Katrina: The Bitch of New Orleans

I once lived in New Orleans. My heart is there more than anywhere. I've been busy these last few weeks trying to gather my old friends together so that we can deal with the sadness and loss together. With iTunes you can listen and watch a slideshow of the things I will Miss about New Orleans. I also set up another blog for us to remember why we loved the city so much. Here is my first entry:

The Black Vinyl Blues

One thousand years ago I was a DJ on the greatest Jazz/Blues/Black Heritage radio station in the world. A couple of times a week I’d wander two blocks from my slave quarter apartment on Dauphine and Orleans to the big iron gates of Louis Armstrong Park. Standing there under the streetlights I would call to the black guard who’d recognize me and let me pass into the darkness, slamming the heavy gate behind me. New Orleans was a much safer place in those days. However, knowing that the most dangerous housing project in the city as well as Marie Laveau’s grave lay just outside the iron bars, that two minute walk through pitch black at two in the morning, gave me the shivers. I scurried as fast as I could without the guard thinking I was a sissy white boy.

Once my key was in the door of the WWOZ studios I’d become afraid of something else all together. I’d never know what I’d find when I opened that door. Often there was no one to be seen. Music would drift down from the second floor where the late night DJ had thrown on one of his pre-recorded tapes before leaving the place to run itself. When that was the case, the phone system would be lighting up like a christmas tree with unfulfilled requests and dedications. Other times I’d find fellow DJs hanging out on the lower floor talking music and women, neither of which I knew much about.

Although I had spun records at WTUL for several years, I knew very little about music and even less about Jazz. When I’d find myself in the same room with some of the ‘OZ crew, I’d shrivel up into a ball; intimidated and overwhelmed. They didn’t know my name. They knew me as the white boy who took the shift that nobody wanted. I deejayed in the wee hours of the morning to an audience of six demanding jazz fanatics with insomnia, although I counted janitors and late night security guards among my peeps.

There was only one other caucasian working at the station at that time. As seems to be a New Orleans tradition; while the black folks kept everything running, a white boy held the purse strings. I wonder if an outsider can understand this status quo. Like nowhere else in the country, blacks keep The City of New Orleans on its tracks and running, yet the whites own the train, the coal, and the very shoes worn by the engineer. Mardi Gras is a celebration of that status quo. I have yet to make my peace with what seems from the outside a glaring racial divide, but what in practice is more harmonious than any other place I know.

During my four hour shift I would sit alone in that tiny building in the middle of that dark park playing random tunes and getting lectured by listeners much more knowledgeable than I. As I’d rummage through what might be the most extensive and valuable collection of black music on vinyl ever amassed, I’d hear suspicious noises coming from the blackness outside and run to double check the lock on the door. That glorious record collection may soon become another victim of Hurricane Katrina. It now sits unguarded at the mercy of bad weather, looters, and local police. There is no one to call, no one to write.

New Orleans’ blacks may not own the bricks, the pavement, the houses, or the stores, but they do own its heart and soul. They gave birth to the groove in the music, the spice in the food, and the rhythm in the streets. Those stacks of priceless records belong to the black people of New Orleans, as does most of the city’s heritage. Whether help comes from outside or not, the city will be rebuilt with all of its charms and graces intact, because black folks are the keepers of its soul.

brian