The Birthplace of Jazz

There's an interesting article up on the WTOP site today that looks at a specific piece of the controversial Bring New Orleans Back Commission recommendations on how to rebuild the city. This piece focuses on the Commission's cultural recommendations -- how do you rebuild the cultural fabric of a city? No one is pretending that culture is the primary concern of the Commission -- "We're not going to sit here and pretend that what we're doing is more important than levees, but we all know that without its culture, New Orleans isn't New Orleans," said Cesar Burgos, chairman of the cultural committee -- but I'm glad to see that it's a part.

The proposed plan is to focus on New Orleans' rich history as the birthplace of jazz, creating destinations like a National Jazz Center / Museum and working to preserve a number of landmarks related to jazz history. I love the idea of creating a cultural component to the rebuilding plan - both as a way to support the redevelopment of the city for its own residents and as a reason to attract visitors who will spend money sampling the arts, as well as hotels, restaurants, parking, shopping, etc. Of course, I work in the arts, so I'm a big believer in cultural tourism and the power that the arts have to generate a positive economic impact.

And, the power of art for art's sake cannot be denied, as the people of New Orleans look for ways to bring back their truly unique, rich, multi-layered city. It would be a further tragedy, in my mind, if the lasting effect of Katrina would be the creation of a giant strip mall / bland, soulless creation of commercial developers. By making sure that any redevelopment plan includes a cultural component, such as this real focus on the history and culture of jazz, it seems that the Commission is really looking to bring back New Orleans as its own city, with its own unique soundtrack.

On a separate but related note, I saw a heart-wrenching feature on CNN recently that was looking at individual stories of people in the Gulf region post-Katrina. They highlighted the cutlural community by focusing on the story of a woman who is the main pianist for the New Orleans Philharmonic (thought the group may have a different name). She lost her own personal collection of Steinway pianos, 3 or 4 of them that averaged about 100 years old. They were these gorgeous pianos, true works of art and examples of craftsmanship that really doesn't exist anymore. Katrina destroyed them, and seeing the pictures of these crippled instruments was just heart-breaking. The woman described the horrible sound she heard when the garbage trucks came to take away the pianos, and as they were lifted and dropped into the trucks they made this terribly loud, jumbled sound of dissonant notes as the strings were all crushed. She was able to save a few of the keys and was fashioning them into an octave that she could save and frame on her wall. It was so sad.

Of course, no one is saying that losing the pianos equates to losing lives, but it's an example of losing the kinds of things that *make* a life. I can't even imagine having to rebuild a city and the lives of all of residents, nearly from scratch. I wish them all the best of luck.