Sudan Dancin' in New Orleans - Sudan Social & Pleasure Club parade Nov. 12, 2006

Different Day...Same Old....or ... .Are Things Really Changing??

Went to a meeting a few weeks back....geez, we're all getting really meetinged out around here these days, but how else except through civic engagement are we to effect any chang????
Anyway, back to the meeting. It was a 3rd District planning meeting and our esteemed mayor C. Ray was there......
He announced one of his bright new ideas, one which came about as a result of his Labor Day economic development trip to NYC - "We're gonna bring Broadway to New Orleans!!!"

That's just plain backwards! What we need to do is bring New Orleans to Broadway.
I see more incredible dancers out on the street on a usual Sunday secondline than I ever saw on Broadway. Sorry New York...hard as y'all try ya can't dance - at least not like New Orleans can.........and lots of music biz in NYC, but the music itself is here, everywhere! The singers, songwriters, arrangers, horn players, guitar players, bass players, percussionists........All here.
Mardi Gras Indians, social aid & pleasure clubs, brass bands..........all here. New York needs us.........we need to bring New Orleans to Broadway.......C. Ray got it backward again.........but at least he's considering the issue, but also likely considering it, as so many so-called leaders aournd here usually do when it comes to developing the cultural economy - from the point of view of the tourism industry and importing audiences, as opposed to exporting our music and culture.
We're all pretty tired of waiting on these guys to get their acts together. Might help them to talk with some actual artists and musicians instead of tourism honchos. Course cats like Ray aren't interested in talking to the little people...the person on the street or the secondline........cuz they ain't the big money people. Ray ain't interested, despite appearances....like his psuedo folksy 'down' routine.
And where did the 28 million the Louisiana Recovery Authority have for marketing the state go?????
Yeah You Right! The usual places- for the usual lame television and newspaper ads - the New Orleans Tourism & Convention Bureau and the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation - None for the musicians out on the road, the touring musicians, who have always been the most effective marketers - yeah, they're still doin' it on their own dime, and still better than either of organizations mentioned above. It ain't right the way that the musicians are soooo underappreciated here.
When's the payday for the musicians????? Like the payday Wynton Marasalis received back in April????
Hey Mitch Landrieu!!!! Hey Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism! Ya can't be just about tourism and not culture.....! When y'all gonna come through for some tour support for the city's musicians?
When are we gonna export our culture. Where are those strategies??????? Instead of these lambrained ideas for bring NYC/Broadway culture to New Orleans???? Or Lincoln Center productions. They have plenty of private capital to tap into - musicians here don't.....so let's not waste scarce public money and resources on propping-up New York culture as if we didn't have any of our own!
I'm working on some projects though that might, hopefully change some of that, which I'll begin writing on here soon.....
Thanks for reading, Sneakin' Sal

New Orleans One Year Later

September 1, 2005 I was unsure I would ever be in New Orleans again as I watched the city sit in what was being called a toxic soup. I sure didn't envision being back at the Maple Leaf for the Krewe of Oak's Midsummer Mardi Gras again, or being in Congo Square on Katrina's anniversary for White Buffalo Day, the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars, Cyril Neville and his Tribe 13 in from Austin, TX, a drum circle and hundreds of other New Orleanians, back where it all began...........300 years ago........

Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame & Drum Circle, Backstreet Cultural Museum

Visit: www.backstreetmuseum.org

The photos below are from the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame ceremony and the Rhythmic Roots Drum Circle, an incredible event that happened on Sunday, August 13th. Healing energy for New Orleans people........all people.......no tourism industry wonks screwing things up...........the sort of thing the state's office of "Culture, Recreation & Tourism" should be supporting.....and exporting......with some of $28 million the Louisiana Recovery Authority has for marketing the city and state....
I'm still dreaming of what could be........

New Orleans Music, Culture & Tourism Vultures

The tourism industry vultures appeared before the New Orleans city council last week with a grandoise Power Point Bourbon Street song and dance about the economic impact of their industry. Their talentless little magic show didn't fool many of us, and hopefully not the city council....it basically came off as typical corporate cook-the-books bullshit- their usual effort to get money from this cash-strapped city and state and to tap into whatever Federal disaster money may make its way here in the next few months, as if rebuilding the tourism industry should be a priority.
Screw that, the tourism industry has ample private capital to tap into.......public monies should go to the public....and the tourism industry has done nothing for New Orleans past, present, or will in the future, except to keep wages low and the general populace in poverty. Let's not reward them for this.......instead let's put our faith and money where it belongs - into the creative activities of the people, the residents of the city - the musicians, artists, dancers, the social aid & pleasure clubs, the Mardi Gras Indians - without whom there never would have been a tourism industry here to begin with.......It’s time to put the horse before the cart for a change......
Meanhwile **** The Louisiana Recovery Authority has $28 million to market the state to tourists! ****
What can we expect to see from this money? Probably more lame TV and newspaper ads that fail to depict the creative artistic and cultural vitality of the city. This money will likely be dispersed to entities beholden to the Hilton's and Marriott's, such as the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., the Convention and Visitor's Bureau, the HO’tel-Motel Association, etc.all the while workforce development and job training programs for the vast underemployed, i.e. underpaid, masses continue to offer nothing more than career development in making beds and cleaning rooms, as if that is all anyone in New Orleans is capable of producing. For years the state has sold itself as a great palce for big business to locate because of its huge low wage workforce....... there are obvious reasons why New Orleans looked like a third world country on CNN a year ago, cuz its policy makers are thrid rate despots......
What should happen with this LRA marketing money if the state is truly committed to building its 'cultural economy' ????????
How about dedicating $5 million of the marketing $moola$ to a program that will provide tour support to the many touring musicians, that have always been Louisiana's most effective cultural ambassadors. Those musicians that have been touring for years and years, cats like Mem Shannon, The Wild Magnolias, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and the Roadmasters, Jon Cleary, the Dirty Dozen........
Meanwhile we also need workforce development programs that foster the city’s improvisational impulse - the creative entrepreneurial spirit that resides within the soul of the city’s populace...and maybe of the tourism induistry had any balls they would pony up to provide seed money for small businesses.......yeah, dream on girl!

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux - Bon Temp Roulet

Oak Street & Kenny Brown at the Maple Leaf- July 14, 2006

What would we be without the music? Without the Maple Leaf? What would we do at those midnight moments when there is nothing left to do but dance away our sadness at the current 'bidness as usual' state in New Orleans, as if Katrina never happened...........our media celebrity mayor trapsing around the country in search of ever better photo opps, as far from the city and as far from real as he can possibly get........what's happenin' C. Ray!????
Kenny Brown, down from the Delta, was there at the Leaf, July 14th, to help us get through the night. Killing the blues by playing the blues...........showing us the way through.......

WHOO Dooo......

WALTER "WOLFMAN" WASHINGTON, NEW ORLEANS MAYORAL CANDIDATE MITCH LANDRIEU, JACK CRUZ

WYNTON MARSALIS & BRING BACK NEW ORLEANS COMMISSION

Mo' Hoodoo

Mayor C. Ray Nagin is running neck n' neck with Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu. God Help New Orleans. Who to vote for?
Who is the lesser of the two evils? It would seem to be Landrieu. Maybe......??????
Wynton Marsalis endorsed him yesterday. Of course that is after the office, Culture Recreation & Tourism, that Landrieu oversees, gave Marsalis and his gang at the Lincoln Center $50,000.00 to perform Marsalis' piece "Congo Square" in Congo Square a few weeks back. Nice payday for a New Orleans cat made good...but one who hasn't lived in the city for years and years, sittin' back comfortably ensconced in NYC while pulling strings and yankin' chains hereabouts.... way to go.....

There are lots of talented musicians here sinking ever deeper into obscurity and poverty....what about them? When is their big $50,000.00 payday? That money could have gone along way, contributed significantly to New Orleans' cultural economy development, had it been used instead as tour support for the city's musicians to get out on the road for the summer.
Summer here this year post-K is going to be a bitch....no doubt about it........
Marsalis' endorsement of Landrieu was a bit of a slap to Nagin who put the NYC musician on his Bring New Orleans Back commission, as head of the cultural committee. (see above)
Meanwhile it seems Nagin, who says he a democrat, but contributed $1,000.00 to Pres Bush several years back and likely engineered an even larger contribution from his then employer, cable media dicks Cox Communications, is talkin' outta the side of his mouth and doing quite well at it. Look for the Republicans to win a big one if Nagin gets elected. Nagin is tight with big wig New Orleans 'developer' Joe Canizaro, a Bush Pioneer Contributor (mega $$$), who built Canal Place back in the 1970's with the Shah of Iran as his partner. Nagin is clearly in Canizaro's pocket and an election win for Nagin will ensure significant progress for the Republicans toward turning Louisiana into the RED State (Dead State?) they want it to be.....

Hurricane season just days away, 12 days after this Saturday's election.......Is it time to evacuate again?????????

Hoodoo City Elections

The hoodoo ramps up as a variety of candidates jostle for a variety of city-wide positions from mayor to city council to assessor to criminal and civil sheriffs...
Mayor C. Ray Nagin is going for a second term, but has lost most or all of his white uptown "Isle of Denial" base for a variety of reasons ranging from his "Chocolate City" and other glib remarks that spotlight his inability to be thoughtful and effective, to his failed economic policies and cronyism that dwarfs that of the Morial Administration.
Hey Ray! Just in case you didn't know.....New Orleans is creole- the essence of creative multiculturalism...or at least it used to be.....
The Isle of Denial money folks that funded Nagin previously now seem to be throwing their money at Audubon Institute CEO Ron Forman. Yeah OK, he turned the zoo into a worldclass facility, got the Aquarium built - but an insect museum?? Please. Ranks right up there with the D Day museum.
Before Katrina, New Orleans needed better schools, better housing and better jobs and what do we get? Huge facilities celebrating war and bugs, and scarce public funds going to football and Walmart. The sorry-ass Saints, (actually sleazy car salesman Tom Benson), not the schools, get $18 million and Walmart, $28 million in tax increment financing - the Tchoupitoulas Walmart looted the city long before the Katrina looting. Where is the people's insurance against these acts of theft?
None of the mayoral candidates with the exception of Tom Watson and Virginia Boulet, can even bring themselves to utter the word POVERTY, which remains the most pressing issue, as it was before the storm. And white uptown Republican mayoral candidate Peggy Wilson speaks of nothing else but preventing the "...pimps, gangbangers and welfare queens..." from coming back by establishing a 'tax free' city... funny, because Wilson is just an independently wealthy version of a pimp/gangbanger/welfare queen......and a bigot with no talent at all, except at divisiveness. Time to hang it up old girl!
As I said in my previous post, the city and its tourism industry has traded off the efforts of the poor for decades....it was the music, arts, culture - the unique improvisational impulse, that sprang from the city's poor neighborhoods that saved the city from the 80's oil bust, not the Saints, not the tourism industry, not the hotels, elitist museums celebrating war and bugs.....
It is time this is acknowledged.
It is assumed that the reason so many in New Orleans are poor is because they lack skills and talent - which is a totally erroneous assumption - there's a ton of talent here, and ironically, there is probably much more at the lower end of the economic spectrum than at the upper end, judging by folks like Peggy Wilson and her ilk....
Talent has traditionally gone unacknowledged in New Orleans in order to create the situation where the talentless with money can more easily exploit the talents of those without money.
Like every other city in America, New Orleans is scrambling to develop a high-tech sector and a bio-medical sector, but once again that is likely to prove to be a 'putting the cart before the horse' strategy, as it does not build upon the strengths and ingenuity already present.
Build the creative and cultural sector and the others will follow. Build vibrant liveable and INCLUSIVE neighborhoods and small businesses and the rest will follow. Build friendly inclusive neighborhoods where residents can walk to the store, where kids, teenagers and adults can ride their bikes of the sort we had pre-Katrina.
It is almost impossible to ride a bike or walk in the new New Orleans anymore.....huge pickups and SUV's are everywhere, impatiently careening through the city's old narrow pre-auto streets at breakneck speeds ........none of the candidates have addressed this issue either.
Election day is Saturday April 22nd. I wish both Tom Watson and Virgina Boulet could serve together. A Power duo. Black & white, male and female - thewy could bring some much needed balance. And maybe the job, given the present circumstances, id too much for just one mayor. Two heads are better than one....and both serving could also serve to eliminate the "Bidness as Usual" factor.........
more later..........Sneakin' Sal

Welcome to HoodooNola.......

Hoodoo has taken on new and deeper meaning in New Orleans in these new century Post-Katrina days, once again, as the soulless moneymongers attempt to assert their version...........
This blog will document their attempts to dominate, to take over and remake New Orleans in their unholy (though they think of themselves as the only holy) $$$ image........This blog will also expose the suspects for Hoo they are....expose the truth and curse their underlying predatory motivations against the people - those few still here and those trying to return.....And....this blog will shine the light on the real people, whose efforts made New Orleans America's most unique, most interesting, and most creative city....those unsung heros whose spirit, creativity, knowledge, talents, and adaptability of the real and true New Orleans who possess what urban anthropologists have routinely come to refer to as our "improvisational impulse'.... imbued within our souls.......

Michael Depp, in his piece "The Time is Now: New Orleans and the Poor", on NPR's "All Things Considered" , put it to the nation the other day when he said, "....For now an economic wall has been built around the city's broken remnants.......Prior to Hurricane Katrina, poverty overwhelmed the city. Poverty starved the city's public education system. It spawned ever-escalating rates of murder and violent crime. It festered in public housing. Make no mistake though. New Orleans also needed its poor. The working poor that is.
We had to have poor people to clean hotel rooms, bus tables, wash dishes and fill the thousands of low paying jobs that supported our vital tourism industry. But we also needed poverty's culture. Mardi Gras Indians, second line parades, jazz funerals and jazz music for that matter. These were all poverty's beautiful children. New Orleans put them out front and center to be admired by the world. Poverty was not a monolith in pre-Katrina New Orleans. It contained different, complicated and sometimes contradictory faces. The drug dealing thug and the beautiful, grandiose Mardi Gras Indian.
So who do we let back in? The poor are multitudeness (sic) but so are the upper and middle classes now nervous at the prospect of their return. Some decry the poor out of simple bigotry. They envision a new, smaller city teaming with professionals and white picket fences where there is no room for poverty's dirty faces. Others have more measured concerns. New Orleans didn't have nearly the social services or infrastructure to effectively deal with poverty before Katrina. How can we welcome back the poor without letting their problems overwhelm the city again?
Of course what all of us here are going to learn soon enough is that you can't cheery pick among the poor. You can't bring back the hotel chambermaid and leave her troubled son behind in some other city as someone else's problem. The price of cheap labor is steep in social consequences. Before the storm we were unable to deal with the consequences. Can we, will we now?
We are in an odd moment in New Orleans today. Like the Pied Piper, Hurricane Katrina took away the scourge of our poverty in one grand and sweeping action. But now our streets are empty and it's dull in our town. Our poverty is gone but we are bereft of our poor."

And today, on the front page of the Washington Post - " A City Fears for Its Soul- New Orleans Worries That Its Unique Culture May Be Lost", by Manuel Roig-Franzia, a Washington Post Staff Writer who writes with understanding and love...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202746.html

New Orleans, the city and its tourism industry, has long traded on the creative work and efforts of its poor.........and the economic benefits were reaped by just a few.........ya can't have it both ways.....that kinda hoodoo ain't gonna fly no mo'...cuz we're back...everything has changed, and is gonna keep changing.........wrongs are gonna be made right and the skeletons gonna be dancin' in the streets!!