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Kurt

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Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras And America's Creole Soul

by Roger D. Abrahams

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read in January 2008

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Kurt said: " Greater Afro-America

“The old adage “It’s easier to be angry together than by yourself” has much going for it when it comes to considering the government’s response to a flood caused by engineering malfeasance, its aftermath and the perilous future of Greater Afro-America

“The old adage “It’s easier to be angry together than by yourself” has much going for it when it comes to considering the government’s response to a flood caused by engineering malfeasance, its aftermath and the perilous future of New Orleans. At least for the authors of this book, our anger was kindled forty years ago or more by the insistent neglect of African and other non-Western European cultural traditions that have been nurtured and maintained in the New World. The emotion and hope for inclusion of the great expressive culture our diversity has produced have kindled a good deal of talk and writing on our parts. The idea of a plural culture with an inclusiveness of people and their expressions that developed from the Civil Rights movement has entered a new phase, particularly in the mercantile centers engendered by the global marketplace. Now, in the face of recent events, the exercise of cultural difference seems more like an argument for human rights. Cultures, especially in their most vernacular renderings, clearly have ignored political boundaries, as the history of creole communities in and beyond Louisiana shows.”

These authors, Roger D. Abrahams with Nick Spitzer, John F. Szwed, and Robert Farris Thompson have been seminal to the course of my studies for the better part of the past forty years and getting them all between the sheets of Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America’s Creole Soul (Phila.: University of Pennsylvania, 2006) is the biggest gang bang I’ve got for my literary buck in a while. Their works have been a constant source of entertainment and enlightenment in my study of Africa and Africa America. They are all very good writers.

For the cognoscenti, part of the fun of the book is pondering who wrote what, as they all swing together, preservation style, in rhythm and harmony. For being thrown together in haste, it swings; a screed to address the problems addressed and exemplified by the place that’s always asked, “Do you know what it means?” So sync they say it, transporting the reader, Iko-Iko, to “A poetic city with a prosaic population.” Outraged old Mardi-gridians, these guys have the vernacular vigor needs-be to right wrongs, educate and illuminate our way into the present.

“We are angry in the face of a hurricane whose intensity blew away many of our dreamscapes, and even angrier because human intervention could have prevented it in a way most natural disasters cannot be. And now, we daily witness the indignities issuing from those who run our national lives, as the ask, “What’s left to reconstruct? Let’s just start all over.” Without raising taxes. This is pure ignorance of a natural and cultural disaster of the grandest proportion in our country’s history.” ...more "

Jan 23, 2008 07:35AM · see review