The Other Bourbon

It’s a muggy summer night in New Orleans, and Frenchman Street’s sidewalks are packed with people deciding what comes next.  They could wander a few blocks to Bourbon Street, but the culture there is particular: “Huge beers,” pile-driver techno beats, ‘80’s cover music and college kids throwing up.  Better to stick around Frenchman Street, perhaps, and glimpse a Bourbon from decades past--a jumble of musical styles crammed onto one stretch.

Last night, modern jazz legend Branford Marsalis played Snug Harbor, the oldest of the ten clubs in the neighborhood.  Tonight, next door at d.b.a., the soaring horns and frantic percussion of Latin jazz band Otra have kicked up a dance party stage front.

After a few songs, Otra breaks to sit and talk.

“I’d rather work a day job than play that Bourbon Street kind of stuff because I would just get burnt out,” says Gabriel Vasquez, the young Venezuelan percussionist.  “On Frenchman Street, you can play with different bands, different styles.  I lived in L.A. about a year after the storm, just to see what’s up.  I mean, they’ve got some great players there.  But here, on every corner, everybody plays something.”

Example: The trumpet player who unexpectedly showed up during tonight’s first set, hopping on stage to jam on a song the band simply calls “F-minor Descarga.”

“[That guy] was just walking by,” says Vasquez. “He says ‘Oh, I’ve got my trumpet,’ and we’re like, ‘OK, then sit in.’ I remember one night at the Blue Nile [a Frenchman Street club] before the storm, we had like four or five horns on stage. All improvised. But synchronized.”

Sam Price, laid back and serious about music, is the sole native New Orleanian in the room. He plays upright bass and started Otra in 2002. He describes the band’s sound as “groove-oriented music that gets people dancing but still satisfies us artistically.”

For him, Frenchman Street “Is what Bourbon Street used to be like back in the day. Thriving. Lots of live music.” Bourbon’s transformation into a Bohemian enclave evolved with jazz’s evolution. When burlesque clubs grew up to meet the demands of GIs passing through the port during World War II, girls wearing feathers (or less) eventually displaced the more serious musicians.

“I don’t want to compare [Frenchman Street] to 52nd Street [in New York City] back in the day of be-bop,” Rose continues. “But you walk up and down this street and you have 15 to 20 musicians you know, all doing different stuff every night. It’s inspiring, it spurs creativity, it stirs the pot.”

On any given night, multiple jazz forms (Latin, gypsy, traditional or modern) are played on Frenchman Street, plus other styles like blues, soul, reggae, zydeco and rockabilly. There’s even the occasional Cajun punk band.

But the survival of New Orleans — and Frenchman Street — is not guaranteed, and most people in the city don’t pretend that’s the case.

Rose points out how people all over the world have come together to support the city’s music: “I don’t know if it will last forever. But at the same time …”

“That’s a big question mark,” says Price. It’s the band’s final word before heading back to work.