A Jazz Funeral

Led by two horses pulling an open carriage carrying the casket, a brass band, dressed in their Sunday best (which are not quite as nice as your Sunday best,) plays a slow, loose, dirge lamenting the loss of one of their own. Suddenly they stop and pause, then burst into a joyous sound, playing a jazz gospel version of the hymn “I’ll Fly Away.” For four straight hours the procession rolls along, with bands playing and people dancing in the streets. Behind the band a group of men dressed in various hues of orange, and carrying umbrellas, dance. The umbrellas whirl with the rhythm of the music. A crowd follows the band, waving their handkerchiefs in the air. Perhaps they are waving goodbye to their parted friend, or perhaps they are signaling to his ancestors that a good friend is coming to join him.

The web site of the Orleans Parish Coroner features a sound file of the coroner, Frank Minyard, playing the jazz trumpet. That seems appropriate. Music and death are deeply connected in New Orleans, and they always have been. The people of New Orleans are the kind of people that, when faced with death, dance.

In New Orleans they say that death is the ultimate celebration of life. It is a time to celebrate a life well lived, so they mark the event with a party. It is a time to rejoice. For blocks and blocks the sound of joy fills the air. How can we lose that now?

I have my doubts that the people of New Orleans are destined to return; the landlords and bankers will be selling their homes for pennies on the dollar. You can't really blame them for attempting to limit their losses. I can just imagine the Donald Trumps of the world wringing their hands in anticipation of the bargains to be had, and the new condos to be built. They may even build them to look like New Orleans, but the people of New Orleans won't be able to afford them.

I have never been to New Orleans, but it seems to me to be the city I know best. It is the city everyone seems to know on a personal level. No other US city is more defined by it's culture and heritage. It is not the wealth of New Orleans nor it's buildings that we know, it is the people that lived there. To rebuild New Orleans without them would be nothing but a movie set, or a theme park. Visiting a New Orleans without her people would be like visiting Epcot to see China.

So I do hope that the people of New Orleans will one day return to their city, but I am afraid that they have been scattered too far. They will be assimilated into the communities that have taken them in. Their culture, too, will be taken in, diluted by the melting pot, much of it lost. I can only hope that their will is strong, and that they change us more than we change them. Perhaps they will teach us to dance.