Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
That's excellent!!

 i feel the same about the Rads, they're the only ones who do what
they do. and while I know that they're out there doing new things (Reggie's
New Orleans Suspects are *awesome*), i was just curious if there was
anybody, young anybodys really, trying to fill that niche.

Dave & Tommy will be up my way soon. And I'll been putting bugs in some
local ears for the Suspects. (I was the one who used to put on the Philly
'Krewe' shows.)

Their departure from my musical world has left an even bigger hole than when
there was suddenly no more Grateful Dead.
  

    
tho i'm very glad the end wasn't abrupt...   doubt I'll see Zeke again
unless its down there.
  

    
John, I'd like to know what you think about the government's role in
the rebuilding of the city ( and running parallel with that your thread
about how the musicians are rebuilding their loves and attempting to
restore and maintain their culture).

In David Simon's "Treme" there are story arcs about the public housing
projects, building permits, "carpetbagger" contractors, illegal alien
workers.  What is your take on how the rebuilding/redevelopment process
is going?  And finally, are the helping, hurting, or having no impact
on the musicians' efforts?
  

    
loves=lives  (same thing really)
  

    
Time to remind non-Well folks that if they have questions for John
they can e-mail them to inkwell@well.com and we'll pass them along.
  

    
When I went to NOLA only few months after the storm, I was surprised
to see Mexican eateries.  Maybe I had just missed them on earlier trips
to Jazz fest, but I thought there was a new influx of Mexican laborers
and cuisine.  Is that anything anybody else notices?
  

    
The government is rebuilding the city but the usual politics and
corruption problems have interfered with the process. Louisiana is a
Republican state and New Orleans was a solidly democratic city, so
powerful interests aligned with governor Jundal and senator Vitter are
happy to see the city's population scattered and beaten down. The
poorest communities have pretty much been eradicated. Low income
housing projects were shuttered in favor of small single family homes.
The results look nice but far fewer people are able to live in them.
The school system has been abandoned and "privatized" which means
education for the poor has pretty much disappeared. Same with health
care after the closure of Charity hospital. The most visible
improvements have been made by the citizens themselves who've taken on
a lot of the work rebuilding indidual houses, starting programs to
teach kids about music etc. Doctors have donated their services through
organizations like the Musicians Clinic and Art docs. Brad Pitt's Make
It Right foundation has helped turn the lower ninth ward into a
proving ground for green technology, as opposed to the disastrous Red
Cross boondoggle in the inappropriately-termed "Musicians Village" in
the upper ninth ward. Elsewhere the government has actually gotten in
the way in many cases. 

Mitch Landrieu, the new mayor, seems to be moving things in the right
direction but time will tell. If Obama wins a second term he might be
able to help New Orleans. The problems remain staggering however, and
the city faces a completely hostile political environment in Baton
Rouge.

There has been a large influx of Mexicans into the city since Katrina
and there are several good Mexican restaurants and taco trucks. It's
hard not to notice. 
  

    
I'll be traveling to SXSW Monday and preparing to moderate a panel on
the musicians' role in the city's recovery as depicted both in New
Atlantis and Treme. The panel will take place March 17 at 12:30.
Hopefully this discussion will have some bearing on it. 
  

    
>>the disastrous Red Cross boondoggle in the inappropriately-termed
"Musicians Village" in the upper ninth ward.

I haven't heard about this: can you say a bit more?
  

    
The Red Cross boondoggle and Habitat For Humanity's Musicians Village
are separate issues but are illustrative about everything that went
wrong in New Orleans after Katrina. The Red Cross received millions in
donations for relief but at least some of the money was misallocated.
The Times-Picayune did a thorough job of covering this. Habitat for
Humanity raised money for the so-called "Musicians Village" in the
upper ninth ward. Much of that money went to administration and
advertising costs that had nothing to do with New Orleans, a bait and
switch that was uncovered by Anderson Cooper. Only a handful of the
houses eventually went to musicians.  Many musicians applied but were
turned down because their finances weren't in order, but in the wake of
Katrina musicians were out of work and had lost their homes so the
financial requirements to get into the "Musicians Village" were a kind
of Catch-22. Habitat did little outreach to musicians, but when the bad
press started rolling in they had an army of lawyers on hand to
threaten journalists and musicians who told the truth about what was
going on. A smear campaign was waged against Katy Reckdahl, whose
reporting on this issue in the Times-Picayune really told the story:
http://www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/katrina/projects/Struggling/story_So
urNote.php
Davis Rogan, who wrote a satiric song about the recovery called "The
New Ninth Ward" and will be on Saturday's New Atlantis panel at SXSW,
was approached by one of these lawyers after a gig and told never to
play the song again. 
In a related scandal, people who did get houses in the "Musicians
Village" began coming down with illnesses related to toxic drywall used
in the original construction. They were all forced to move out of the
"Musicians Village" houses, which had to be rebuilt. 
And these are the good stories, where something positive actually did
happen. Then there are the stories of the massive fraud and skimming of
government relief funds perpetrated by Haliburton, the toxic trailers
that poisoned so many people after the flood (and ended up being sent
to Haiti after the earthquake left so many there homeless), the
disaster of the "Road Home" program etc. It's no wonder that so many
people concluded that the only way back was to do it themselves.  
  These are bigger issues than I had the opportunity to write about in
the scope of my book and are worth examining in greater detail.
  

    
John that sounds like a disaster heaped upon a disaster.

Wherever I live in the US I always taken the temperature of the local
political climate.  Once I've gotten up to speed on the cast of
characters and the key "policy" issues then it is easier to evaluate
what you read in the newspapers every day.  

New Orleans and Louisiana are well-known as corrupt places with
oligarchies that dominate life.  You also are from Brooklyn and I'm
sure you have opinions on how politics works in NYC.  How would you
compare the 2 places in terms of how they deal with disasters, how they
make sure they get their cut, and how the population sees the
government.

The town in NJ where I live has a mayor who has held the office since
1967, he owns the real estate company, all his family and cronies are
set up, and his public face is that he brings the money from the state
and the feds to "get things done."  Meanwhile the residents just roll
their eyes and say "What are you going to do?" 
  

    
They seem to have a different system for dealing with that in
Connecticut - they elect a new crook mayor every five years or so, and
then at the end of his first or second term, prosecute him and send him
to prison.  There must be a whole wing in the state pen for former
mayors of Naugatuck.  I guess it keeps the cronies and relatives from
becoming too entrenched.
  

    
For a moment there I thought you were talking about Governors from
Illinois.
  

    
If it were a horse race I wonder who would win?  NJ, NY, RI, LA, IL?
  

    
john--i have a completely unrelated question.  This came up a while back on
the well and no one seemed to have a pointer.

Do you know of any video footage of Huey P. Smith playing the piano?

Like many, I would have loved to have seen him play live.  I can't track
down any sort of film or video of a performance and wondered if you knew of
any.
  

    
No comparison. New Yorkers generally see the local politics as totally
slanted toward Wall Street, real estate developers and the rich. All
you need to do is study the ads in the New York Times to see who the
paper believes its audience really is. How much do you think Bloomberg
has enhanced his financial empire using the power of the mayor's office
while he's been in there? Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz
is an out and out crook who has sold out the community to real estate
developers. Brooklyn is getting to look more and more like Manhattan
southeast every day. So many New Yorkers are dependent on Wall Street
(or rich relatives) that they willingly participate in this massive
boondoggle. The thievery going on in New Orleans is chump change
compared to what's happening in New York. I'm in Texas right now and
the front page of Monday's American-Statesman had a big story on how a
contractor close to gov. Rick Perry swindled the state out of millions
in federal disaster aid. How much of that money went into Perry's
campaign coffers? How much kickback money is Louisiana gov. Bobby
Jindal getting from the funds supposedly earmarked for Louisiana's
recovery. The whole political system from the Supreme Court down is
completely corrupt, fixing elections and allowing unlimited secret PAC
money to drive our political discourse. Who's kidding who? We're all
being robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight.
  

    
John do you think the musicians are going to be able to pull it off?

I'm afraid that they will be shunted off, victims of gentrification,
relegated to the role of quaint tourist attraction.
  

    
In a very real sense they already have pulled it off. The city's
cultural institutions are thriving. The influx of young creative people
from all over the globe, people who came to help the city and decided
to make it their home,have brought another level to the discourse. Of
course it remains an open question whether the communities that have
been decimated will produce the cultural tradition bearers of the
future. Only time will tell. If Bobby Jindal has his way  and cuts off
all education funding the future remains grim. But the musicians are
out there pressing the case and I'm happy to say they show no signs of
giving up the cause. 
  

    
i swoon everytime i'm listening to 'OZ online and hear the club listings for
the weekend. i'd never be home if i lived down there. can't wait to visit
again SOON. (The Suspects and the Malone Bros are at Tip's this weekend, for
instance.)
  

    
For anybody who is not a listener, that's the lifeline that is

   http://www.wwoz.org/
  

    
This has been such an evocative conversation. Really appreciating
everybody.
  

    
By the way, anyone in Austin for SXSW can find out a lot more about
this subject Saturday afternoon at my New Atlantis panel. We've got
Alison Fensterstock from the Times-Picayune, Davis Rogan from Treme and
the award winning album The Real Davis, and three direct descendents
of the man who invented R&B, Dave Bartholomew. Dave's son Don B and his
two sons will be on the panel. They are all hip hop producers and
artists working in New Orleans and will have a lot to say about the
future of the city's music.
  

    
Not anyone; just people registered. However, it'll be streaming online
in a week or two, if it follows the model of most SXSW panels. And
there's no reason for you to run away before you reflect on how it went
-- either here or in the SXSW Inkwell topic!
  

    
After Katrina hit, i was a volunteer at the convention center here in
Austin.  As with many cities in Texas, the convention center became a
temporary emergency shelter for folks from New Orleans.  During this time, I
met many people who had left New Orleans for the first time ever while
fleeing Katrina. The ecology of the city and their specific neighborhoods
was such that they had never ventured from them before.  Although this made
sense after I thought about it, i was also astounded by it.  Does this sort
of New Orleans exist in the post-Katrina era?

Also, while I love the music and what I know of the culture of New Orleans,
I am definitely not of that city.  Yet, New Orleans has such an old,
visible, and vibrant culture that I think it acts as a sort of beacon for a
certain type of American rootlessness.  People who are hungry for a
connection to an older, rich culture are attracted to it--both in
superficial and deeper ways. My impression is that New Orleans is both very
friendly to visitors like me, but, conversely, that it's much harder to
actually become part of the culture itself--that it would be a much longer
experience for an outsider before they no longer felt like an outsider but
they were truly of the city.  As someone who moved their from elsewhere--
what was your experience? At this point do you identify yourself as someone
who is of the city?  Have there been cultural or social difficulties that
you have had to undergo in adapting to the city?
  

    
I'd also be interested in your views on the panel yesterday. Since it
dealt largely with a television program I have no (legal) access to, I
left after a while, but I did find it interesting that there were two
generations of Bartholemews involved and that they're still at the
forefront of the contemporary music scene there.