Coping with Words and Song: The New Orleans Jazz Funeral

-S^Coping with Words and Song: The New Orleans Jazz Funeral Marian Gray Secundy O, when the Saints go marching in O, when the Saints go marching in Lord, I want to be in that number When the Saints go marching in. — traditional Negro spiritual "When the Saints Go Marching In," familiar to jazz and church audiences alike, epitomizes the response of the Afro-American community to death. The closing theme for many New Orleans jazz funerals, the song is an upbeat acceptance and joyful embracing of the possibility of joining the saints in their march to heaven. As such, it illustrates the literature and music created by black writers and musicians responding to death. Funeral rituals and the ways black folk mourn are vitally important for helping blacks maintain mental health. They enhance self-acceptance, acceptance of others, and acceptance of nature. The black church and black music, in or out of the church, allow catharsis, survival, and coping. Dispossessed, burdened people will not believe themselves beyond God's loving providence forever. Denied much on earth, many believe that God's enduring love and power will provide when they get to heaven. In the words of an old spiritual: All of God's children got shoes. So when I get to heaven, Going to put on my shoes And shout all over God's heaven.1 Literature and Medicine 8 (1989) 100-105 © 1989 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Marian Gray Secundy 101 Dying represents an opportunity for vindicating faith and restoring humanity . For many in the past and for significant numbers now, God, his angels, his chariot. . . are never far from this world of sorrow: "I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? ... A band of angels coming after me."2 A particular funeral ritual that has made extraordinarily rich contributions to American culture is the New Orleans jazz funeral. In its musical traditions and its lyrics we have perhaps some of the most noble expressions of the human spirit found in history. The jazz funeral was popular in New Orleans in the late 1800s and early to mid-1900s. The Dahomeans and the Yoruba of Western Africa laid its foundations.3 Much of its musical tradition emanates also from French martial music played in funeral processions in the 1800s. Historical reports also document the use of bands for funerals in the German, Italian, French, and Irish communities of New Orleans.4 Secret societies, organized through fraternal associations, assured individual members a proper burial through the pooled financial resources of members and the family of the deceased. William Russell and Stephen Smith, writing about New Orleans music, report that "everyone in New Orleans belonged to some secret order or society. When the member died, he had to have a band. 'He was nothin' if he didn't have a band!' "5 Sponsoring a decent burial was a significant obligation. Procedures and activities associated with the jazz bands were in themselves a ritual within a ritual and followed detailed formulas. Methods of assembly, order of processional, costumes, hymn selection, dirge and march tempos were all quite specific. The jazz brass band usually participated in the wake prior to the funeral. On the day of the funeral, the band would accompany the family and body from home to church, playing familiar hymns, then wait quietly outside during the funeral service before accompanying the mourners to the cemetery. The moment the band signaled the conclusion of the professional segment of the funeral was called "turning or cutting the body loose." This occurred either at a predetermined point or at the cemetery. Once at the cemetery the band might play additional hymns or a trumpeter might play "Taps." Upon regrouping, the band would play a cadence in bright march tempo. Picking up its beat as it progressed, the band would then be rejoined by "second liners," young people not associated with the family or band who danced along behind: "The bands had a way of strutting, of swinging their bodies, and of turning corners in spectacular fashion, and the boys who marched along on the sidewalk with them mimicked every action."6 The jazz bands from this era of New...