Folk Alliance International New Orleans 2020

(From Kristi):
High feathered headpieces adorning mannequins I pass on Peter Street in New Orleans seem to tease and tickle me through the shop windows.  Elaborate glittery beaded costumes remind me that Mardi Gras is a year-round industry in the tourist areas of New Orleans.  Steve and I make our way back to the  Sheraton and I feel the need to remind myself of the wealth in the white bubble we’ve chosen here.  That means getting out of the Sheraton to walk around a bit during the precious few moments we have free from the conference.  The turquoise and purple shine and glitter in the shop windows are more of the accumulation of wealth evident in all directions.  

The marble columns in buildings here are topped with ornate Victorian arched facades cornered with bric-brac that shouts of old money.  The Nachez Riverboat rounds the bend within sight of my dinner table and it doesn’t look like much is left of the old revenue from the Mississippi River except tourism at this dock.  I remind myself of the fateful days of Hurricane Katrina when the Sheraton managed to avoid most of the terrible destruction, except for a few blown-out windows.  We’ve chosen to be here as journalists and venue hosts so we have two jobs, allowing ourselves the luxury of not entirely paying for our way to this conference out of  own pockets, yet New Orleans manages to pull money out of my pocket at every turn, for transportation, parking, internet access, beverages and food.

     This city’s architecture as well as its French history remind me of similar walks we made a year ago in Montreal.  We were also attending the Folk Alliance International Conference there.  Of course the connection is very real, with the Arcadian French migration coming directly from there to here 250 years ago.  But I’m otherwise ignorant of too much history to expound on any more connections from my shallow perspective, just looking around.  The narrow streets bordered by tall brick buildings between the major arteries keep putting me back in Montreal again, thinking of how they were no doubt intended for horse-drawn carts.  We don’t have streets like that in Tacoma.

     Last night we attended a concert by Maria Muldaur, backed by the New Orleans-based Tuba Skinny Band.  She was in fine form, playing a blues tribute to her influences, the iconic Memphis Minnie, Blulu Barker, and Sippie Wallace.  Her years of work honing her craft have made her as winning as ever, with a deeper, fuller tone to her voice.  It lends itself better than ever to her belting blues inflections enhanced by playful bumping and grinding.  Today we attended a panel workshop with her entitled, “Wisdom of the Elders”.  She described how early on in her days of the “Great Folk Scare” she joined the Jim Kweskin Jug Band and was mentored by no less than Sippie Wallace on the delicate business of “stage presence”, meaning how to bump and grind.  Her back-up band for this occasion is a six-piece horn-based group with a resonator guitar and washboard player.  She is very affectionately inclined toward them, mentioning that they seem to be as young people, finding a ghostly connection to the music that’s quite real in their own channeling of music that originated in days long gone.

     The panel included Cyril Neville.  Interviewer Gwen Tompkins drew him out to reveal that racism is still “the gorilla in the room”, showing its ugly head by making him as unwelcome as ever in his recent career travels.

     Being located in this capital of blues and jazz, Folk Alliance is doing due diligence acknowledging some of the sources and the performers of the great legacy of music here.  Tonight I saw a fine African American blues singer, Shakura S’aida, performing original tunes with her crack band which included the legendary black sacred pedal steel player, Chuck Campbell.  Notably she featured a song co-written with Keb Mo’ which is based on the legend that the devil can’t hear you when you moan.  Her gigantic voice lent itself to some beautiful moaning but the most remarkable part was taken by the pedal steel.  Chuck Campbell made it sound eerily like a voice moaning its way into a sort of keening pitch that made my spine tingle.