CHAPTER 1

ONWARD AND UPWARD

EPISODE 1.1: A Funeral Fit for a Duke

Harold "Duke" Dejan was born in New Orleans's historicTremé neighborhood in 1909, just after the dawnof jazz. His first music lesson was with his neighborAlbert Nicholas, the great clarinetist among the first generation ofjazz musicians, and his first job was at the College Inn on RampartStreet, next door to Tom Anderson's saloon, where Nicholas andLouis Armstrong played together. It was the early 1920s, jazz wasbecoming an international phenomenon, and both Armstrong andNicholas would leave for Chicago to launch careers as ambassadorsof black music to the world. Dejan meanwhile would go on to cultivatea thoroughly local musical ensemble and gain a relative degreeof notoriety as the founder of the city's most prominent group inthe 1960s and 1970s, Dejan's Olympia Brass Band.

As young men, each of these musicians solidified his status inthe community by performing in musical funerals and parades,cultural displays that occupied public space with the sights, sounds,and physical presence of people subject to segregationist laws intendedto limit their movements. "I really felt that I was somebody,"Armstrong wrote in his autobiography. "When I played withthe Tuxedo Brass Band I just felt as proud as though I had beenhired by John Philip Sousa or Arthur Pryor."

Over the course of the twentieth century, the brass band parade becamerecognized not only as a proud communal tradition among black New Orleaniansbut also as a traveling symbol of their rich heritage for a globalaudience of admirers. By the end of Dejan's life, in a radically different eradefined by the events of September 11, the cultural capital of the brass bandtradition had given him a degree of social mobility that, while nothing incomparison to Armstrong's, allowed him to travel the world, be recognizedas a local celebrity, purchase his own home, and tool about in a LincolnContinental with the personalized license plate "Duke D."

A week after he passed away at the age of ninety-three on the Saturdayafternoon of July 13, 2002, Harold Dejan was memorialized with a traditionaljazz funeral befitting a musician of his age and stature, attended bythousands and accompanied by media coverage from the Times-Picayunenewspaper and all the local network television stations. The artist WillieBirch was there, "looking for imagery," as he later put it, and he createda piece in honor of Dejan titled In the Sweet Bye and Bye that graces thecover of this book. The full scope of the prestige accorded to the brassband parade and to Dejan himself is also indicated by my presence at hisfuneral. At the time, I was a radio producer assigned the task of recordingthe procession for broadcast on the public radio program AmericanRoutes. Alongside the host, Nick Spitzer, I marched with my microphoneon a boom pole and my headphones atop my head in what I perceived asanother day at the office.

The event begins with Dejan's casket carried out of the Charbonnet-LabatFuneral Home and placed in a horse-drawn carriage, followed inprecise order by those who make up the first line: parade marshals wearingblack suits and hats and carrying feathered fans with pictures of Dejan inthe center; funeral directors clearing a path for the cortege to pass through("Open up, please, off to the side, please"); Dejan's pastor; his family; andthe Olympia band playing the slow dirge "What a Friend We Have inJesus."

The first line turns onto Claiborne Avenue, the main thoroughfare cuttingthrough the Tremé neighborhood adjacent to the French Quarter inthe Downtown district. The second line of black and white New Orleanians,tourists, reporters, and photographers falls in behind and alongsidethe mourners. We march beside the concrete decks of Interstate 10 thattower over the street. As vehicles zing by overhead, the procession movesslowly and solemnly for several blocks, the band gradually ratcheting upthe tempo with the traditional Baptist spirituals "Bye and Bye" and "I'll FlyAway," each faster than the one before. Thirty musicians march in honorof their former bandleader, wearing the traditional uniform of "black andwhites": short-sleeve white work shirt, black pants and shoes, and a visoredcap bearing the band's name in gold lettering. The back row of bass drum,snare drum, and tuba provides rhythmic and harmonic consistency, whilethe trumpets, trombones, clarinets, and saxophones in the front line playthe melody and improvise simultaneously, creating a thick contrapuntal texturethat has been a hallmark of New Orleans brass band music for over acentury.

At first recognition of the melody, we clap along to the beat. Some havebrought their own cowbells and tambourines. The rhythm ripples throughconcentric circles of bodies. More and more sway to the strike of the bassdrum in a freestyle choreography of communal motion. I take off my headphonesto find that I too am swaying. Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen, a respectedmusical elder performing in the funeral of his former bandleader,leads the crowd in the refrain. In unison we sing:

I'll fly away, oh Glory, I'll fly awayWhen I die, Hallelujah bye and bye, I'll fly away

The cemetery is several miles away, so the funeral organizers decideto "cut the body loose" at the intersection of Claiborne and EsplanadeAvenues and then proceed to the cemetery by car. As we near the overpass,the band switches to "Lord, Lord, Lord" at a fast march tempo andthe dancers move with more force, undaunted by the heat of the middaysummer sun. When we make the turn under massive decks of the interstate,police sirens melt into the soundscape of instruments and singing.The band plays the most recognizable musical phrase in the brass bandrepertoire, known as the "Joe Avery riff," a four-note trumpet call from the1950s standard "Joe Avery's Blues." After each statement by thetrumpets—"DA-DA-DAAA-DA!"—the crowd punctuates...