>> Speaker 1: From the Library
of Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Betsy Peterson: Hello everyone.
Can you hear me?
Okay. Hi. I'm Betsy
Peterson and I'm the director
of the American Folklife Center
here at the Library of Congress.
And on behalf of the Library
and the AFC staff I want
to welcome you here today.
This is the latest in our
Benjamin Botkin lecture series,
and the Benjamin Botkin
lecture series allows the AFC
to do a number of things.
I mean most importantly to highlight
the work of leading folklorists,
ethnomusicologists, oral historians,
and other cultural specialists,
enabling them to share their
latest research with all of us.
But for the center and for
the library it also helps us
in terms of our acquisitions.
These lectures are tape
recorded and do become part
of our collections here at the
library, and will ultimately be
on the website and be webcasts.
So with all of that said,
and bringing up webcasts,
if you have a cell phone on
right now, please turn it off.
I would appreciate it.
And today I have the honor
of introducing the distinguished
folklorist and longtime friend
of the American Folklife
Center, Bert Feintuch.
Doctor Feintuch is a professor of
folklore in English and director
of the Center for the Humanities
at the University of New Hampshire.
Under his leadership the
center at the University
of New Hampshire has built
a significant endowment,
developed numerous interdisciplinary
programs, supported hundreds
of faculty research projects,
become home to several
notable undergraduate programs,
and has developed a study
abroad program in Ghana.
And that's not all.
He does more.
As a folklorist, Bert has
published on traditional music,
cultural conservation,
and other numerous topics
in traditional and
vernacular culture.
From 1990 to 1995 he
served as the editor of the
"Journal of American Folklore."
He has also done extensive
ethnographic research
in traditional music
cultures in Great Britain,
the United States, and Canada.
And he is particularly
well known for his research
on the traditional music and
culture of Northumberland
and Cape Breton Island, and he is
also a musician in his own right.
With David Waters he published
the critically acclaimed
"Encyclopedia of New England."
And his 2010 book "In The
Blood, Cape Breton Conversations
on Culture" won an independent
publisher book award.
His latest book, "Talking New
Orleans Music" was recently
published by the university
press of Mississippi.
And there continues to be more.
Bert has also produced
recordings for Smithsonian Folkways
and for the Rounder label.
He serves on the Library of Congress
prestige's national recording
preservation board.
And for five years he represented
the American Folklorist Society
at the meeting of the World
Intellectual Property Organization.
He's been awarded numerous
grants and fellowships
by the National Endowment for the
Humanities, National Endowment
for the Arts, the American
Council of Learned Societies,
the US Department of Justice, the
New Hampshire Humanities Council,
the New Hampshire State
Council on the Arts,
and other agencies
and organizations.
Are you tired yet, Bert?
In addition, in 2012 Bert was
elected as one of the fellows
of the American Folklore Society.
Today I'm delighted to introduce
Bert who is going to be talking
about cultural integrity
and local music,
Cape Breton fiddle,
New Orleans funk.
So please give Bert
Feintuch a warm welcome.
[ Applause ]
>> Bert Feintuch: Thank you.
That's -- It's great to see old
friends and colleagues here.
It feels like a real honor to be
-- have been invited to give a talk
at the Library of Congress.
I want to thank Nancy Gross [assumed
spelling] in particular for the --
all the work that she put
in to the logistics of this.
And again such a treat to see some
of my fairly old friends
and colleagues too.
I also want to recognize
my significant other,
Jeanie Thomas [assumed
spelling], is here,
a folklorist from the University
of -- from Utah State University.
And Jeanie kind of rode shotgun
on a lot of the fieldwork
that is the basis of what I'll
be talking about this afternoon.
Speaking of field work, let's see.
Get myself organized here.
Speaking of field work, for me
probably the thing I like best
about being a folklorist
is doing field work.
It's something I love to do.
I -- Sitting down with a
musician who I admire or,
to use a New Orleans term, a
culture bearer who I admire,
with a recording device on the
table between us, is often sort of,
you know, one of the
highlights of my life.
And I also come to realize
after being in this field
for a very long time that, you
know, academic ideas come and go,
but the materials that we create
doing field work become part
of an enduring record and
that seems to me to be,
if I think about any significance
to what I've been doing
over the years -- That seems
to be what is most significant.
I've done field work all over the
place, it feels like for decades now
in the United Kingdom, in the
United States, and various locations
on sort of both ends of
Canada and British Columbia
and Canadian Maritimes too.
And, as I think back, I realize
that what seems to draw me to places
where I do ethnographic field work
is that these are often places
that I've come to think
of as musical hotspots
or creative hotspots.
There's something that sets these
places off from other places
when it comes to the vitality
and significance of local music.
They're often places where
music is deeply rooted,
where it's very much valued,
where it's well integrated
and connected to identity.
You know, for roots music
people, if I say Chicago,
you -- Something comes to mind.
You think blues.
Chicago is a great example of that.
If I say Omaha, maybe less so.
For instance, not that there's
not, I'm sure, terrific local music
in Omaha, but it never kind
of rose to the kind of level
of public awareness and
appreciation that some
of these other sort
of hotspots have done.
The more I spend time in these
sorts of places talking to musicians
and culture bearers and citizens,
the more I see some
commonalities despite all the kinds
of obvious differences too.
And so today I want to talk
about two musical hotspots,
seemingly very different places
where I've done field work.
I talk about Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia and about New Orleans.
Do you know Cape Breton at all?
Some of you probably do.
Yeah. Good.
Good. So I'm realizing, in fact,
that this year is not
only the 50th anniversary
of "Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club," man,
but I think it's the
20th anniversary
of my first trip to Cape Breton.
And I can't tell you how
many times I've been there.
I'm not hearing about that
as much on NPR, though.
So Cape Breton has been a sort
of long running obsession for me.
New Orleans a little bit
less so in that the work
in New Orleans I've tried to focus
more on control and not allow it
to become that kind of obsession
that Cape Breton has formed for me.
Both have led to various
publications
and some sound recordings
and things like that,
and I'm showing you these book
covers really because I want
to acknowledge the fact that these
have been collaborative projects
that I've had the privilege
of working
with a really fine
photographer and an old friend,
a guy named Gary Sampson
[assumed spelling] who I know
from New Hampshire who in fact
was just named artist laureate
for the state of New Hampshire.
So, you know, what drew me to
these very different places?
You know one is just sort
of sheer self indulgence
in that there are places that
produce music that I love.
And they're also places where
I've come to understand, you know,
people have the kind of
good fortune to be able
to dance to their own music.
That is I'd like to say they're
not people who don't know Beyonce
or whatever, but they're people
too who have the sort of privilege
of having come up in a place where
the local music is still very strong
and vital and somehow lives
alongside the more industrial more
popular music that
we all experience.
These are also places where culture
is in the air, I like to say.
That there's often a kind of
public conversation about the value
and significance of culture
or music and its importance
to the integrity of local life.
They're places where
people see music, in fact,
as integral to a good life, where
it stands for a kind of wholeness
of integrity in local culture.
So I hope you note that I'm using
these words integral, integrity,
and so forth, and this is in
part because I want to try
to develop an idea that
I've been thinking about,
this idea of cultural integrity
which I work my way toward.
But first let me talk to
you about Cape Breton.
Cape Breton is an island
that is part
of the Canadian province
of Nova Scotia.
I feel very accomplished in
PowerPoint that I managed to get
that arrow on this
screen, by the way.
That was a first for me.
So it's an island just
about 4,000 square miles.
That makes it like times --
almost three times the
size of Rhode Island,
but 130,000 people there
now and steadily declining.
The population has been declining
precipitously for decades now.
It was settled -- The largest group
of people to move to that island,
the largest sort of contingent
of settlers, were people who came
from the highlands and
western islands of Scotland.
They came in the late
1700s through about 1847
or so when the population
movement ended.
They got there and they found a
thin scattering of native people
or first nations people, as
Canadians say, a thin scattering
of francophones, French
speaking people who were there
as a consequence of early
French fishing and exploration.
And some Anglophones too
who were also there in part
because of the fishing and
in part because loyalists
from New England tended
to move north and east
when things weren't
going so well for them.
And it is a musical hotbed.
It is centered on the fiddle.
The fiddle is often accompanied
by [inaudible] a very
distinctive style.
And these days too we're
seeing a resurgence of interest
in the highland pipes too which
is a very different scene.
If you think of highland pipes you
think of people in kilts marching
in formation or in a
kind of military way.
At Cape Breton the pipers sit down
and they play them for dancing
and it's a much different way of
approaching the instrument too.
And it's dance music.
People dance to the
music in local halls.
When I first came to
Cape Breton 20 years ago,
especially on the western
side of the island
which is Inverness
County it seemed to me
that the music was just every place.
I felt really astonished at
how present and vital it was.
There were dances just about
every night of the week.
This was summer when things
are more active there.
You could sit in a fast food
place and the radio would be on
and you'd heard a country song
and then you'd hear a
local fiddle player.
I mean hear another country song.
Something like that.
You'd -- There were
festivals every weekend.
If you got lucky you got invited
to a house party where people sat
and took turns playing for
the assembled crew of people.
The local newspaper which on that
side of the island is a weekly paper
in the summer devoted more pages to
coverage of music than to sports.
It was really quite astonishing.
I think I like this crowd.
At one time I went to an event early
on where people bought tickets.
They actually paid for tickets
to hear an ethnomusicologist
interview two older musicians,
and that's when I realized
I'd found paradise.
I want to show you a kind
of blurry video from one
of those community dances.
Going to try to link to YouTube.
I'll tell you that this is in the
community of [inaudible] Village
and this is a kind of
typical venue for a dance.
It is -- There are two kinds of
community dances in Cape Breton,
and that has to do
with the liquor laws.
In Nova Scotia you have to
be 19 to be able to drink.
The dances where they sell
beer or other alcohol rather
than just share it in the parking
lot are called adult dances.
And then there are also family
dances where no alcohol is sold.
This is an adult dance, but I
think you'll notice that even
in this case it's sort
of a multigenerational
sort of experience as well.
In fact, you're just
going to see the dancing.
You're not going to
see the musician.
I don't have time to
find a good clip,
but I should tell you
about the musician.
The fiddle player is named Rodney
McDonald who's a step dancer
and a fiddle player and a member
of a musical dynasty, a family --
His first recording, which
he did with a cousin,
they did a family tribute on 44
other musicians in the family tree.
And at 34 Rodney was elected premier
of the province of Nova Scotia
which is equivalent to governor
so they had a fiddle player
and step dancer as governor.
This is post his time.
[Inaudible] he came home, and
plays music and works in culture.
So assuming this link will
work, we'll just take a --
We'll look briefly at a dance.
[ Music ]
Worked fine when we tested it.
Stop and start it.
[ Music ]
One more.
I hope you're liking it so far.
John Divvy [assumed
spelling] thoughts?
>> Speaker 2: That's just
the internet connection.
>> Bert Feintuch: Just [inaudible].
Why don't I talk --
[ Music ]
Well, let's say you get the idea.
Okay? The -- Cape Bretoners like
to tell a story about their music.
They like to say that because of
the history of Scottish immigration,
thousands of Scotts, many
of them Gaelic speakers,
many of them Catholics,
coming to Cape Breton,
and then in the history the island
having been relatively isolated
for a very long time, the story
is that the music there --
that the island became a
kind of archive or museum
of older Scottish repertoire
and performance practice.
Even today you get
this thing where people
in Scotland invite Cape Breton
fiddlers to come to Scotland
to teach them to play
Scottish music.
It's really -- The story is, at
best, you know, partially true
because I mean it's living,
breathing music, and it has changed
and grown and expanded and
adapted and so forth to stay vital.
I don't think it sounds today like
it would have sounded in, you know,
1780 when people arrived at all.
But it still is striking in its
connection to the old Scottish music
and the genres of tunes that are
played and the style and so forth.
And it's also striking to
me that this is a place
where local music is
locked in to community life
and community memory too.
So it really is a kind of paradise
for someone of my interests.
It's a place where people
come together around music.
It's a place where music is part of
a glue that holds people together
in the community, connects them to
each other as well as to a sense
of the past that's still
very present there too.
Now it's not an easy place.
The economy has been
lousy for decades.
It was once actually an industrial
powerhouse thanks to coal fields
and iron mills, but
that's long gone.
And the economy has really
been bad for decades.
High unemployment.
Significant out migration.
Especially a generation ago
there tended to be a lot
of really big families there because
of the Catholic culture and the --
I've met any number of people who've
said, you know, "I was 1 of 11 kids
and I'm the lucky one
who got to stay home.
Everybody else is in Alberta."
They used to come to Boston,
but things change, you know.
Seem to go to western Canada too.
But, you know, the interesting thing
is survey after survey there shows
that people who stay talk about
how satisfied they are with life,
that there's a kind of unusually
high degree of satisfaction
with life in this place
where things are not so easy.
So, you know, I have done some
thinking about how to think
about this and what to call it.
And I want to talk a
little bit about that too.
I kept thinking there about how
integral the music is to life.
And to a sort of understanding
of identity
and of cultural distinctiveness.
And I started to myself
and now a little bit more
in public using the
term cultural integrity.
Another way to say this is I
eventually came to the idea --
I'm getting a little
out of sequence here.
Let's go there.
Eventually came to the idea that
all of this, that is the music,
its historical and cultural context,
the role it plays in communities --
And what I lately hear is a kind
of anxiety about culture too.
That is a fear that the music is
going away, that it's in decline.
That all of it can be embraced by
this idea of cultural integrity.
I like the sound of that.
You know, I like the sound
of saying cultural integrity.
And for a while I thought maybe
I'd made it up, but it's not so.
I mean you know Google tells me that
I'm not the first, but it also shows
that nobody has really kind of
written about that term and thought
about it very much, but it's used
sometimes to imply that to be secure
in one's culture and in one's
community is a good thing.
My friend, the ethnomusicologist
Jeff Titan, pointed out to me
when we were talking about this
that some environmental
scholars use the term integrity.
And I want to look at
something here with you.
This is from a retired
environmentalist from the University
of Toronto named Henry
Regier who's written
about what he calls
ecological integrity.
I guess I should read it.
He says, "A living system
exhibits integrity if when subject
to disturbance it sustains
an organizing self correcting
capability to recover toward
an end state that's normal
and good for that system."
And that really got me thinking.
Culture is of course a living system
in which components
interact with each other.
And it seems to me that one way
of thinking about this is thanks
to Regier that culture integrity
involves a kind of resilience
and an ability to sustain what local
people think of as normal and good.
So I think when I use this term
cultural integrity I'm talking
about the desire to maintain what a
community values, the local desire
to maintain what a community values.
I think it's about the sort of
wholeness and interconnectedness
of life in places like this
and I don't think every
place is like this.
And also about what I think of as
a sort of ethic of community life,
the idea, the local idea, that
there's something very good
and that life is good
in our relationships
to each other in this community.
Yet another way to think about it is
when I say cultural integrity
then I'm talking about continuity
and cohesion and resilience.
So I want to talk about how
these play out in Cape Breton,
and then I'll move to talk
about New Orleans as well.
So I want to talk first
about maintaining what
the community values.
The first example I want to
use is to talk a little bit
about language revitalization
in Cape Breton.
All these Scotts who arrived
who were 70 years or so,
many of them were Gaelic speakers
and Gaelic was once the language
of community life in some
Cape Breton communities
up through the 1960s or so.
Some of these places were
primarily Gaelic speaking.
In 1900 there were 85,000
first language Gaelic speakers
in Cape Breton.
Now there are maybe 200, if that.
There actually was a time
when Gaelic was Canada's
third most common language,
most commonly spoken
language, as well.
And these days we're
seeing a lot of interest
in language revitalization
in Cape Breton.
Government programs.
Local programs.
Local people teaching
music -- I'm sorry.
Teaching language.
And so forth.
A lot of interest in trying
to bring back the language.
And when you hear people
talk about language,
talk about Gaelic language,
they're often talking about music
in the same breath as
well because music is seen
as somehow carrying
some of the same values
that the language carried too,
the same sort of cultural values
as well, and is seen as
standing for a way of life.
So we're beginning to see
programs to sort of maintain
and encourage the language as well.
By the way, in the French community
in Cape Breton they've done a great
job bringing the language back
in the most densely
populated francophone area.
You can now choose to go to
school in French or in English.
They raised the funds and
built a community radio station
that broadcasts in French,
and they've done pretty
remarkable things.
So as part of this maintaining what
the community values we see the
development of institutions
and venues and so forth,
including what you see here, the
Celtic Music Interpretive Center
and the small community
of [inaudible]
which is supported locally by
golf tournaments and more formally
by government funds, by provincial
government funds as well.
And has a mission that
sounds a little bit
like the American Folklife
Center in that it's to preserve
and to present the Celtic music
traditions of Cape Breton Island.
And, you know, these days
scholars tend to write
about institutionalizing as a
kind of distancing and as a kind
of disturbance and
find sort of ironies
in the ways it doesn't entirely
reflect older ways of doing things.
I don't think that's
true in Cape Breton.
I think in Cape Breton people
in the local communities
have embraced these efforts
and sort of made them their own.
It's amazing that this place
that you see here which has a bar
and restaurant in it is just viewed
as a kind of community resource now.
It hasn't really been seen as sort
of changing anything or disturbing
or pulling away from the
local ways of doing things.
It's more a sort of
response to the worry
about losing things that matter.
And one thing that I think is
really striking in Cape Breton is
that people have somehow made
clear to each other what matters
when it comes to community life.
And they've figured out in some
examples, as in this one, I think,
ways to begin to make
that happen too.
I want to play you an audio
clip from an interview I did
with a CBC radio journalist
based in Cape Breton.
She does a five day
a week local program.
The website describes her program
as a lively and informative blend
of news designed to put Cape
Breton listeners back in touch
with their communities at
the end of the work day
which I think is a very sort of Cape
Breton way of expressing things.
She'll talk a little bit
about this sort of sense
of community in Cape Breton.
>> Speaker 3: That might
be if community's a thing
that really I think defines the
Cape Breton experience right now.
There's a social -- There's a
glue that ties people together,
people who have been here for
five or six generations and people
who have come in very recently.
And it has to do with
I think declaring
to one another what's
unique and what's important.
And that seems to be
defined very clearly here.
It might be because this has been
a have not region for so long
that people really know the value
of gathering in a fire hall.
They really know the value of
being pleasant to the person
across the counter
at the post office.
It manifests itself in a thousand
different ways, but at the end
of the day it's just in the air.
>> Bert Feintuch: So talk a
little bit about the wholeness
and interconnectedness part too.
Think about this.
People in these little
communities get together for music.
At the very least,
they're entertained by it.
Sometimes they're transported by it.
But they're also building
connection when they're doing this,
and there's kind of a
complex reciprocity involved.
I'm thinking now about
another community dance,
this one in a little town
called West [inaudible]
which locally is viewed
as kind of the heart
of Gaelic speaking Cape Breton,
of Gaelic culture in Cape Breton.
So this is a weekly dance
that goes year round.
It helps musicians.
It -- The revenue supports
the community recreation hall.
And it also supports a
community softball team as well.
So you go to this dance
and there's this kind
of physical connection
with your neighbors.
I mean I can't think of other
times when I put my arms
around my neighbors, for instance.
Musicians are paid well so they're
able to continue in their art.
This is the first generation, by the
way, where we're really seeing a lot
of younger musicians thinking they
can make a living as a musician.
Before that everyone had a day job.
But so the musicians are paid
well to continue in their art.
The hall gets fixed
up and maintained.
And the ball players get
to travel to tournaments.
So music helps integrate
the culture.
It unites disparate elements.
Music and sports.
Music and identity.
Music and history.
For the community's benefit.
I'll speak briefly about the last of
those three points that I mentioned
in talking about cultural integrity,
about the goodness of life
or this ethic of community.
Culture matters to
people in Cape Breton.
The language revival is in
part because people believe
that Gaelic stands for a way of life
that is slipping away not
only for a language itself.
And, as I say, people see the
music as being the heart of that.
One way to compliment a fiddle
player is to say she has a lot
of Gaelic in her playing because
the local story is Gaelic is --
has a kind of guttural
sound and the style
of playing the fiddle
there likes a lot of kind
of roughness in the music as well.
And what we're seeing now is to
the creation of organizations
to transmit culture
to younger people.
Often trying to involve their
families as well and often trying
to talk about not only
how to play music,
but sort of what it means
culturally, what it means for life.
And I'll play you, with a
luck, a bit of a video clip
about one of those organizations.
[ Music ]
It was so good when we tried it out.
This is an organization that is --
runs out of the Celtic [inaudible]
Center and runs on the other side
of the island out of
another facility
and puts young people
with master musicians.
For a time they're making
the parents come as well.
I think the parents needed to
participate in these events,
that that was a way of sort
of reinforcing the cultural
transmission aspect of this.
I guess you wouldn't expect our
Library of Congress to have --
[ Music ]
Well, I hope you get the idea.
So Cape Breton is a place
that faces serious challenges,
economic and cultural.
And I'd like to suggest that
it's the cultural integrity
of community life there that's
the foundation of the idea
that life is somehow better there
which many people will tell you,
and point out that music is at
the heart of the good life in some
of those communities if
you talk to local people.
And finally tell you that I can't
tell you how many tourists I've met
who come there because the
scenery is spectacular.
It's a place that keeps being
named by travel magazines as one
of the most beautiful
places in the world.
But so people come for
scenery, happen on a dance,
and leave talking much more about
culture than about scenery as well.
So the really weird thing, though,
is that the more time I spend
in New Orleans the more I
think about Cape Breton.
And my friend Andy Wallace
is nodding his head.
So I can't be too crazy,
I guess, but --
And thinking about that clip you
heard from the radio announcer,
I want to play you a clip to get us
started thinking about New Orleans,
a clip from an interview
with Charmaine Neville.
Charmaine, a member of one of the
musical dynasties in New Orleans.
Some of you will know the Neville
brothers as one of the major bands
that kind of broke out of New
Orleans, and she is the daughter
of Charles Neville the saxophone
player with the Neville brothers.
And she is a very highly regarded
jazz singer in New Orleans
who also kind of describes
herself as --
says, "I don't like
the label jazz singer.
I'm an eclectic singer."
But here she is talking a
little bit about New Orleans
and you tell me if
you hear -- Whoops.
Any parallels to Wendy [inaudible].
>> Speaker 4: I tell you, you knew
everybody because it wasn't just --
You know, I have to tell people all
the time New Orleans is the biggest
little neighborhood in the world.
And everybody knew everybody.
You knew everybody's mama, and
they had their dogs, their cats,
you know, their [inaudible].
You knew everybody.
So -- And if you did anything,
everybody knew what you did,
and people would [inaudible]
the policemen would whip you,
the [inaudible] would whip you.
You know, and then you got home
and you got another whipping.
So, you know.
And you knew that you had
to speak to everybody.
Like I remember one time I
walked past Ms [inaudible] house
and I didn't say, "Good
afternoon" or whatever.
By the time I got home everybody
in the neighborhood knew
that I hadn't spoken to her, and
I had to go -- I got a whipping.
I had to go back to her house and
say, "Good evening, Ms [inaudible].
How are you doing?"
You know, so that's
how we were raised.
You know? Everybody looked out
for everybody else, you know.
You knew if somebody was
having problems or, you know.
So it was always like that.
That's just, you know -- I mean
things are different now with the --
>> Bert Feintuch: So, you know,
New Orleans is a place
that's famous for its music.
Talking about musical hotspots in
the United States it's hard to think
of a place more famous
for its music.
It's famous, everyone knows,
for its role historically
in the development of jazz.
It's also very significant --
a very significant player in the
development of rhythm and blues,
in rock and roll and funk,
and it just keeps kind
of churning out music.
You know, the contemporary brass
band scene there is remarkable.
Contemporary forms of hip hop,
distinctively New Orleans forms
of hip hop where you can
hear echoes of brass bands,
for instance, quite amazing.
People call it the Big Easy, but
it's not an easy place really.
It's a place that has deep problems
with poverty, with an infrastructure
that doesn't work very well, with --
It's still in recovery
from when the levees broke,
some parts more than
others in recovery.
High crime.
And more and more big issues having
to do with gentrification too.
I originally thought, "What could
be more different from Cape Breton
than this large black
majority city?"
And I was remembering, you know,
one of my Cape Breton interviewees
about my age telling me that she
had not seen a person of color
in her life until she was 17.
These seem like quite different
kinds of places, but the more I go
to New Orleans the more I
start hearing parallels.
I start hearing people talk about
how much they value community.
I hear about how much
culture is valued.
I hear about valuing heritage.
I hear an anxiety about
maintaining those things.
And more and more if you go
and pay attention you realize
that there's a public conversation
kind of raging about maintaining
that music and that culture.
What I want to do now is actually
read to you some interview clips
from interviews I've
done with people
that are short interview clips,
and I want to start with someone
who I bet has spoken in this room or
performed next door in the Coolidge
with Doctor Michael White.
Michael is a leading traditional
jazz player, clarinetist,
and a researcher on New Orleans
music, has a PhD in Spanish,
but actually holds an endowed share
in black music and black culture
at one of the universities
in New Orleans.
And he said to me, "If you
look at New Orleans culture,
its branches are the same tree.
We're doing the same
things for the same reasons.
It's just that they come
out in different ways.
Which is beautiful.
I mean it's hard to
believe that an urban area
in America even today can have
unique traditions like we have.
Social parades.
Jazz funerals.
Brass bands."
[Inaudible] still have meaning
and vitality in the community,
although that meaning
may have changed
and outside influences have
altered the course or direction
of some of them somewhat.
But they're still very important
parts of New Orleans culture today.
It's incredible.
Charmaine Neville talking about
growing up in the Ninth Ward --
The Ninth Ward in her childhood
was a working class African
American community.
It's one of the two
parts of the city
that has come back least
of all from Katrina.
Said succinctly, "Growing up in
the Lower Ninth was fabulous.
I mean everybody was a musician."
And from Deacon John
Moore -- Deacon John.
Interesting character.
I don't -- Andy will know him.
I don't know if anyone else does.
Deacon started as a session guitar
player playing on some classic rock
and roll and R&B releases
from New Orleans produced
by Allen Toussaint and
[inaudible] studio.
He played on Aaron Neville's
"Tell it Like it Is."
And Lee Dorsey's "Working
in a Coal Mine."
And Ernie K-Doe's "Mother-in-Law."
So you may know some
of those songs as well.
And since then he's made a
career playing with a big band,
including three backup singers.
Playing private functions.
The hunger for music there is such
that he's been able to do that,
and you always meet people
there who say, "Oh, yeah.
He played for my graduation."
Or, "My debutante ball."
Or the Mardi Gras crew or whatever.
He very rarely plays in public,
but he's made a fairly
good living doing that.
Sometimes he goes out in disguise
because people stop him
so much to say, "Oh.
You played my daughter's wedding
and my next daughter -- It's time."
You know, that sort
of thing as well.
He wears these sort of old
gas station attendant shirts
with different names on them.
And he's also president of the local
musician's union there as well,
and he said, "Being from New Orleans
you're exposed to the culture.
You come up in the culture
with the second line parades,
the Mardi Gras, all that.
You're exposed to that ever
since you were a little kid.
Your parents bring you to
Mardi Gras in your costume
and you see the Mardi Gras Indians,
the brass bands, the jazz funerals,
and it becomes part of you."
Let's hear some music
from Deacon John
since we haven't heard
anything from New Orleans.
This is from a concert that was
kind of a celebration of him.
So it's with an even bigger
sort of all star band and it's
with a big house, and he's singing
kind of anthemic New Orleans songs
with Tricia Boutte also
known as Teedy Boutte.
We'll with luck hear a little
bit of this and you'll --
At least if you're of a certain
age you'll know this song, right?
I think.
[ Music ]
Could this have anything to
do with the hearings tomorrow?
Do you think we've been blocked?
Try once -- My partner Jeanie I
think calls this spinning thing the
beach ball of death.
Let's try one more.
[ Music ]
I think that's a message
that it's time to keep going.
This is actually helpful in that,
you know, I kept telling myself,
"You can't -- You don't have
time to play all these clips
as long -- for their full length."
So, on the other hand, it would be
nice if we could get out of this.
Yeah. Oh. I'm at the
wrong end of the keyboard.
Thank you.
Actually, why not just
play another little clip
since we seem to be
having some luck?
I don't know if you know the Mardi
Gras Indian tradition at all.
Mardi Gras Indians dating to the
late 19th century in New Orleans,
mostly working class
African American men,
would spend a year sewing costumes
that are inspired by
plains Indian garb.
And parade a few times a
year wearing that costume
and then next year they
start another costume.
Increasingly now we're seeing women
and children as part of this too.
They're -- They organize in
what used to be called gangs.
Now they call themselves tribes.
And they have names like the Yellow
Pocahontas or the Wild [inaudible]
and these sort of great
fanciful names that are
in some ways evocative anyway
of Native American culture.
And they say they're doing it
in tribute or in appreciation
for the role that Native
American communities played
for people in slavery.
There are all sorts of attempts
to try to figure this out,
where it really comes from, and
so it's inspired in part it looks
like by the Buffalo
Bill Cody Wild West show
which [inaudible] New Orleans
in the 1880s, for instance.
But they have developed this
distinctive body of music.
They parade.
They have tribal ranks.
There's a spy boy who marches
ahead looking for the other tribes
because they used to have
violent confrontations.
Now when they have
confrontations they argue
about who's the prettiest, talking
about their elaborate suits.
And this is not a very great YouTube
clip of something very recent
from some Mardi Gras
Indians out on the streets.
I think it's worth seeing,
though, because so much
of New Orleans music has
to do with the streets.
[ Music ]
It is a visually spectacular thing.
I had someone from one of the
[inaudible] clubs, black benevolent,
organizations that have been
so much a part of New Orleans
for a long time said
to me, "You know,
committing to be a
Mardi Gras Indian,"
which means you sew a
new costume every year --
And these are elaborately
beaded, tiny beads
and so forth, all done by hand.
He said, "It's a form
of self incarceration."
So kept going to New Orleans.
Kept going to music events.
Kept listening to people talk
about music, culture, and life.
And the more I do that,
the more parallels
with Cape Breton come to mind.
Some of those are the importance
of smaller social configurations
in New Orleans communities.
I'm sorry.
In Cape Breton it's communities.
In New Orleans it's neighborhoods.
The importance of these things in
supporting and sustaining the kind
of cultural creativity
and continuity
that seemed necessary
to cultural integrity.
And I point out too that
New Orleans neighborhoods,
especially the musical ones,
are sort of like the
Cape Breton communities
in that they are comprised of people
left out of economic opportunity.
Both places music is very
much in the public realm.
In Cape Breton it's halls and in New
Orleans it really is the streets.
The best theater in
America, I think,
is going to a second line
parade or a jazz funeral
or Mardi Gras Indian super
Sunday which is when they parade
for the broader community.
It's also striking to me that
almost everybody talks about music
and family in both of
these places as well.
You know, as [inaudible]
mentioned, the Cape Breton book
that we did we called
"In the Blood."
But I hear people in New Orleans
saying, "Music is in the blood."
And they're both places
that are characterized
by these family dynasties.
In Cape Breton it's
Beatons and McMasters
and in New Orleans it's
Nevilles and [inaudible]
and many, many others as well.
Also in New Orleans the
music is very much part
of the public realm just
as it is in Cape Breton.
It's in some ways at the
center of public life.
In some of these communities too.
And also, as I mentioned,
there's this ongoing kind
of public conversation about --
especially about threats to
those neighborhoods' integrity.
Often meaning gentrification.
Formerly it was urban renewal,
although they've tended
to back down from that.
And other sorts of
disruptive forces.
So, as in Cape Breton, New Orleans
is a place where there's a lot
of kind of cultural
anxiety too, I think.
And, as in Cape Breton, there's
this development of a kind
of institutionalized
infrastructure to teach
and sustain and present the music.
That is to maintain
cultural integrity.
I'm thinking New Orleans of,
oh, the Tipitina's Foundation
and Ellis Marsalis Center
for Music which some
of these were built
after Hurricane Katrina.
Some predate them.
The Marsalis Center which is an
after school center for children --
They come mostly middle school
and I think high school kids come.
They have tutors who insist
that they do their homework
and then they get music lessons.
I asked the director there,
"What's the instrument that most
of these young kids want
to play in New Orleans?"
Thinking that if you ask that
where I live, what would it be?
Maybe guitar?
Maybe flute or whatever.
Trumpet. Trumpet.
New Orleans.
There's a New Orleans
[inaudible] alliance, for instance.
And these are all about protecting
or restoring what's normal and good.
And, as I said, it's
important to realize that some
of these are the results of
the levees breaking in 2005,
but some of them predate this.
These are long running
concerns, long running issues.
I looked at a 2010 study about
civic engagement and the recovery
from the hurricane, and they looked
at various kinds of social groups
in New Orleans and graded them
in terms of civic engagement.
And some of those constituencies
were high income groups,
high education groups,
whites, church members.
The groups that scored highest
on civic engagement were the
social [inaudible] club members.
These, as I said, are
benevolent societies
that were established early in
New Orleans to provide benefits
that weren't available in African
American communities [inaudible]
benefits and so forth, but
also played a key role in kind
of cultural preservation as well.
They sponsor the parades
that pay the brass bands
to keep going and things
of that sort.
So in a sense I see
these organizations
as having been formed
originally to create
and help sustain cultural
integrity, and that's not surprising
that they stepped up right
away after the 2005 storm.
I talked about conversations.
I want to mention that they're
fighting all the time in New Orleans
about whether music should
be regulated on the streets.
The Mardi Gras Indians have resisted
parade permits historically.
The city says, "No.
You need parade permits."
They are fighting about that.
And culture is the rationale there.
It's not expense or whatever.
Noise ordinances have
become a big issue.
This is especially in
gentrifying neighborhoods
where you have the kind of familiar
irony of people moving in to an area
from outside saying they, you
know, they love the culture,
and then not wanting it
up close very much at all.
So, to use the terminology
I'm trying to develop --
So what's normal and good in
some New Orleans neighborhoods is
under fire typically because
of socioeconomic factors.
The pushback is that these new rules
and regulations will
damage cultural integrity.
So I don't mean to imply that
cultural integrity is measurable
or finite or objective, but in
my field I don't know what is.
So that doesn't really disturb me.
We know that from sustainability
studies
that change is part
of natural systems.
We also know that environmentalists
believe that there are states
of being in a natural world that
are more successful which is
to say more integrated than
other more disruptive states.
Some environmentalists use
terms such as stewardship
to describe their work to help
places recover from disruption.
As I think about Cape Breton,
and as I think about New Orleans,
and I think about culture being in
the air and about local anxieties
about culture, I wonder if we
might say that what's at stake
in these places is a desire to
hold on to cultural integrity.
And of course I'd like to think
that scholars and institutions
such as the American Folklife
Center are helping play a role
in that stewardship, the
stewardship of that integrity.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
What do you think, Nancy?
Should we take a few questions?
Do we have time?
Are there questions?
Yes?
>> Speaker 5: I have two,
one for each [inaudible].
I wonder if how -- You made
them [inaudible] really great.
I was there 45 years ago.
I'm sure nothing has
changed [inaudible]
but are the local communities
welcoming of people coming
from the outside who are
interested in being involved
in their cultural integrity?
And then as far as New
Orleans is concerned,
did I understand you correctly in
saying that the ninth ward wasn't --
didn't come back as well?
And, if so, why?
If they were part of that
potential sustainability you were
talking about?
>> Bert Feintuch: Those
are two good questions.
I -- Are Cape Breton
communities welcoming outsiders?
I would say often yes.
I mean I think people
go and are often struck
by how much people approach
them and are curious,
say, "Where are you from?"
And so forth.
I mean there's been a great deal
of tourism development there
that predates the interest in
music, in fact, and a great deal
of intentional work to
kind of create the idea
that it's a Celtic place
or a Scottish place.
And, you know, Nova Scotia
itself has seen a huge amount
of tourist development
with special roots plotted
that are thematic and so forth.
I have found Cape Bretoners
are often very friendly,
but may be a little slow to,
say, invite you to their house.
So friendly in public spaces,
in the kind of public arena,
and often curious about you,
and often very welcoming.
I felt in doing field work
that when I finally get invited
in to someone's kitchen to drink tea
that I know I've kind of made it.
And that feels like
more of a privilege
than some other people I
know who go just to kind
of enjoy the music have had.
New Orleans Lower Ninth
ward, you know, it --
I don't have an answer for this.
People in the Lower Ninth --
The Lower Ninth is where the
industrial canal levee broke,
and it's where some of the most
devastating flooding happened.
I mean 18 feet of water and stuff.
And you could go and you'd
see the only thing left
of a house was the concrete
front steps that went up to --
a few steps to the porch.
So a lot of those houses were
built on concrete blocks.
You know, they were barely
anchored to the earth.
People there will tell
you that it's not so much
in the city's economic
interest because there's not
that much industry or business there
and that poor people get
the short end of the deal.
And that's what you hear often.
I -- I'm sure there are -- If you go
to city hall there are other kinds
of explanations, but
actually I don't know them
and can't tell you this.
But both the Lower Ninth
and New Orleans East
which was also a working class
or in some ways more middle class
black neighborhood are the two
places that have been slowest to
come back and have gotten less
in the way of outside funding
and so forth to bring them back.
There are still swaths
of the Lower Ninth ward
that the physical buildings
are gone, for instance.
Yes? In the back.
And then Andy.
You please.
Yeah.
>> Speaker 6: I'm not sure if I
have a question or observation,
but when you showed the
clips of the tribes --
>> Bert Feintuch: The
Mardi Gras Indians?
>> Speaker 6: I saw a
pretty African influence
in that too [inaudible]
just curious [inaudible].
>> Bert Feintuch: Sure.
>> Speaker 6: The African
[inaudible] culture and --
>> Bert Feintuch: Well, you know, it
is African American culture and much
of African American
music includes that call
and response no matter
what the genre is.
It's also, I think --
You can understand the Mardi
Gras Indians too as part
of this really spectacular tradition
of masking and parading that runs
through a lot of the black Caribbean
and in other places as well.
If you go to -- I live near Boston.
There's a Caribbean
parade every year.
People are wearing huge
feathered costumes and so forth.
Here because of historical
circumstances here
in New Orleans they
connected to Indians and talk
about Indian culture, but you can
also see it as part of a long kind
of continuity that has to
do with parading, masking,
elaborate costuming and so forth.
Andy?
>> Speaker 7: One comment.
The other thing I found in common
between those two cultures
was the caliber
of [inaudible] in both of them.
I don't encounter communities that
have that level of great musicians,
but the great Cape Breton musicians,
the [inaudible] are popular
music stars in addition
to being traditional musicians.
And I wonder if you can comment on
-- But they integrated the trappings
of a lot of popular
culture in to their acts.
And yet that's perfectly
accepted there and I wanted you
to -- that whole phenomenon --
>> Bert Feintuch: Do you know
Natalie McMasters' music?
Some of you will, of course.
Yeah. There was a time when
Natalie was Canada's busiest
performing artist.
When I first went to Cape Breton
Natalie McMaster who had been --
then may not have even
been out of her teens.
And Ashley [inaudible]
were just huge sensations.
Ashley -- Both came out of
family traditions of music.
Both are remarkably good players.
Both share the same teacher.
And both were doing really well.
Ashley had done a recording that
integrated traditional fiddle music
with very aggressive rock and roll.
And had gotten the equivalent
of a Grammy in Canada
and was getting a lot of college
radio play in the United States
and sort of applying to or appealing
to sort of hip young people.
Natalie was playing
more traditionally,
but over time she sort of turned
in to what I think of as someone
who could do her act on a -- in
a Las Vegas casino or something.
There's a lot of glitz
and a lot of choreography
and wonderful musicianship.
And both are loved
at home and admired.
And they really kind of paved
the way to the idea for a bunch
of other young musicians that,
"Maybe I can make a living at this."
I remember when I was there in the
late '90s you would see, you know,
quarter mile long lines to get
in to the Brook Village Hall
because Ashley was
playing, for instance,
and it was all young people.
So it brought a lot of young
people back to the music.
And there was something
else I want to say
and I've just -- I
just blanked on it.
Oh yeah. I did an interview
with someone
who was a very fine fiddle player.
She's in her 40s now so she
was in her 20s then I guess.
Who said there was a time
-- This was late '90s.
There was a time when parents
used to send their kids
to play hockey thinking that was --
could be an economic
way out of the island.
And she said now they
have fiddle lessons.
Yeah. And that moment
is somewhat gone,
but they're still revered figures.
Yes?
>> Speaker 7: I was thinking that
the Cape Breton people, you know,
tell a story about how a community
responded to economic challenges.
So the first thing was they had
[inaudible] but a whole bunch
of [inaudible] you know ended
up moving to the same place,
and so they were able to bring the
culture with them, keep it going.
And then once again, you
know [inaudible] started to,
you know [inaudible].
In New Orleans it was
with a disaster
that especially affected
the communities
where there had been a
tremendous stability in terms
of the people living in those
neighborhoods and their --
They had very high home ownership
rates even [inaudible] homes were --
>> Bert Feintuch: So you're
talking about Katrina.
Yes.
>> Speaker 7: But what
happened was that a lot
of those people were
scattered around.
People went to Atlanta.
They went to Houston.
They went to Denver.
Wherever. And I think
in those circumstances,
especially [inaudible]
cultural identity.
So I think these institutions of --
that, you know, have been reinforced
or sprung up, say, in
New Orleans, you know,
those need to become spread
around if the people want to try
to keep connecting back and
then, you know, bring it forward
to where they're probably going to
be living the rest of their lives
and probably their children as well.
And I was just thinking
about my own father who grew
up in an Irish American
dock worker's neighborhood.
There's probably not a single
person left in the neighborhood
because the economy changed
over, you know, decades.
But there are certain institutions
that you can connect to if you want
to go back to some of the
music, go back to some
of the traditions and [inaudible].
>> Bert Feintuch: Oh, I agree.
I don't really know
what to say beyond that.
You know, there's been a fair amount
of work, especially around Houston,
by some folklorists kind of
documenting the stories of people
who were displaced
by the storm and had
to create new lives in other places.
You often hear when people
are interviewed in, you know,
Salt Lake City or Houston
or wherever they ended
up that they miss the food
and they miss the music.
That those are -- They're
so emblematic
of life in that community.
>> Betsy Peterson:
Thank you very much.
>> Bert Feintuch: Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at llc.gov.