Strike Up the Band

Has there been music written since Katrina that’s worth hearing?

What’s happened more than anything is that people have brought those songs out and they’ve acquired new meaning. A song like “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans” is a very schmaltzy song that most people would normally consider tourist music. That has been elevated into a new position. One of the most obvious [new] things is the Allen Toussaint-Elvis Costello collaboration, “River in Reverse.” In terms of inside local culture folk, James Andrews, a trumpet player who calls himself the “Satchmo of the Ghetto,” did a really nice tune that we aired called “Katrina, Katrina.” It’s a takeoff on “Corinna, Corinna.” The new Wynton Marsalis work, “Congo Square,” has got a whole call and response section in it. [It features] improvising about FEMA, criticizing the Red Cross and “why don’t you listen to what the poor people say?” It’s very much in that classic African American improvisatory protest group communal singing [tradition].

And local rappers the Legendary KO almost instantly released “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” riffing off Kanye West.

Yeah, that kind of thing for sure. Then Juvenile had that video which I thought was very powerful and a great way to connect to his audience. Do uptown white New Orleneans see that? No. But that communicated to a whole other audience.

You mention songs that take on new meaning. The one that really hit me was Randy Newman’s “Louisiana.”

It’s interesting about that song: you can portray him as the Jewish Tin Pan Alley West humorous songwriter, but, it’s made it here. It’s been pulled in and made our own. And he has a new stripped-down version of it on the Nonesuch record - just him and the piano. It’s in some ways more powerful.