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Iheard a tourist couple ask a grand marshal at a funeral, “This dead man must have been quite a big ¤gure to rate a big funeral like this, huh?” The answer was the usual one, “Oh, no, he was just an ordinary fellow, an old porter who worked at a bank for forty-¤ve years. He was a paid-up member in the old society, and that’s what the society does—turn out with music for all the members who wants it. If you was a member of the society, we would turn out for you” (Barker 1986, 53). When Alfred Lazard passed, his funeral procession was jointly sponsored by many of the social organizations active in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans.1 Mr. Lazard, also known as “Dute,” had been a member of the Money Wasters and the Black Men of Labor, and served as Grand Marshal for the original Dirty Dozen Brass Band before he became ill and had to restrict his activities. At his Treme funeral, his image was everywhere, photocopied onto handheld fans, T-shirts, and pins. “We love you,” his mourners proclaimed as they paraded his image throughout the Sixth Ward of the city. As is common in New Orleans black funerals, the deceased is addressed in the second person. His or her presence at the funeral is unquestioned: “We love you, Dute!” Mr. Lazard’s funeral was particularly dramatic because it happened to take place on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, and as his procession went down Orleans Avenue by the Iberville and La¤tte housing projects, the Mardi Gras ®oats for the Krewe of Endymion (one of the major carnival krewes) were heading toward City Park where they were scheduled to line up to begin their annual procession through the city later that evening. However, due to the voluminous crowd, which composed Mr. Lazard ’s funeral procession, Endymion’s passage was blocked. This huge carnival organization that for many New Orleanians represents the 1 / “Keeping Jazz Funerals Alive” Blackness and the Politics of Memory in New Orleans Helen A. Regis powerful white establishment had its passage obstructed by a funeral procession honoring a working-class black man. During the funeral I saw many members of the parade turn to look at the frustrated convoy of Mardi Gras ®oats and smile gleefully . For once, a sacred parade of black New Orleans had bested a powerful white parade, if only on one Saturday afternoon in front of a housing project on Orleans Avenue. In this way Dute’s funeral, a community-based performance of the celebration of one man’s life, managed to immobilize the cortege of ®oats representing the hegemonic cultural forms of Mardi Gras and the tourism industry it serves. This particular jazz funeral, a sacred funeral procession, which is emphatically and self-consciously “owned” by the black community, interrupted and even displaced a mainstream cultural institution, claiming urban space for its own distinctive celebration of life through death. The funeral for Mr. Lazard emphasized his achievements and strengths, which enabled him to live a life of dignity and respect in the interstices of a highly inequitable society. And the community’s homage to him thus became a collective accomplishment and an af¤rming declaration of membership in a noble lineage for all those who, through their gestures of commemoration , claim this man as a departed “ancestor.” Community-Based Second Lines and Funerals Participation in funerals in New Orleans as in many other cultures is a profound way of strengthening and repairing social fabric, which in this city is severely weakened by poverty, joblessness, violence , class inequities, and race-based segregation. The neighborhoodbased funerals are often sponsored by African-American benevolent societies, usually known as “social clubs” or “social and pleasure clubs.” Operating in the city since at least the late eighteenth century ( Jankowiak, Regis, and Turner 1989, 5; Jacobs 1980; Blassingame 1973, 13, 166–71) and playing an increasingly important role after the Civil War, social clubs historically combined benevolent functions (such as providing insurance bene¤ts to members) with “pleasure ” in providing for the collective entertainment of its members. Contemporary social clubs are active in their communities throughout the year, giving dances, balls, birthday parties, and fund-raisers, and organizing massive anniversary parades known as “second lines.” These parades, sponsored by over forty parading organizations , take place nearly every Sunday afternoon and routinely inBlackness and Politics of Memory in New Orleans / 39 volve from two to ¤ve thousand people...

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