N-A-W-L-E-A-N-S

Visit To  "Our Roots"

 

I've been away for a week.  I had to travel to the New Orleans area to bury a younger brother.  I've travelled through that city several times, but never stopped, until now.  The last time through, I was fleeing from several hurricanes in Miami -- only to cross New Orleans FOUR months before Katrina.  Katrina will, perhaps, go down in history as the final proof of Peter Drucker's assertion that "government" cannot "protect" ANYBODY.

 

Following the ceremonies, I had a few hours to search for Kongo Square, and the New Orleans of Louis Armstrong  ("Pops", "Satchmo").  We found it co-located in a park dedicated to Louis Armstrong.

 

Except for the general decay of "The Quarter", Black New Orleans was scarcely in evidence, except for around the edges.  Gentrification is in full force in the French Quarter, and also circling around that real estate totally devastated by Katrina.

 

We were told that you could find a few blacks playing original Jazz in the Quarter, but mostly at street intersections.  As we searched in the narrow streets of the Quarter, a couple of "apparitions" occurred: in a narrow intersection, framed by a partial block of housing, appeared an extremely obese European on a Segway (the new, two-wheeled  mopeds you see on T.V.)  Then there was another, and another, ... for a total of about a dozen tourists.  I was struck by a vision of "pigs on wheels", riding through a graveyard.

 

When we arrived at the next intersection beyond the "wheeled" ones, we found our black Jazz players, surrounded by a small group of listeners.  It was truly worth the search.  The music was heavenly; starkly unlike the appropriated Jazz being played by non-blacks in the few clubs now open outside the "beer run" on Ramparts St.  The leader of the black group lost everything in Katrina and commutes from out of state to play his music in the Quarter.

 

The police showed up to scatter the Jazz musicians and clear that block for a "parade". We stayed to see it, and a group of about fifty Jewish people paraded by, led by a bride and groom and including a "Jazz Band", all Jewish, embedded among the marching guests. They approached the intersection and wheeled to the right; disappearing deeper into the Quarter. They arrived, and disappeared, enveloped within some "ether".

 

We found the best part of the Quarters in Frenchman St.  The River Walk nearby was alive with Sunday Afternoon Seafood Festivals.  I also found a copy of Ned Sublette"s The World That Made New Orleans.   Most of us are in some way aware of Andy Jackson as an "Indian Fighter" protecting the United States in New Orleans; fighting battles with the British after the war of 1812 was won.

 

What we don't know as well are the roots of New Orleans, starting in 1634, with the French settlement of  Trois Rivie'res (Canada).  From the Spanish, through the French, the history of ALL of the Americas flowed North, and South, from the Caribbean after 1492.  The original peoples, the foods we now take for granted (even in Europe), and the emerging new peoples who will dominate America Del Norte, all came from the same place.

 

 We have obscured this history by emphasizing the European invasions after the Mayflower.  U.S. Citizens of all colors should, pay special attention to that history now, in 2012, as people of the entire Americas "brown".  One of the people I met in the Quarter was a "Shaman" of the Lakota Tradition, who remarked that time progresses in such a way as to marginalize those citizens who over-emphasize their "whiteness".  Their values, beliefs, activities, attitudes, approaches to "law", all portend a wrong-headedness for them and for their children, LOOKING FORWARD!

Stay Vigilant!

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