My Jazz Travel to New Orleans

It is very unfortunate now, but you can't fight the forces of nature.
It was a terrible hurricane.
There are no direct flights to New Orleans.
From the moment my wife and I stood in line at the crowded customs in the Houston airport, it felt terrible.
Something was out of the ordinary.
Something was swirling in the distance in the sky, just as one can feel the difference in the flow of blood between ebb and flood tides.
In July 2005, Hurricane Katrina was on a rampage in Miami, sucking the lives out of five people, and it was good at it.
Our plane was held up in Houston for a bit before taking off for New Orleans on the 11th.
The sky was rougher than usual.

In Japan, there is a saying, "The typhoon has passed.
Here, too, the heat of midsummer rushes in when the clouds sometimes run through at a great speed, and sweat beads up on the skin.
But the black clouds always appeared in some part of the sky, as if they were always watching somewhere.
It was sickeningly black and toggling.

The humidity was 80% to 90%, and sweat was pouring just standing outside.
Yasuo Arai's headache was at its peak. The sky loomed over him.
At night, when the temperature drops a little and it feels cooler, people go out to the bustling Bourbon Street.
The narrow alley, reminiscent of a downtown street in Tokyo, is lined on both sides with souvenir shops and live music venues with bands bursting into sound every other house.
The sound of the live music is only outdone by the live music clubs across the street, which are pumping out noisy tunes to add to the bustling atmosphere.
The signs of strip joints lining the street are beyond expression and seem to make it more difficult to enter.
(I wonder if this is more likely to attract American customers?) Anyway, this place is a festival all year round.

We hardly passed any Japanese tourists walking around this area.
Actually, it seemed to be a very dangerous area, but Yasuo Arai had a terrible headache and his face had a frightening expression.

In New Orleans, it always rains at night from dawn to morning.
It was hot and humid at that time, and this heat is said to have given birth to jazz, novels, unique cemeteries, and ghosts that are said to live in the city....
Voodoo legends still live on in New Orleans, which seems to be an easy place for the dead to live, with many haunted houses, ghost stories, and even vampires.
There are even tours to visit there. ・・・・ It's fun, isn't it?

The Mississippi River, which flows through the town, is the longest river in the U.S. and the third longest in the world at approximately 6,210 km in length. And the average elevation is minus 1.5m above sea level.
New Orleans was the only city in the U.S. with an elevation of less than 0 m above sea level.
This river is as wide and big as the ocean in appearance.

The river bank I saw was 3-4 meters above sea level in the old downtown French Quarter.
There are many ships coming and going all day long, from huge tankers to small boats.
Jackson Square is located along the river. This is the belly button of the city.
The St. Louis Cathedral facing this square is beautiful.
In front of the square, sightseeing carriages decorated with flowers are waiting for many visitors.
This is indeed New Orleans. During the daytime, when you take a short walk around the town, you can hear the sound of horns calling from all over the place.
Louis Armstrong Memorial Park was quiet even in the daytime, and the courtyard was impressive with a pond befitting a beautiful garden and a small red bridge hanging over it. A guest house stood quietly to welcome any guests.
Inside the park, there was a large hall and a small hall where frequent concerts were held. There were many statues in the garden, and it was hard to distinguish who they were.

As for the souvenir shops, New Orleans is all about Jazz, because there is nothing after Jazz.
As for music, New Orleans has only the image of Jazz, but there is not much Dixie or Ragtime on Bourbon Street at night, and as I mentioned earlier, there are few places where you can hear traditional New Orleans Jazz even in nightclubs.
The sound of blues, R&B, rock, disco, and other sounds, mixed with bouncing rhythms, are all played loudly through the open doors of the clubs.
It is strange that even if you do not go into a restaurant or hang out on the main street sipping ice cubes with cocktails such as daiquiris, the music that comes to you is not jazz, but it is naturally jazz.
On Bourbon Street at night, there were policemen at every street corner (there were even riding policemen), and you could feel the danger of the people.
It looks like a real danger zone. I said as we paraded through the streets, sipping daiquiris.

We found the Preservation Hall, one of the best places to hear classic jazz in the U.S., a rundown live music venue tucked away in a small alleyway on Bourbon Street.
I was looking for it by address, but it was so old, with its dated fences and rickety wooden doors, that I passed it several times before I finally found it.
We paid the $10 admission fee through the old fat door, which had been painted over too many times to fit properly, and went inside ・・・・.
Inside, the space is small, with guests crammed onto narrow wooden benches and later arrivals sitting on the old-fashioned creaking, crumbling wooden floor.
The walls and the small space where the stage is set are all sepia-toned, as if I had blended into the postcard itself.

---No microphones, no nothing.
---When a song is sung, there is only piano accompaniment and no brass sound.
---The bass player could be tuba or wood bass,
---The trumpets, trombones, drums, clarinets, and pianos all played the Dexy.
---- There are pictures of famous jazz players from the past hanging on the crumbling walls.
---And a small sign that says $5 for requests, but only the Saints are $10. (I guess that means they're sick of the "March of the Saints.")

The people in this band are old enough to feel the history of New Orleans itself, and the space was so wonderful that no one in the audience was unimpressed with their effortless, no-pressure playing.

Another famous Dixieland jazz place was in the center of Bourbon Street.
As soon as I walked in, I realized that I was in for a treat.

---Oh, my God!

MaisonBourbon has often used this store's stage in jazz books, photos, etc. for a long time!!!!
So this was the place!

For all that, there was almost nothing that really clicked with me about the band's performance today.
The PA (sound system) seems to be too loud.
Sound escapes from open windows and doors and catches the customers ・・・・? Every night is a festival because of the competition for customers...maybe that's why.
It's like a performance that cares too much about the audience ・・・・.

Free customers were hanging out in the street out front.
New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, and this poor town is all about jazz.
It is a wonderful town that gave birth to trumpeter Louis Armstrong, pianist Jelly Roll Morton, and blind cornetist King Oliver.

That town was destroyed by a hurricane.
The walls that protected the town were old and could not dam the flooding river.
Are the kind-hearted people I met, the inspiring players, now safe?

What about the old man in the wheelchair who gave me a great saxophone performance, laughing at each other in unintelligible conversations in English with too bad an accent?
What about the kind old lady at the souvenir shop whom I ended up going shopping several times?
What about the town full of history, the home of jazz, which is now ・・・・?

For some reason, right after my wife and I left New Orleans, Hurricane Katrine, which was supposed to have left, came back around in a circle.
Has such a thing ever happened before?
Could such an unbelievable event happen in the unknown?

My wife and I came within a hair's breadth of the hurricane, as we came within a hair's breadth of the Los Angeles Combination Store murders.
I pray for the many people who lost their lives.
I pray for the safety of those I met and got to know in New Orleans, and I sincerely hope that the city can be rebuilt even better than before.

For Snapshots of New Orleans