Brass Bands of New Orleans (1,381 words)

Section: Music

Brass Bands

The brass band has come to represent the distinctiveness of New Orleans, most

notably in the African-American cultural traditions of the jazz funeral and the second

line parade. The brass band is made up of a tuba, trombones, trumpets, clarinet and/or

saxophone, snare drum, and bass drum, and the portability of the ensemble has allowed

the bands to travel beyond the streets and onto the stages of neighborhood barrooms,

concert halls, and international festivals. In each context, the role of the brass band is to

bring people together in an expression of collective pleasure, communicating a uniquely

New Orleans experience.

Early History

Brass bands have a long history in New Orleans, drawing upon both European

and African performance traditions. European military bands and Sousa-type marching

bands were ubiquitous in New Orleans, as elsewhere, throughout the nineteenth century.

Simultaneously, there were African traditions of playing music and dancing the ring

shout during the Sunday gatherings of slaves in Congo Square. There were also mixed-

race Creoles and free people of color who were professional instrumentalists during the

time of slavery. In the decades after Emancipation in 1865, the first black brass bands

began performing in public events such as funerals, baseball games, and business

openings. By the twentieth century, brass bands such as Excelsior and Onward had
become an integral part of a black community made up of Creoles, urban blacks, and

freed slaves who were now classified together under the segregationist laws of Jim Crow.

The development of the New Orleans brass band was entwined with a new

musical form that emerged around 1900. Jazz synthesized ragtime, blues, spirituals,

marches, European dances, Latin American rhythms, and American popular songs into a

specifically African American musical style. It emphasized collective improvisation,

audience participation, rhythmic syncopation and repetition, and the use of pentatonic

scales and “blue notes.” The brass band was a formative influence on early jazz; Jelly

Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and virtually every other early jazz

musician performed in brass bands. In addition, most jazz bands, including those of

Buddy Bolden and Kid Ory, doubled as brass bands with minor modifications (typically

substituting the rhythm section of piano, bass, and banjo for tuba and drums). In turn,

jazz performance styles influenced the New Orleans brass band, allowing it to develop as

the most significant black brass band tradition in the United States.

While jazz developed into an American art form, brass band music remained

closely tied to the rhythms of everyday life in New Orleans. The jazz funeral, the city’s

most emblematic sacred tradition, revolves around the beat of the brass band, beginning

with slow dirges and ending with up-tempo dance songs. In second line parades,

community organizations called Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs hire brass bands and

parade through their neighborhoods for miles each Sunday afternoon. Over the years, the

music and dancing at funerals and parades have been continuously updated in terms of

tempo, style, and repertoire, allowing these traditions to remain vital to each new

generation of New Orleanians.

 In 1945, trumpeter Bunk Johnson assembled a brass band of “pick-up” musicians

to make a record for Bill Russell’s American Music label. The album New Orleans

Parade was the first thorough audio documentation of a New Orleans brass band and was

followed by landmark recordings by the Eureka Brass Band in 1951 and the Young

Tuxedo Brass Band in 1957. These and other records attempted to faithfully capture the

most traditional ensembles playing established repertoire, such as the dirge “Just a Closer

Walk With Thee” and the upbeat spiritual “Sing On,” but the Eureka’s performance of

the jazz standard “Lady Be Good” demonstrates that brass band music had always been a

form of popular music that accommodated emerging songs and styles. By the early

1960s, rhythm & blues songs had become commonplace in brass band performances.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Olympia Brass Band was renowned for its enormous range

and flexibility. Saxophonist Harold Dejan and trumpeter Milton Batiste would lead the

band in a modest style for traditional funerals and concerts for tourists while adding the

more progressive sound of Fats Domino and Professor Longhair for second line

parades in the community.

Brass Band Renaissance

By the late 1960s, worry arose among musicians about the future of the brass

band tradition. Many young instrumentalists attuned to the politics and aesthetics of the

black power movement were playing funk and soul music exclusively. As result,

musician and scholar Danny Barker formed the Fairview Baptist Church Christian

Marching Band specifically to recruit young players and indoctrinate them into the

tradition. The Fairview band (and its later incarnation as the Hurricane Brass Band)
sparked a revival of traditional brass band music and became a training ground for

numerous musicians. Clarinetist Michael White’s Liberty Jazz Band and trumpeter

Gregg Stafford’s Original Tuxedo Brass Band are but two examples of Fairview alumni

maintaining successful careers as traditionalists.

Also out of the Fairview band came new musical approaches that redefined the

brass band tradition and greatly expanded its audience. Anthony “Tuba Fats” Lacen

helped establish the tuba as the defining instrument, performing for tips in Jackson

Square and in community parades with the Chosen Few Brass Band. Most

significantly, four musicians who had played in the Fairview and Hurricane bands –

Gregory Davis, Charles Joseph, Kirk Joseph, and Kevin Harris – joined with Roger

Lewis, Ephram Townes, Benny Jones, and others to form the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Beginning on the streets and in local nightclubs like the Glass House, and

eventually on record and on tour, the Dirty Dozen blazed a trail that the majority of

younger bands have followed. The Dirty Dozen made the “back row” (tuba and drums)

more prominent, especially with Kirk Joseph’s virtuosic tuba parts, and also revamped

the “front line” (trumpets, trombones, and saxophone), modeling their style after modern

bebop jazz. The music was funkier and faster than that of their predecessors, as heard on

the landmark 1984 recording My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now, which brought the group

international acclaim and sparked what became known as the “brass band renaissance.”

While dozens of popular bands have followed in the footsteps of the Dirty Dozen,

none have been as effective as the Rebirth Brass Band in building a dedicated audience

by making tradition their own. Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, tuba player Philip Frazier,

and bass drummer Keith Frazier founded the band in the early 1980s while students at
Clark High School and eventually established themselves as the leaders of the local

scene. The primary innovator of the brass band tradition at the turn of the twenty-first

century, Rebirth composed signature songs such as “Do What’cha Wanna” and “Feel

Like Funkin’ It Up,” both built around Philip Frazier’s memorable tuba melodies. Their

performance schedule balances second line parades, weekly shows at the Maple Leaf

Bar, and frequent performances throughout the U.S.

Beginning in the 1990s, hip-hop has shaped the sound of contemporary brass

bands, most notably in the original songs of the Soul Rebels. Beginning as the Young

Olympians, a traditional band mentored by the mighty Olympia Brass Band, the members

broke off to form the Soul Rebels and made waves with their debut album Let Your Mind

Be Free in 1994. The title track is a showpiece of the modern sound, flowing in and out

of spoken-word raps, group chants, and Calypso-inflected horn parts. Like the most

popular songs of Rebirth, “Let Your Mind Be Free” has become a local standard that

every brass band must be able to perform. The 2005 CD Rebelution took the brass band

even further into hip-hop territory, matching horns with drum machines and digital

samplers.

Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the New Orleans brass band has only grown in

stature. In the space of a few years, the Hot 8 Brass Band has gone from playing strictly

parties, parades, and club gigs to performing regularly in Europe and across America.

New bands made up of students, such as the Baby Boyz Brass Band, whose members

attend McDonogh 35 High School, now point to Rebirth and the Hot 8 as their mentors.

The tradition has thrived, in part, because it continues to express the experiences of new
generations without ever losing its identity as a distinctive and durable form of local

music.

Suggested Readings:

Berry, Jason. “Brass Forward.” New Orleans Magazine 34.7 (April 2000): 58-59.

Burns, Mick. Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

Schafer, William J. Brass Bands and New Orleans Jazz. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1977.

White, Michael. “The New Orleans Brass Band: A Cultural Tradition.” In The Triumph
of the Soul: Cultural and Psychological Aspects of African American Music,
edited by Ferdinand Jones and Arthur C. Jones, 69-96. Westport, CT: Praeger,
2001.

External Links:

Sakakeeny, Matt. “’Under the Bridge;’ An Orientation to Soundscapes in New Orleans.”

Ethnomusicology. http://tulane.edu/liberal-
arts/music/upload/Sakakeeny_Ethno3.pdf