, the family and close friends leave the band and people who have gathered to participate in or witness the jazz funeral. The band is usually led by a grand marshal , sometimes referred to as a “nelson,” who is always a well-dressed gentleman . After a silence during which the band and crowd watch the deceased and family pass through the crowd, the body is then “cut loose” by the marshal, signaling the band to begin playing more upbeat music and the crowd to dance in a celebratory fashion. Mournful songs are replaced by tunes like “Didn’t He Ramble.”4 As described by Joseph Roach, “cutting the body loose” to the spiritual world of heaven is less a forgetting of the deceased than a community replenishment toward the future and celebration of life.5 The dancers and marchers who follow the band as the entire scene moves through...

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