“Without jazz, life would be a mistake”
Lights. Camera. Action! When you turn any corner in New Orleans, everyone looks like they are shooting a movie. People don’t walk through the streets here: they dance. Here, people stop to listen and enjoy the live music. The city seems to have a rhythm to itself, because I too find myself dancing through these streets. There are times where I don’t even realize that I have a small bounce in my walk or start swaying side to side. It’s easy to feed off the energy of those walking down the street with you. I really do understand why this city is so special now. I’ve never seen another place where people dance walking down the street. It truly is magical, and something that couldn’t happen anywhere else but The Birthplace of Jazz.
However, I think to just refer to New Orleans as The Birthplace of Jazz is a disservice. This place is a thriving capital for jazz. Jazz is the heart and soul of this place, and this is something that anybody walking around can feel. The live street bands draw in crowds and bring people together. Everyone dances in any way that the music makes them feel. I can’t help but join any crowd I see, watching how everyone expresses themselves through movement. Everyone moves differently, however, it creates this beautiful blend. Between the music and the crowd, everyone works together to create a sort of harmony. From my time in New Orleans, I have learned that this is the epitome of jazz. Michael Ondaatje hits this exactly in his novel Coming Through Slaughter, which tells the story of the man who put jazz on the map, Buddy Bolden. The book itself is structured in a very chaotic way: there are no quotations, there are time jumps without any prompts, and it is often unclear who is speaking. While I thought this would frustrate me as a reader, this ended up being the reason I appreciated the book so much. It truly reflected the chaotic yet syncopated nature of jazz music. Jazz is so complex, yet at first glance, it seems so simple. I love that Bookpacking and reading Coming Through Slaughter gave me the experience to truly understand the complexities of jazz.
Here are some photos I took at Preservation Hall, one of the first places we experienced a live performance! The two photos on the right are taken from Google.
One of the highlights of the trip for me was watching the Moneywasters Second Line Parade. I really had no clue what to expect when Andrew invited us to attend. As we watched the floats and the crowds walk by, I was just trying to absorb all the action around me. Everyone was unified over their excitement of the music. People were full of life and celebration, moving their bodies however the music made them feel. It was so exciting to watch a sea of people interpret the music in so many ways but still manage to create a sense of unity. And then, we became a part of the crowd. Everyone was encouraging me to move to the beat and become a part of the crowd. I noticed myself start to sway, throw my hands in the air, and just take in everything around me. This was something I truly had forgotten to do.
When people learn that I grew up as a dancer, they assume that I can dance wherever I hear music. They assume that I can move freely on the spot. However, my career as a competitive dancer really restricted me from this. My instructors always taught me how to move my body, and from there it would just be memorizing how they interpreted the music. Especially as a ballet dancer, I had little creative freedom. I, like many others, fell into dance for my love of music. I loved the way that people let music take over their body, and then express those feelings through movement. It’s sad to see looking back now how I lost the ability to just feel music. Dance and movement really became a job to me. I would come to class and blindly follow my instructors, and many of my fellow dancers felt the same way. We would memorize the same routine, and all look uniform. Looking uniform was the ideal in competitive dance. It is so discouraging of individualism. Competitive dancers are taught to be robots of each other: we are all supposed to look and move the same. This rewired my mind, and I lost my love to just move to music. Burnt out from the cutthroat and toxic dance community, I officially quit when I was 16 years old. I lost my creative outlet and something I had known for most of my life. As I moved on, I still craved an opportunity to move freely. Coming to New Orleans really did reopen that aspect of my life.
I found this quote by Boris Vian that I put at the top of my blog that I felt reflected a lot of my experience with music thus far in New Orleans. Being surrounded by a city where everyone celebrates music made me realize that it is a powerful way to bring people together. Everyone expresses themselves in unique ways, and it all comes together so beautifully. As Boris Vian says, a life without jazz would lose a lot of this magic. For me personally, it would’ve been a mistake. I would’ve lost the love I have for moving to the music. Whether we are at Preservation Hall, parading with the Moneywasters, listening to live music on Frenchman Street or dancing on Bourbon, jazz lights up this city. Thank you, New Orleans, for teaching me how to just move freely again.
