Second Line, Home and Away

Here's a couple of pretty good articles about two of the really great New Orleans-based brass bands today: Rebirth and the Hot 8. Rebirth, obviously, are kind of the pioneering superheroes of the modern second line bands. They started doing what they do more than 25 years ago when playing in a brass band just wasn't all that cool. If that has changed since then, it's largely because of them. Now snare player Derick Tabb, along with Trombone Shorty and several other brass band folks from the area, are starting up a program to teach elementary school kids how to play instruments.

It will draw students mainly from five Recovery School District elementary schools, which don't have marching band programs, and put them in summer music classes. During the 2008-09 school year, the students will attend after-school classes for three hours.

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"I lost a little brother to gunfire, and Derrick has lost cousins," said Corey Henry, Rebirth's trombone player and a product of a Treme elementary school marching band.

Andrews said, "If we get them at the age Derrick is targeting, they'll also be getting a similar education as they would get at (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts), only they'll be starting younger."

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Until the program finds more money, the teachers will volunteer their time, said Lawrence Rawlins, one of the instructors working with Tabb. Teaching students music can lead to them learning far more, [Pam] Breaux [assistant secretary of Louisiana's Office of Cultural Development] said.

"Take it a step at a time. You get a better student, you get better test scores," she said. "You get better test scores, you get more of an opportunity for higher education. You get better educated workers, you get a better work force for the state."

The Hot 8 always seemed like a kind of underdog in a city of underdogs. Until recently, they never seemed to get the recognition that they deserved (and maybe they still don't, tho there seem to be a lot of articles about them cropping up lately). And they've stuck it out through a nasty pile of hardship over the past few years, even by the rough standards of their home town

[T]he Hot 8 experienced its own private, yet sadly typical, tragedy in December 2006. Drummer Dinerral Shavers died, age 25, shot in the back of the head while driving his car.

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[I]t's very hard to make a living on the local scene; venues aren't paying enough. "You want to work, because you want to play for your home crowd," he says. "We still do a lot of second-line parades and private parties. It just makes you want to do your own thing, free performances for the people."

This matters, of course, because New Orleans brass-band music is organically of its city and has always thrived on interplay outside, on the street, in the parades where folks perpetuate old dances and invent new ones. Separate the sound from the street and you stunt it, take away the point.

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"We need to keep the music going," Pete says. "It don't make no sense to break up. I wanted to leave, I didn't want to play, I was tired. But I made a commitment to the other band members - and to the forefathers on whose shoulders we step."

Anyways, if you're not familiar with the background of the modern second-line bands, these pieces might give you a couple of hints about where they're coming from. And if you already know, then here's what two of the best are up to at the moment.