Jazz & Blues band in Bourbon Street, New Orleans
History,  Independent travel,  New Orleans,  North America,  Photography,  Travel Blog,  USA

New Orleans And All That Jazz

April 24, 2024 /

“Hey y’all. Y’all havin’ a good time?”

Everyone responds.

“O’ course y’all havin’ a good time. You is in Nawlins and in Nawlins everyone has a good time. If you ain’t havin’ a good time, den you is in da wrong place”

And so the scene is set for our time in New Orleans…..

We’ve given ourselves some changes of scene which have bordered on culture shock in the past, but we’re not sure we’ve ever made quite such a leap as this one. One minute we’re in the Amazon rainforest listening to the gentle lapping of the waters of the Rio Negro, the next we’re taking a stroll down Bourbon Street, New Orleans with our ears full of razzmatazz. One small move from trees to sleaze, 24 hours from tranquility to iniquity.

Bourbon Street in New Orleans
Bourbon Street
Bourbon Street in New Orleans
Bourbon Street

One day we’re listening to the calls of exotic birds, the next it’s blasts of rock or the foot stomping beats of jazz. Walking down Bourbon Street when we’ve just blown into town from Amazona is about as big a jump as you can imagine: we may as well be on a different planet. Gaudily coloured neon signs invite the passer by into a multitude of strip joints, topless bars and places with names like “The Barely Legal Club”. The whole street smells of stale beer and marijuana. Gangs of inebriated men lean over wooden balconies, leering at passing women and draping a banner which says “show us your tits”. Shops sell T-shirts bearing obscene slogans; girls in scanty lingerie mingle with the crowd to tempt men into “gentleman’s clubs”. Just when you thought the encouragement of misogyny was on the way out….

Bourbon Street in New Orleans
Bourbon Street
Musicians in Bourbon Street in New Orleans
Street musicians, Bourbon Street

But this is New Orleans and, when I jokingly eschew the cocktail list in the breakfast cafe next morning at 9am, the waitress says, “don’t rule it out Sir, you gotta remember where you are”. Of course, Bourbon Street is just one street, and no one street defines a city anywhere on Earth. It doesn’t do so here, either. The crossover in New Orleans, or NOLA as they like to call it, is undoubtedly the music: Bourbon Street’s music may be loud but it’s joyful and it’s terrific, and music is most definitely one thing which DOES define this particular city.

Bourbon Street in New Orleans
Nightlife in Bourbon Street
Bourbon Street in New Orleans
Nightlife in Bourbon Street
Streetcar in Canal street, New Orleana
Streetcar in Canal Street

The appropriately named Louis Armstrong Park centres around not just a statue of Satchmo himself but also the evocative space of Congo Square. During the time when the plantations were filled with slave labour, Congo Square was the place where, in the short spells of time away from the gruelling work, usually on Sundays, slaves from West Africa would congregate to remember the homeland and celebrate their culture with drumming, dancing and music. It must have felt like a few short hours of joy prised from their tortuous lives.

Monument in Congo Square, Louis Armstrong park, New Orleans
Slave monument in Congo Square
Statue of Louis Armstrong in Louis Armstrong park, New Orleans
Louis Armstrong
Monument in Louis Armstrong park, New Orleans
Monument to Jazz

Hundreds would gather. As different factions mixed, so the music evolved until eventually on this very spot jazz music was born. You don’t very often get to stand on a spot with such strong claims to be the birthplace of a major music genre. We can only guess what New Orleans is like at Mardi Gras or during the jazz festival which actually starts just after we leave: this is another city which seems to live in the grip of a perpetual fiesta.

Monument in Louis Armstrong park, New Orleans
Tribute to the joy of Jazz

The music scene is simply breathless, and not just in Bourbon Street either. It’s toned down counterpart Frenchmen Street bursts with the sounds of live bands and, even away from the main areas, authentic jazz clubs issue soulful strains from darkened interiors. No exaggeration, there is simply music everywhere in New Orleans, most of it live, bands in bars, buskers in streets, impromptu performances on sidewalks and in plazas. And make no mistake about it, the quality is consistently high: soul divas, guitarists and trumpeters who are so good that one can only wonder how and why the big break favours just a few lucky ones and passes so many of these talented people by.

Blues band in Bourbon Street, New Orleans
A taste of New Orleans
Blues band in New Orleans
And more

On day two in New Orleans, my daughter Lindsay and her wife Stacey fly over from their home in California and join us for most of our time in the city. It is just great to see them again and spend time together exploring and unravelling this vibrant, pulsating enigma of a place. 

A number of significant factors merge together to create the patchwork of New Orleans’ history, most notably slavery on the plantations, music, food, the founding by the French and, of course, hurricanes. The utter devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is still in the collective mind nearly 20 years later, physical scars still visible and mental scars still bringing pain. 

New Orleans and the Mississippi river
Across the Mississippi
Mississippi river, New Orleans
Mississippi and the levy

New Orleans sits on the banks of the wide, sweeping Mississippi as it ambles towards the Gulf of Mexico a few miles downstream, the city famously sitting mostly below sea level and built entirely on swamp land. Surrounding the city even now are hundreds of square miles of swamp and water – it’s so easy to picture the devastation wreaked by Katrina when land is as low lying and as flat as this. When the levies built to protect the town were breached by the storm, New Orleans was submerged by the relentless waters, bringing an astonishing 108 billion dollars worth of damage and causing over 1800 deaths. Katrina is still to this day a major topic of conversation, such was its terrible impact: it crops up in every guide’s commentary and in every local’s story.

Devastation of hurricane Katrina in Ne Orleans
Katrina damage still visible

More than three hundred years since founding by the French and 250 years since they were ousted by Spain, the Gallic influence is very obvious and very visible in everything from street names (Decatur, Chartres, Toulouse etc) to cuisine, with beignets and cafe au lait being an everyday indulgence for citizens of the “Big Easy”. It should be said, though, that in food, as in music, the creole influences outweigh the European.

French quarter, New Orleans
French quarter, New Orleans
Cafe du Monde in New Orleans
Cafe du Monde
Beignets in Cafe du Monde in New Orleans
Beignets

It is impossible to overstate the role played by “NOLA” as a slave trading centre. As a major port on the Mississippi in a climate entirely suitable for the cultivation of sugar cane, large numbers of sizeable plantations grew, so creating a need for manpower in that labour intensive industry. Over 135,000 slaves passed through the port to be traded here, the vast majority from West Africa, with trading posts cropping up throughout the city, making New Orleans the largest slave market in the US. Market squares, parks, civic halls and even the lobbies of elegant hotels played host to the trade in human flesh.

Whitney plantation main house near New Orleans
Plantation house, Whitney
Whitney plantation overseers house near New Orleans
Overseers house, Whitney plantation
Whitney plantation memorial near New Orleans
Whitney plantation rail trucks near New Orleans
Whitney Plantation

Thirty minutes out of town the Whitney Plantation is today an open air museum with many of the actual slave houses, kitchens and workplaces from both Whitney and other plantations still intact and presented as they were in the days of intense farming. Personal accounts from former slaves tell of their brutal treatment, both out in the fields and as retribution for perceived misdemeanours. Boys as young as 10 were removed from families and sold into slavery; female domestic slaves presented to house guests for sexual gratification; workers sent into the fields to complete gruelling work from “kantsy to kantsy”, meaning from “can’t see” to “can’t see”, ie dawn till dusk.

Whitney plantation slave house near New Orleans
Slave house, Whitney plantation
Whitney plantation monument near New Orleans
Whitney plantation slave house near New Orleans
Slave houses , Whitney plantation

Just as with our time in Jamaica, it’s impossible not to be completely humbled by the evolution from the terrible history of enforced migration and the brutality of slavery, to the joyous and proud life lead today by the descendants of those very slaves. Fascinating that the brief moment of freedom grabbed each Sunday in Congo Square was to give birth to jazz, a music genre associated with enjoyment and fulfilment. Learning this history hugely shifts our understanding of precisely what this music really represents: and this is only the beginning of piecing together the story of this unique city.

Whitney plantation monument “returning the chains” near New Orleans
Returning the chains
The filed of Angels memorial Whitney plantation near New Orleans
Field of Angels

Whitney plantation church near New Orleans
Monument in church Whitney plantation slave house near New Orleans
Whitney plantation church

We are to see much more of how life in NOLA has evolved into the eclectic and diverse extremes that form its illustrious character today. Too much to fit into one post…..more to follow….

Oh, and yeah, we’re havin’ a good time y’all.

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