In the winter of 2007, beloved New Orleans residents filmmaker Helen Hill and drummer Dinerral Shavers were among the victims lost to violence. Treme's 15th episode, Slip Away, begins with Dinerral's funeral.
A House Not Meant To Stand, my NOLA post from that time, captures a little of the dizzying pace with:
"There were more than a dozen murders in the last week, six on Thursday."
Watching the show triggers continual fast forwards and flashbacks as it floats between fiction and reality. Dinerral's sister Nakita gives a heartbroken eulogy, and a boy portraying Dinerral, Jr. holds Dinerral's drum as the Hot 8 plays their bandmate out.
Fast forward. This weekend, three people were shot in the Bywater and popular Boucherie chef Nathanial Zimet was shot in an armed robbery in front of his uptown home. He had cooked all night to prepare enough food for the Bayou Boogaloo festival.
This is the life that Treme's chef Janette left behind, moving on to Chef Eric Ripert's kitchen. And it's what Lt. Terry and Toni are shown working their way through. Toni is also on rocky ground with Sofia's curiosity about her father's death to contend with. The suicide of a teacher rocks her school. Antoine's students are dealing with the shooting of a classmate.
And Albert can no longer take it. He's going back to Houston. Even the upcoming Mardi Gras Indian celebrations aren't enough to make him stay in a city that turns off his water while he drowns in red tape, and a state that turns his Road Home Application down once again. There are days when the culture bearers can no longer bear the culture, and New Orleans becomes more of a trampoline than a landing pad. The Big Chief is out.
LaDonna and her husband Larry are still struggling with the choice to stay in Baton Rouge (him) or stay in New Orleans and suffer through the pain (her). Watching her navigate through a hometown she no longer feels safe in is gut-wrenching, literally.
Davis is sending congratulatory liquor to expatriate Janette and Annie is writing songs about Sonny, so the two are at cross purposes but getting along swimmingly. Aunt Mimi declares: "We shall seek an appointment with Mr. Fresh," then lays some of DJ Mannie Fresh's own lines on him including: "Fuck the fake ass friends." Post-Treme, there could be a future in rap for Elizabeth Ashley. Belly laugh of the week goes to Annie when Davis announces his plan to pay back the Sazerac fixings with "Advance against future sales of the CD." Even in 2007, that was optimistic.
Antoine's wandering eyes are almost out of their sockets with the Soul Apostles Slip Away. To further clarify, Wanda Rouzan sings an excellent rendition of The Dark End of the Street. Sonny hangs in there.
Delmond has been searching for what fueled early jazz music, and his albums lead him back to Jellyroll Morton's Milneberg Joys. The lakefront resort community was torn down in the '30s, and much of it now lies beneath the spot where the University of New Orleans is located. "It's got mud all over it," Delmond says of early jazz. He could be speaking of Milneburg.
"If you want to build or modernize anything you're seen as the problem," C.J. "The Problem" Liguori tells Nelson who is told to work within the lines that CJ cryptically draws on a map. It feels as if Katrina ripped the roof off City Hall and Simon, Overmyer and Company are looking directly down on the backroom deals of four years ago.
Fast forward again, more than seventy acres of New Orleans have been cleared for a new LSU teaching hospital, despite rallies by citizens pushing for homes in Mid City to remain where they are and for the existing Charity Hospital to be reopened. Today, the Louisiana State Legislature voted down $900 million in borrowing power for a hospital campus, so for the time being it's empty land. Milneberged.
In Milneberg Joys (sometimes spelled Milenberg in fact my spelling may be pretentious), Morton described life in a village of lakefront cottages attached by walkways, where musicians could ignore Jim Crow laws and play across racial barriers. Dr. John once told me he was fined by the musicians union decades ago for breaking the musical miscegenation bylaw. The rule is long gone, but Mac still sends in a small amount every year as a reminder. The fine will probably never be paid off. That's the point.
In New Orleans, spoken word performers Gian Smith and Altonio Jackson describe the situation as it stood in 2007. Meanwhile in New York, Delmond sings "Rock My Soul to the Milneberg Joys" while Janette second lines, hankie and all.
The lost cradle of jazz is a memory to fewer and fewer music lovers, but the song survived to Season 2, Episode 5, of Treme. And that's something.
Photo by Jeff Beninato, Second Line Funeral for 5 Year Anniversary of Katrina Levee Breaks.
More music background by Dave Walker in NOLA.
Follow Karen Dalton-Beninato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kbeninato
My thoughts are with Zimet's loved ones, I can't imagine what they're going through right now.