LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 37)

has sought to impose new limits on the times when music can be played and the level of its volume. A nationwide overview shows that there is little to differentiate New Orleans from other places: noise ordinances, entertainment permits and limitations on street music are common to all American cities. Whether a listener hears music as music or music as noise depends entirely on disposition and circumstance — music is in the ear of the listener. What is unique about New Orleans’ latest struggle, and what has raised the stakes of the local debate, is New Orleans’ identity as a musical city and the critical role that music plays in the social and economic welfare of the region. Music is a constant in New Orleans, as sturdy as a shotgun house and as enticing as a bowl of gumbo, and threats to its sustainability are not taken lightly. Looking back on New Orleans’ proud and unbroken musical legacy, readers may be surprised to find an equally persistent tradition of silencing and suppression. Debates about music versus noise started with the antebellum period. The bedrock of New Orleans music is Congo Square, that hallowed ground on the perimeter of the French Quarter where slaves gathered on Sundays to enagage in rituals of music, song and dance known as a “ring shout.” In his autobiography Treat it Gentle, the great jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet claimed that his grandfather Omar danced in Congo Square, and though the accuracy of Bechet’s memory has been questioned, his account attests to the mythical status of the ring shout in the pantheon of New Orleans music. “He’d hear drums from the square,” Bechet wrote. “First one drum, then another one answering it. Then a lot of drums. Then a voice, one voice. And then a refrain, a lot of voices joining and coming into each other. And all of it having to be heard. The music being born right inside itself, not knowing how it was getting to be music.” Music drew Omar to the square and, further, into the ring, where the enslaved were free to “join and come into each other,” Bechet continues, “telling themselves about things that were inside them.” Using voices and instruments — drums, gourds, reed pipes, cow horns, violins, banjo-like stringed instruments, marimbas, jawbones, triangles, tambourines and cremonas — to communicate with one another and with their ancestors, those who gathered at Congo Square constructed the foundations of a New World culture out of African musical instruments. The most detailed account of Congo Square, from an 1819 journal entry by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, makes reference to several of these characteristics. The many drummers, whose sound Latrobe compared to “horses trampling on a wooden floor,” were likely creating the complex polyrhythms that characterize ritual drumming in West Africa. While one group of women “responded to the Song of their leader” in the type of call-and-response phrasing that is common throughout Africa, others “walked, by way of dancing, round the music in the Center,” highlighting the functionality of so much African music in unifying people through dance. African ring shouts could be found throughout the New World but were almost entirely suppressed in the United States, with the exception of New Orleans. The Congo Square dances attracted much attention from shocked spectators. If the ring shout was music to the ears of Omar and his fellow slaves, it registered as noise to many whites, including Latrobe, for Music is a constant in New Orleans ... and threats to its sustainability are not taken lightly. whom a stringed calabash made “a considerable noise,” a cylindrical drum made “an incredible noise,” and a square drum made “an abominably loud noise.” Even as he took the time to sketch the instruments in his journal, Latrobe interpreted the sound they produced as “dull and stupid” and “brutally savage.” The singing, too, was strange and upsetting: “A man sung an uncouth song to the dancing which I suppose was in some African language, for it was not French, and the women screamed a detestable burthen on one single note.” For Latrobe and other powerful whites, slave music was more than an auditory nuisance, it was a potential act of subversion. With the largest per capita black population in the United States, the stability of the slave regime relied upon maintaining divisions between subjects, and as Latrobe’s account indicates, the sounds emanating from Congo Square signaled a high degree of interaction and communication between slaves. The first restrictions on these gatherings appeared shortly after the Louisiana Purchase and the arrival of the American governors. In 1808, a New Orleans Police Code declared it unlawful “for any slaves in town and suburbs to meet together for the purpose of dancing and amusing themselves (except on Sundays, at such places only as may be therefore appointed by the Mayor, and no where else), under the penalty of 10 lashes for every slave delinquent.” Another ordinance forbade slaves “to shout or sing a loud obscene song, or, in short, to do any thing… that may disturb public tranquility.” In 1817, Congo Square dances were required to end by sunset, and the penalty was increased to 20 lashes. By 1845, the dances could only take place between the hours of 4 and 6:30 p.m. and slaves needed written permission from their masters to participate. In addition, eight policemen were allocated to the site and the city council specified that the dances not be “offensive to public decency.” Finally, in 1856 it became unlawful for slaves to beat a drum, blow a horn, or sound a trumpet in the city. “So it was that on the eve of the Civil War,” writes historian Jerah Johnson, “dancing disappeared from Congo Square. ”What slaves valued as music, Anglo-Americans increasingly disparaged as noise that must be silenced to maintain order. We need not look far for signs of how times have changed — the name Congo Square now graces one of the largest stages at Jazz Fest, the former meeting grounds will soon serve as the home of the Jazz National Historical Park and these once suspect slave dances are universally celebrated as the foundation of New Orleans music. But publicly honoring the past does not guarantee popular support for the current musical scene. On North Rampart Street, across from what was once Congo Square and is now Louis Armstrong Park, all of the clubs that offered live music — Donna’s, the Funky Butt, King Bolden’s — have closed and all permit requests for new live music venues have been denied. Over time, the context for the music versus noise debate has changed, but the terms remain the same: one person’s music is another person’s noise and, for many, the only solution is to turn a deaf ear. ———————————————————————————————— Matt Sakakeeny, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of music at Tulane University in New Orleans. His research explores the intersection of music with race, economics, and politics, 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 band as a potent symbol of the city’s black culture. Winter 2012-13 • Louisiana CuLturaL Vistas 37 

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LCV Winter 2012

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