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Culture, change collide in Treme
Some residents balk at musicians' traditional sendoff
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
By Katy Reckdahl
Staff writer
Monday, at about 8 p.m., nearly 20 police cars swarmed to a Treme corner, breaking up a memorial procession and taking away two well-known neighborhood musicians in handcuffs.
The brothers, snare drummer Derrick Tabb and trombonist Glen David Andrews, were in a group of two dozen musicians playing a spontaneous parade for tuba player Kerwin James, who died last week of complications from a stroke he had suffered after Hurricane Katrina.
The confrontation spurred cries in the neighborhood about the over-reaction and disproportionate enforcement by police, who had often turned a blind eye to the traditional memorial ceremonies. Still others say the incident is a sign of a greater attack on the cultural history of the old city neighborhood by well-heeled newcomers attracted to Treme by the very history they seem to threaten.
Police say Monday's response was in part generated from unspecified complaints.
Tabb and Andrews face misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace and parading without a permit. But both returned Tuesday night to the intersection of St. Philip and North Robertson streets to lead another procession for their friend.
"I got to be here," Andrews said. "Because I have to stand up for what I believe in."
Peaceful parade
Tuesday's parade was without incident. It was peacefully escorted by the New Orleans Police Department, thanks to a newly issued permit, the result of lengthy meetings Tuesday between community groups and police officials.
Funeral director Louis Charbonnet, a longtime supporter of music in Treme who also is in charge of James' Saturday funeral service, confirmed the permit came from those meetings, which he participated in. He was vague about who paid for the permit. "We've got a permit and it's paid for," he said.
Some neighbors said buying a permit was a cop-out, arguing the traditional parades should be unencumbered by the bureaucratic formalities.
"It is" a cop out, Charbonnet agreed. "But sometimes you have to do what you have to do."
As Charbonnet stood waiting for the parade to start, he emphasized that the meetings already had an effect. "Look around," he said. "Today you've got police out here protecting people. Yesterday it was harassment," he said.
Jerome Smith, who runs the Treme Community Center a block from Monday's arrest scene, said the police response was heavy-handed and culturally insensitive. He compared it to the Police Department's heavily criticized treatment of the Mardi Gras Indians on St. Joseph's night in 2005, which was the topic of Big Chief Tootie Montana's City Council testimony the night he collapsed and died in the council chambers.
First District Capt. Louis Colin avoided such comparisons, defending his officers' response Monday night. "If a law is being violated, we have to uphold the law," he said. But after Tuesday's meetings, he said he is determined to work with neighbors to find "long-term solutions" to this issue.
'I need to be here'
Lifelong Treme resident Beverly Curry, 65, is one who believes that permits should not be required for the neighborhood memorial parades. Despite a failing leg, Curry made it to the procession's start Tuesday night. "I need to be here, to show my support for our heritage," she said.
For a century, she said, that heritage has included impromptu second-line parades for musicians who die, "from the day they pass until the day they're put in the ground," she said. Those memorial processions still occur with regularity, without permits, as is the tradition. But, increasingly, NOPD officers have been halting them, citing complaints from neighbors and incidents of violence at similar gatherings.
In some ways, the police complaints parallel those NOPD officials raised earlier this year, as they defended the high permit fees that the department was charging New Orleans' weekly second-line parades, hosted by social aid and pleasure clubs. Ultimately, the NOPD settled that suit, assessing much lower rates to allow the clubs to parade. Club members saw the court victory as an admission by police officials that they had been insensitive to New Orleans' culture.
But Curry and other longtime residents point fingers at Treme newcomers, who buy up the neighborhood's historic properties, then complain about a jazz culture that is just as longstanding and just as lauded as the neighborhood's architecture.
"They want to live in the Treme, but they want it for their ways of living," Curry said.
For newly arrived neighbors, Curry sometimes serves as a cultural interpreter. "I tell them, 'When someone dies in the Treme, you're going to hear a band,' " she said. But to those neighbors dismayed by the noise or the crowds that come along with those bands, Curry is stern. "I say, 'You found us doing this -- this is our way," she said.
Mourning a friend
On Monday night, about 25 of the city's top-rung brass-band musicians mourned Kerwin James the way they hope to be mourned themselves: They paraded around Treme, taking the same well-trod route that the spontaneous parades often take. They started at the corner of North Robertson and St. Philip streets, then criss-crossed through the quiet streets of old Treme, which stretches from Esplanade Avenue to Basin Street, from Rampart Street to Claiborne Avenue.
On horns and drums were James' lifelong friends, bandmates from the New Birth Brass Band and members of the Rebirth Brass Band, including James' brother, tuba player Phil Frazier. Dancing along with the band was a crowd of about 100 people, including about 30 children. At some street corners, the band stopped and played for a few minutes while fancy dancers strutted and dipped and elderly neighbors in bathrobes stepped out onto their stoops to wave and give their condolences to James' family.
Then, about 8 p.m., a squad car pulled up behind the parade, which was just yards from its ending point, back at the corner of North Robertson and St. Philip.
When a New Orleans Police Department car approaches, musicians say they never know what's ahead.
Sometimes a squad car arrives and quietly follows the parade. Other times, an officer will emerge and ask for the bandleader, then discuss the reason for the parade and the planned route. In those cases, the two parties may negotiate a different route or ending point, but the parade typically is allowed to continue.
But on Monday night, the squad car meant the parade was over. The band had just launched into the funeral hymn, "I'll Fly Away," and some musicians had tears running down their faces as they sang the lyrics: "One glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I'll fly away." At that point, officers used the car's intercom to tell band members that if they continued playing, they would be arrested.
Most musicians kept playing, as they walked into the parking lot. "I wasn't trying to defy police," one trombone player said. "But I was just carried by emotion."
Officers repeated their message, with little effect, so they began running into the crowd and grabbing anyone with an instrument. Some officers grabbed at mouthpieces, others tried to seize drumsticks out of hands.
James' sister, Nicole James-Francois was shocked. "There were so many police cars," she said. The scene was so peaceful and beautiful while the band was playing the hymn, she said. "Then it beaome almost something demonic, with all these officers saying, 'Don't you play.' "
Soon, 20 squad cars were lining the blocks of North Robertson between St. Philip and Dumaine streets, filling the night with red and blue flashing lights.