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10
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
MARCH | APRIL 2015
I
t was the Clown Prince of New Orleans
Rhythm & Blues, Ernie K-Doe, who
once said: “I’m not positive, but I think
all music came from New Orleans.”
It is a sublime theory, simple yet elegant.
But it’s hard to know whether K-Doe was
being serious or not. After all, this is the
man who also said:
“There aren’t but three songs that will last for
eternity.One is ‘Amazing Grace.’Another is
‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ And the third
is ‘Mother-in-Law,’ because as long as there
are people on this earth, there will always be
mother-in-laws.”
K-Doe was,as the saying goes,a complicated
man.
But here’s the thing: K-Doe was very close
to the truth. About all music coming from
New Orleans, that is. ( Judging where his
biggest hit, “Mother-in-Law,” ranks in the
eternal music canon is above my pay grade.)
If he had just cast his gaze past the New
Orleans city limits, he would have come
upon a little known truth of staggering
implication: Not all music comes from New
Orleans. A lot of it does. But all music
does
come from Louisiana.
With utmost respect for the great history
of neighboring Mississippi, I submit that
Louisiana is the Cradle of American Music.
The few musical styles that were not born in
Louisiana were indelibly stamped with its
influence. The few musical styles that were
not rebranded by Louisiana are probably
not worth listening to.
I’m not making this up. My examination
of this matter has been exhaustive, my
research methodology unassailable, my
academic scholarship unimpeachable and
my conclusion infallible.
And unlike the amateur musicologist Mr.
K-Doe, I offer more than three songs to
support my thesis.
To begin, everyone knows New Orleans is
the birthplace of jazz. I think we’ve got a
consensus among the experts on this one.
But where historians have it wrong is in
the proclamation that jazz is the only true
original American music form.
That’s the sort of stuff you hear aesthetes and
intellectuals prater on about at fancy dinner
parties. But it’s not the only true American
musical art form. Hell, it’s not even the only
one that began in New Orleans!
The elites don’t like to soil their effete
jazz bona fides with music that is not as
sophisticated. Not as….civilized. But they
know the truth: That rap music originally
comes from New Orleans as well.
What is rap, after all? Musical stylings
born of the streets, resistant to the
dehumanization of an entire class of people,
characterized by boastful word play, sexual
innuendo, heated political rhetoric and
rejection of the white establishment, all set
to a polyrhythmic percussive backbeat, as
a means of proclaiming pride, virility and
one’s inherent value as a human being.
Now, let’s go back to Congo Square in
the heart of New Orleans, two hundred
years. Here, on Sunday afternoons, slaves
from around the region were permitted to
gather together for a few brief hours that
approached the closest thing to freedom
most would ever experience.
What did the men do on these Sunday
afternoons? They gathered together to
express their individuality and humanity.
While drummers pounded out syncopated
drum beats, men took turns leading
call-and-response chants, affirmed their
masculinity, decried their oppression at the
hands of white masters.
They challenged the mores of the day with
a form of music white people found both
puzzling and menacing. In other words,
they were freestyling. In other words, with
elegant and original wordplay, they were
rapping.
Another genre created in New Orleans
was rock and roll. Fusty historians like to
natter on about its derivation from country
music or an appropriation of blues chord
progressions.
They fall all over themselves debating
whether the first pure rock and roll record
was “Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill
Haley and the Comets” in 1955 or “Rocket
88” by Jackie Bronston and the Delta Cats
in 1951.
Well dig this, all you cats: Here’s the straight
dope: In 1947, a record producer named
by
Chris Rose
the
Food & Music
issue
The
Keys
to the Coast