Disclaimer: Five minutes into the Preservation Hall Jazz Band show at the Bing Concert Hall Sunday evening my clapping got a bit enthusiastic and my pen hopped a commuter flight to the seats behind me. Let me take this moment to blame any holes in this review on that incident. Anyway.
Walking into Bing I met a contradiction. The building around me was flawless. Every elegant arc and corner placed perfectly. The floors clean and shining with sterility. The audience had grey hair and tucked in shirts and not a small number of them had arrived via vans from intricately named retirement communities and assisted living homes. An usher explained to me that the hall is designed so that cell phones can’t work inside. Glancing around the audience I wonder how popular texting is amongst them, cell service or not.
The clean-cut flawlessness ended at the stage. A yellowing kick drum bore hand painted letters spelling the name of the band. A big brassy sousaphone did too. This was no string quartet. Buckle your seatbelts. Now unbuckle them. Because you’re gonna want to dance.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is from New Orleans. But from the very first piano key it starts to become clear. These guys aren’t just from New Orleans – they are New Orleans. Every note acts as a warm ambassador from the city where, as bandleader Ben Jaffe pointed out, “American music was born and raised.”
Here’s the setup: piano, keyboard, tuba, trumpet, clarinet, tenor sax, trombone, two sousaphones, and two drum sets. Six different musicians take turns singing. The sound is big and rowdy and wonderful. It transcends the acoustic excellence that is Bing Concert Hall to create a raucousness one would expect in the band’s traditional run-down venue down south.
Located just off Bourbon Street, Preservation Hall stands, true to its name, as an enduring cradle of New Orleans Jazz culture. Since 1961 it has served its protective mission loudly. The Hall and the Band, which are essentially synonymous, embody an inherently progressive sense of the past. Their concept of “preservation” is not passive or commemorative but actively, charmingly bold. And the audience, putting my misgivings to shame, got it.
Before the show I had feared a broken hip just about every time I stood to let someone squeeze by me to his or her seat, but I’ll be damned if the whole place wasn’t on its feet by the end. I’ve never been to New Orleans. Most of the audience probably hadn’t either. But the band had every foot tapping to the dark, joyous rhythms of a city that knows how to dance.
The flooding of New Orleans beset not just homes and people but the unique, rich American culture within them. As the city rebuilds and fears of a new homogeneity circle overhead, the future appears uncertain. And it is. But the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is fighting for it, and every time a foot taps to their rhythm it knocks little bit of mud and mold off the city’s soul. And if I felt one thing after the show it was hope. Honest, brassy hope.
The show closed with an encore of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” But I think I understand now. The saints are marching on. So march on, jazz. March on, my greying compadres who I’d judged so unfairly. March on, New Orleans. March on.
(‘15, History / Theater and Performance Studies, Literature Editor) is from Telluride, Colorado. His writing varies in genre, as it does in quality.