LCV Spring 2013 - (Page 37)

As a general rule, bordellos catering to a white clientele post-Reconstruction period. (See pages 24-31 for an in-depth employed piano entertainment and were rarely harassed by history of this newspaper.) In an 1885 issue The Mascot declared it police, while those saloons and dance halls that were regularly was “devoted to the correction of evils that exist in the moral, raided inevitably featured a dance band. On March 20, 1901, the social, and political zones of the community, and labor[ed] to Item reported a raid on the “notorious” Pig Ankle saloon, where bring about a more elevated standard of civilization.” Clearly The Mascot included black music among the “evils” permeating New “music was furnished and the big dance halls were crowded with … the worst character of negro men and women.” Orleans. The cover of the November 5, 1890, issue was graced Another incident reported by the Item the following year with an illustration depicting four musicians on a balcony demonstrates that whites were not immune to musical vice. In a shooting musical notes out of their horns onto unsuspecting surreal scene, a minister gathered with several “prominent ladies white pedestrians below. The accompanying article explained from Uptown” on the steps of his church to stage a showdown that “several ‘coons’ armed with pieces of brass” were “inflict[ing] against the operators of the Unexpected Dance Hall across the torture upon this suffering community,” the lone exception being a gentlemanly mule merrily strolling with his female companion, street: “The Rev. Cuddy and those who were laboring for the reformation of the fallen of the neighborhood preached from the a bird. Door of Hope, while within the hall across the way the dark The bird and the donkey were on their way to the Dime musicians tooted and thumped for the dancers.” Instead of Museum, an establishment at Canal Street near Bourbon, complying with the Reverend’s wishes, Tom Bryant, owner of the presumably to hear the “band of wind-jammers” on the balcony. saloon, summoned a wagon with another group of “dark Though The Mascot had previously heaped praise on the museum musicians” and ordered them to “beat the drum to interrupt the as a “favorite attraction, especially of ladies and the young,” the presence of black musicians in a segregated establishment, services in the Door of Hope.” The cacophony silenced the reverend, but only temporarily. It would located on one of the city’s main appear that one Henry Borges, a thoroughfares, was perceived as a patrolman who the Item described as threat to societal order. If museum OR MANY MUSICIANS “dark skinned and somewhat proprietor Eugene Robinson had once AND AUDIENCES JAZZ cadaverous looking,” had encouraged helped “bring about a more elevated Bryant to fight the reverend during the standard of civilization,” the WOULD UNFURL AS A ruckus. Borges then promptly newspaper now opined that “a nigger WONDROUS SOUND A disappeared inside the Unexpected brass band betrayed him and as many Dance Hall to join the drinkers and as know him now call him bad names.” SONIC BOOM THAT dancers. When this bit of news reached The image and words say VIOLATED SEGREGATION something about how music shaped City Commissioner Hymel’s office, Hymel AND STOOD IN STARK understandings of geographic, racial declared Borges a “disgrace to the uniform” and went on to frame the and conceptual boundaries at the CONTRAST TO THE incident in broader racial and precise moment when those lines SILENCING OF BLACK geographic terms: “I would be more were being redrawn. That same year lenient were it a negro dance hall in the state legislature passed the VOICES ENSURED BY question, but for white men and women Separate Car Act, which Homer Plessy IM ROW LAW to behave as I have seen them is would violate in 1892 by sitting in a disgusting even for that neighborhood.” white train car, setting in motion the A month later, yet another Item headline Plessy vs. Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court announced the fate of the bar in question: “Unexpected Dance case that cemented racial segregation as federal law. But unlike people, sound cannot be segregated as it travels through the air. Hall Closed.” In post-Reconstruction New Orleans, music threatened the While we may never know if the notes fired by “Robinson’s Band” stability of an emerging order that sought to maintain separation were improvised, syncopated or otherwise jazz-like, there is no between races. Consequently, the identification of black sound as question they were right out in the open, thus defying “noise” or as “music” depended on a complex calculus, factoring in segregation. The music sounded an alarm, pricking up the ears of the racial identities of performers and audiences, the spaces where passersby who had no choice but to submit themselves to its they congregated and the type of music played. For many evils. “The band is always there and it is always playing,” complained the author. musicians and audiences, jazz would unfurl as a wondrous sound, Other editorials in The Mascot suggest a more appropriate a sonic boom that violated segregation and stood in stark contrast to the silencing of black voices ensured by Jim Crow law. For place for the performance of this music. Relocating the band others, including those at The Mascot, the new sound was not from a balcony in the heart of the commercial district to “the comprehensible as music, since the boundary between music and gambling hells of Franklin Street” would maintain order. Franklin noise was the same as that separating black from white. “We often was replete with saloons, dance halls and bordellos, which whitewish that we were little fishes, that we could lie under the water as readership publications—including The Mascot, the New Orleans Picayune and the New Orleans Item—referred to as “nigger dives.” well as on the earth,” the Mascot’s author fantasized after being subjected to the band of wind-jammers. “It would be no use to be The proliferation of these establishments occurred at a a little bird because the vibration would take the feathers off us.” transitional moment when two neighborhoods were being redefined as “vice” districts for prostitution and alcohol ————————————————————————————————— consumption. The area around the intersection of Franklin and Matt Sakakeeny, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of music at Tulane University in New Perdido streets (today, the entrance to Duncan Plaza, at the front Orleans. His research explores the intersection of music with race, economics and politics, door of City Hall) was intended for black patrons, while a much particularly in the performance of African American music. His forthcoming book, Instruments of Power: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, considers the brass larger section on the downtown side of Canal Street, eventually band as a potent symbol of the city’s black culture. known as “Storyville,” was strictly for white patrons. F , , J C . Spring 2013 • LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 37 

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LCV Spring 2013

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