This past weekend has become one of the more jam-packed of the year including events like Hogs for the Cause, the Revolution Second Line, the Congo Square Rhythms Festival and the Class Got Brass competition. Hogs for the Cause has moved it’s rather large festival to City Park, but weddings and birthdays kept us from the festivities benefitting families facing  pediatric brain cancer. But we did manage to hit all the Armstrong Park-centered events. The annual Revolution Social Aid & Pleasure Club Second Line starts at Armstrong and winds its way through city streets gathering paraders as it goes.

The costumes this year had a construction theme and the band was the TBC Brass Band. For this not in the know, a second line is basically a rolling block party (for more about second lines and what they are, click here). It was a gorgeous day for a long walk through the streets of the city. I love the people dancing on porches and rooftops, the guys dragging coolers with beers for sale, the children learning the dance traditions, the smell of bar-b-que and the off-ramp traffic waiting patiently as we sing and dance past. It’s a great way to spend a day – but we bailed halfway and made our way back to Armstrong Park for the rest of the day’s festivities.

The Kumbuka African Dance Collective was onstage at the Congo Square Rhythms Festival when we arrived. Beautiful women in daffodil-yellow dresses swirled around then invited audience members to join them. We watched as we ate a tasty Satchmo Dog ($7) from Dreamy Weenies and Bread Pudding w/ Butter Rum Sauce ($4) from Olivier’s Creole Restaurant. Tents peppered the wooded trails with artisans selling hats, carvings, paintings, soaps, jewelry and more.

Then it was time for the 2nd annual Class Got Brass contest. Bands from middle and high schools compete for $10,000. This year, there were 13 schools from New Orleans, the Westbank and Baton Rouge: Edna Karr, Joseph S. Clark, KIPP McDonogh #15, Martin Behrman, McDonogh #35, Medard H. Nelson, O. Perry Walker, Park Forest, Sophie B. Wright, St. Mary’s Dominican, Warren Easton and West Jefferson.

The bands are judged on tradition, originality and innovation. They each have 5 minutes and must open with a traditional dirge. I love that this city keeps it’s history alive and certainly the kids are the only way to keep that going. I’m all for innovation but I loved the schools that incorporated traditional second line dancing complete with umbrellas. Third place winners, Joseph S. Clark, were a cut above musically and I loved their drummers. KIPP McDonogh #15 came in second with instruments they bought with last year’s winnings. I’m flustered to say my photos of them were blurry but I have some great video.  ”The Chosen Ones” of O. Perry Walker came in first and were certainly the most traditional of all.

With few exceptions, the talent was phenomenal. We are so spoiled silly here for music that even our kids can bring down the house. The panel of luminaries judging the bands included Brice Miller, Gregg Stafford, Gregory Davis, Dr. Michael White, Big Sam, Shamarr Allen, Gerald Howard, Glen David Andrews, Ben Jaffe, Virgil Tiller, Kerry Brown and Big Chief Donald Harrison. I can’t imagine the pressure those kids felt playing for such established musicians and the large crowd but I never saw them sweat. Heck, most of them looked like they were having a blast.

Afterward, we stayed for the Stooges Brass Band. Formed in 1996, this  jazz/hip hop band just keeps getting better. They’ve won the Red Bull Street Kings battle and the title of “Best Contemporary Brass Band” at the 2011 Big Easy Music Awards. Last year, the band was selected as cultural ambassadors to New Orleans on a 2 week tour through Pakistan then toured parts of Europe. All I know is that I still love to Wind it Up for Michael Buck! Buck was the stepfather of one of the band members who second lined with the Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club and did a fun dance he called the “wind it up.” Now we all get to do it!

Some restaurants offer a dish 3 ways on one plate like fried shrimp, boiled shrimp and shrimp remoulade. That’s how Sunday felt – like a second line 3 ways. We started with the real thing, then to keeping the tradition alive through our youth, then dancing like Michael Buck to a band that has brought its second line roots to the rest of the world. What a day.

Enjoy the videos of the Revolution Second Line and the Class Got Brass contenders. Photos also include Stooges Brass Band, DancingMan504, Spy Boy Ricky and more.

Brice Miller, a 23-year veteran DeLand cop, chose to retire after video surveillance showed him  driving in his patrol car while on duty to a closed Goodwill store, examining items left outside the business by donors and then loading the items into his police car — twice, reports The Daytona Beach News-Journal.

His excuse?

Miller allegedly told investigators he took items to help a needy family.

He also stated there were no signs posted prohibiting people from taking stuff left outside the store, according to the report.

IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEN EVERY GOODWILL WOULD BE EMPTY!~ LOL

The wonderful TBC Brass Band provided the music wearing “Free Sean Payton” t-shirts. We ran into DancingMan504 and spotted Kermit Ruffins recording the parade on his iPad again. The band kept a super-swift pace and took no breaks for an hour and a half. Amazing. For more about second lines and what they are, click here.

When the band finally rested, we booked back to Armstrong Park to attend the Class Got Brass battle of the bands. The distinguished panel of judges (finally found the right time to use that phrase) included Shamarr Allen, Dr. Michael White, Trombone Shorty, Derrick Tabb, Brice Miller, Virgil Tiller, Gregory Davis, Greg Stafford, Sammie Williams and Ben Jaffe. The judges sat on the balcony above Golden Feather. That fabulous Mardi Gras Indian restaurant continues to find ways to enrich the community.

The battle may have had a number of songs repeated, but the kids worked hard for the money and it was great to see the tradition alive in another generation. Competing were Chalmette, Edna Karr, Eleanor McMain, Fannie C. Williams, KIPP McDonogh #15 Middle School, Lafayette Academy, L. W. Higgins, Martin Behrman, McDonough #35, O. Perry Walker, Riverdale Middle School, Salmen, Sophie B. Wright, St. Mary’s, St. Tammany Jr. High School, Warren Easton and West Jefferson High School.

I was happy watching from the neutral ground, but I said hello to Shaka Zulu, proprietor of Golden Feather, and he invited us to watch the rest of the battle from the balcony. Who am I to refuse a kindness, so up we went and found a place behind the judges. Though, in reality, we had to wait hours to hear the winners, I’ll skip to the punchline. Third place for $4000 toward instruments - McDonogh #35. In second for $6000, O. Perry Walker and first place and $10,000 went to KIPP McDonogh #15 Middle School.

Then we ran across the street to catch Stooges Brass Band at the Congo Square Rhythms Festival. It’s amazing how much great music this city can pack not a day. The food booths were running low, but we did manage to get the last small spoonful of rice for the Red Beans and Rice with Smoked Sausage and Homemade Hot Sausage from Li’l Dizzy’s ($7). Though they were out of their Crowder Peas and Okra, we did get a plate of collard greens and some rice from the Praline Connection ($6).

After refueling, we ran into my Django Unchained co-star, Dennis Christopher, fresh from the Stella! contest at the Tennessee Williams Festival. His photos were priceless. Then we found Django Unchained producer, Reggie Hudlin, another  castmate, Daniéle Watts and her friend, Erica Dasher, from ABC Family’s Jane by Design.

Next onstage, Partners N Crime impressed with their ability to move from rap to ragtime without batting an eye. a highlight was when a talented young lady (who I recognized but couldn’t place) came out to rap in her adorable tutu.

Then it was time for my second Rebirth concert in less than 24 hours. There were problems with the mics and problems with the lights, but they are always amazing. Daniéle and Erica had to leave early to join a ghost tour but Reggie bopped his head until they pulled the plug. Saturday, Reggie had experienced the Mardi Gras Indians and got to cross that off his bucket list after over 30 years. In 1992, Reggie released his Eddie Murphy hit, Boomerang with Rebirth’s Feel Like Funkin’ It Up on the soundtrack. I think it was a cousin of his that had told him about the band. Now, 20 years later, he finally got to see them play live. Another bucket list item crossed off in just one weekend. And, like when he got to meet Big Chief Fi Yi Yi Saturday, he got to finally shake hands with one of the band members, snare drummer Derrick Tabb. If Reggie stays here much longer, he might just run out of bucket list.

March Madness has begun as evidenced by the action-packed weekend. I look forward to all that’s to come this action-packed weekend!

Revolution second line video:

Class Got Brass video:

In this essay, I (Brice Miller) adopt William Dressler’s cultural consonance concept as a framework to better understand New Orleans’ post-disaster community resilience following hurricane Katrina. The purpose of this essay is to suggest the concept of cultural consonance, as an empirically shared model, can serve to illustrate, beyond its relation to health research, and indeed be applicable to examine, in this instance, how communities consisting of all variations of social, class, and ethnic representation, are able to share a common domain (for New Orleans, to return her to her glory as a livable and culturally vibrant city) as a “seemingly” collective community working towards a collective goal.

Specifically, using the rebuilding of New Orleans post-Katrina as an empirical example, I wish to explore how the concept of cultural consonance in theorizing post-disaster community resilience in New Orleans could provide a link in culture theory between the concept of culture as a property of human society that transcends the individual, and the expression of culture in individual thought and behavior (Dressler 1996; Handwerker 2002). I hope to offer implications to examine how cultural consonance can impact sense of place, community identity, and resilience. To rebuild after the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina, residents found it both important and necessary to establish themselves as active stakeholders in their communities and in the city. And it was indeed the will of the citizens—individual beliefs and behaviors relative to a particular cultural context—that truly encouraged the transcendence from mourning to rebuilding.

CULTURAL CONSONANCE

To begin, we must first define and understand the concept of cultural consonance. The premise of cultural consonance forms a viable model from which to theorize understandings between culture, community, and relationships between cultures and behavior. Cultural consonance is a model developed by William Dressler (and colleagues) to assess the approximation of an individual’s behavior compared to the guiding awareness of his or her culture. It presupposes that individuals learn within environments of shared meanings, in which the construct examines how individuals understand and put meanings into practice in their own behavior. More so, cultural consonance begins with the premise that culture is both learned and shared. It is also understood as the degree to which individuals approximate in their own belief or behaviors, patterns encoded in shared cultural models.

SENSE OF PLACE and SPACE AS IDENTITY

Cultural consonance begins with the premise that culture is both learned and shared. If culture is indeed learned and shared, that intersection has to exist somewhere. For the purpose of this essay, that somewhere, that space, is community; specifically New Orleans. We do not live in a vacuum. We live in spaces of place and those spaces will have an influence, and often we will be influenced, by that place. The great social theorist Pierre Bourdieu defined this place, the need for connections’, as social space. Bourdieu (1984) suggest social space is constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution constituted by the set of properties active in the social universe under consideration and has multiple dimensions.

Examining the multiple dimensions and connectives of culture as social space offers the ideals that a community is a special place—has a sense of place. As a sense of place, people are connected. Here, the connections’, as Bourdieu suggested, shape the attitudes, beliefs, meanings, and interpretations that people associate with a particular place (Steele 1981). Hay (1998), for instance, has highlighted the similarities between the development of a rooted sense of place and the attachment to a place “can provide feelings of security, belonging and stability”. Thus, we are able to assess how individuals live out their lives in a space of meaning that is constructed of something shared.

Contextualizing culture from the perspective of sense of place, the phenomena of rebuilding post-Katrina New Orleans, framed with the concept of cultural consonance as a shared empirical anthropological model, serves as an appropriate analysis. It is widely suggested that New Orleans is a unique city and its vast intercultural and intracultural social-cultural norms exist in every aspect of its landscape—the city’s culture is what provided the resilience for people to rebuild. What visitors see (experience) are not the same experiences of the natives. Understanding the intimate understandings of place as best expressed and understood by natives is what truly expresses community and cultural meaning-making, and it is this collective cultural meaning-making that becomes the blurred existence of individual and group cultural conceptualization.

CONCLUSION

I argue, it is because of the spirit that is New Orleans, a place where everyone is embraced, regardless their race, ethnicity, socio-economics. It is this, the imperative of maintaining the lifestyle, quality of life, and cultural richness and heritages that are New Orleans, that the community was able to, and chose to, rally as a resilient collective and rebuild New Orleans, together, following hurricane Katrina. Thus, as Dressler (2004) asked regarding cultural variables: “Does the concept of culture refer to individuals or groups? Is it the individual or some aggregate of individuals?” I argue, yes, it is both and all. Why? Just as Jorgensen and Stedman (2001) have demonstrated, sense of place can explain people’s attitudes and a useful variable for explaining people’s outlooks, perceptions, dispositions, behavioral beliefs, social capital building, political activity, and community engagement. Thus, my proposition is to offer linkage that serve to better understanding the complex interplay of culture, culture and individual behavior, cultural dimensions, and the significance of sense of place—cultural consonance.

I Am Brice Miller