The Chicago Sun-Times published this interview December 15 with the most outspoken of the Neville Brothers at one point of Arlo Guthrie’s Amtrak train music tour on the City of New Orleans to raise funds for Katrina victims.
Thing is, he wasn’t not going to be in New Orleans at the end of Guthrie’s journey.
He says that there is nothing for left there for him or his brothers and their musical progeny, relatives and friends:
“Would I go back to live?” Neville asked. “There’s nothing there. And the situation for musicians was a joke. People thought there was a New Orleans music scene — there wasn’t. You worked two times a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The only musicians I knew who made a living playing music in New Orleans were Kermit Ruffins and Pete Fountain. Everyone else had to have a day job or go on tour. I have worked more in two months in Austin than I worked in two years in New Orleans.
“A lot of things about life in New Orleans were a myth.”
Whenever friends or acquaintances said that they were planning on going or said that they were going to New Orleans to visit, I cautioned them. Don’t take whatever you see at face value. Don’t believe everything that you hear, because much of it is a lie. Even the gravesite of Marie Laveau in St. Louis Cathedral Cemetery may not contain the bones of the real voodoo queen. I’ve been shown by those who know at least one more unmarked site housing the bones of the mother, who was also named Marie. There was even a Marie III.
Neville said, “For a lot of us, the storm is still happening.” He and his wife have bought a house in Austin, TX. The Nevilles appeared at a big New York benefit for Katrina relief at Madison Square Garden, with Cyril wearing a teeshirt that had, “Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans” written on it, as blacks, formerly 68 percent of New Orleans’ 451,000 residents have not returned in great numbers. Said 2005 Grammy nominee Marcia Ball about Cyril:
“Austin has so much to gain from Cyril,” Ball said in a phone interview from New York. “He was always the social conscience, the message man. He’s worked with kids and set up educational groups. He’s already approached Austin High School. Austin is a different kind of town than New Orleans, which has been a dead-end street for a lot of people for a long time. You can be the best graduate in a New Orleans public high school and there’s nothing for you.”
The other Nevilles are also exiles. Art and Aaron Neville and their families have settled temporarily in Nashville, TN. Charles Neville, however, has resided in rural Massachusetts for a decade.
When Katrina hit New Orleans, the Neville Brothers were performing in New York. They regrouped in Memphis, where Neville said that he found that the music scene was just as paltry as it was in New Orleans:
“Memphis was the same scene as New Orleans in that there were three clubs with 3,000 musicians trying to get gigs,” Neville said. “New Orleans has Tipitina’s, House of Blues and the Maple Leaf. The decision to go to Austin was a no-brainer. There was a good music scene.”
Tribunes might agree with what Neville had to say next:
“Now you got cats that come down there every now and then to be king of a parade or whatever. They couldn’t find helicopters to get people off of roofs, but they found helicopters to bring certain people in for photo ops. I’m not mad at anybody, but at the same time we put a lot into that city and never got what I think we should have got out of it.”
Nowadays, Cyril Neville and his wife Gaynielle appear in a weekly, Tuesday show called “New Orleans Cookin’ & Jukin'” at Threadgill’s in Austin. Gaynielle cooks red beans and rice and gumbo, and together they perform with their group, Tribe 13. Neville believes that they have been thoroughly accepted in Austin, long considered, along with its university area, as the “Berkeley of Texas.”
Look for some interesting stuff to come out of Texas in the next few years. But I don’t blame him for leaving entirely. Many New Orleans blacks in previous decades came to feel that they were limited by the city and what it had to offer and what it ultimately respected or cared about. They found themselves elsewhere where there were better opportunities: the West Coast, Chicago, Detroit, the East Coast. My father and stepfather were just those kinds of people who later brought their families or remarried and settled away from New Orleans where their circumstances improved.
Cyril Neville thinks the only reason that he would return to New Orleans would be if blacks had more ownership of businesses and venues in the city:
“People are talking to me, but some of the people I know went through much more than I did. There are 3,000 children missing in New Orleans. [The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children places the figure at 1,300.] Hundreds of bodies are waiting to be identified. The people of New Orleans have been scattered to the four winds. Their lives were determined by people in Washington and Baton Rouge before the storm hit. Without African Americans having ownership, economic equity and the same type of things the French Quarter gets — like tax cuts — the city will never be the same. The 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Wards should have their own tourist commission. Build our own hotels and restaurants in those areas. The key is ownership. Then I would think about going back and living there. But we’re still practicing American democracy. How can we ever bring it to somebody else?”
What does that mean for thousands of other New Orleans musicians who don’t have the wherewithal as the Nevilles? Many still need the basics: food, shelter and medicine; and some are elderly, past their prime. They also need gigs. What do you think? Is New Orleans really done for as a place for music, much as Memphis and Chicago are relics of a blues and jazz scene that happened decades ago? I know that creativity, like the rise and fall of civilizations, comes and goes in cycles. What is left?
I’m sorry, but I am not surprised. Tipitina’s may have to relocate, because the Nevilles are no longer “the house band.”
Do you have any plans to reorganize all your posts into an online history of the aftermath of Katrina?
Reading each diary as you do them has been a powerful experience but I think that reading each on as part of a coherent overall story would be even more effective.
and I wouldn’t know how to begin doing this?
Boo has not returned my e-mail regarding a regular column.
I wrote you back. If you did not receive my response I can send it again.
please do…
I’m a big talker but I don’t have any idea either and I know it could turn into a massive amount of work. But if you are interested (beyond the idea of a column at BooTrib) I would be happy to bring up the idea at one of the Froggy Bottom cafes. Several of the people who hang out there have their own blogs and I’m sure would offer some ideas.
I agree with AndiF and many others also that your diaries should be collected together for people to be able to read as an ongoing series. These diaries provide a very powerful and passionate accounting of Katrina and it’s continued devastating aftermath to so many people and families. And no goddamn end in sight it seems either.
I shouldn’t say I told you so, but…
I told you so!
Please, please, please–blksista should have her own Hurricane Katrina section featured at the Boo.
As long as blksista has time and the Boo says yes. I sure hope so!
Yes, I agree. These are invaluable, real time and personal reflections on the news and people, as it’s happening. Amazing work.
I can archive them, with an index, onsite copies and links to the original bootrib diaries, if you want. Also, you can point people to your diary page that lists all your diaries, only those go from latest to earliest.
This is similar to what I’ve heard from Katrina survivors here in Austin. They are not musicians, but they repeat – there is nothing for me there. I was unhappy there even before Katrina. The bad schools, the incompetence and corruption of government. Several have told me – I wanted to leave before but I just couldn’t make myself go through the hassle of moving, finding a job somewhere else, and so on.
Not that they are saying, we’re in Austin now and everything is peachy keen and all better. Families and life-long friend are scattered, and this is not a small thing – it is heartbreaking in some cases. Finding jobs, permanent housing, struggles with insurance companies and government agencies, financial worries. Kids adjusting to new schools and new surroundings. It’s not easy.
And many of our new residents (estimated 5,000-6,000) were those who were abandoned for five days in the Aftermath – I worry about the long term mental health effects and whether we will provide the necessary resources to help them work through it. Let’s face it – this is still Texas (even if we are an island of relative sanity in it) and Texas has never funded social services of any kind adequately.
But selfishly, I’m glad so many are staying here. We are much enriched by their presence. Good Lord! Gumbo and Cyril Neville every Tuesday?!! I didn’t know that they were doing this. I’m going to try to be there tomorrow.
The only survivor I know who wanted to go back (and has) is white. All of the other survivors that I know are Black, and none want to return. I’m not Black, and I have never been to New Orleans other than to drive through it a couple of times, so I don’t feel qualified to speak to what this means. But I wish I could hear more from African-American New Orleanians about the implications of this.
Your diary makes an important point, namely that bringing the soul of NOLA back is much more than creating a supply of mold-free, tainted-mud-free housing. People need jobs, whether musicians or not.
Families will endure more than folks without kids can imagine in order to do the right thing for their kids – starting with safe neighborhoods, good schools, stable family situations, livable incomes… All the things that don’t look like they’re going to be available in New Orleans anytime soon – in large part, because they were in short supply before the storm.
In hindsight, this outcome was already decided long before Katrina hit – by a generation of empty promises by civic leaders as much as by faulty levee designs and wetlands erosion along the coast – the eroding wetlands were but a metaphor for other forms of erosion happening as well.
If a family has found a situation that’s working out for them, odds are high that they aren’t going to go back. And the more time goes by, the more families will decide “The kids have made friends in their new school; I’ve found a tolerable job; the wife’s joined the local church choir…” In other words, they will have a new life taking root, and who are we to question them? They’ve already paid a high enough price.
And as your piece indicated, when a place is past its prime folks will often hang on hoping for a lucky break, trying to get by, until forced to leave by circumstances – whether musicians or not.
The musicians are just the highly visible (and perhaps more mobile, as they’re used to touring) tip of the iceberg.
As always, thank you for bringing this diary to the pond. Definite food for thought here.
I’ve spoken to many African Americans who want to come back. Many are very homesick, despite everything…and there is a lot.
This past summer was a summer of murder, police killings, revenge killings…etc. There was a storm building, many years before the storm.
But what is in New ORleans, which based its economy on the service industry, is for many American cities. I have no desire to live in most American cities, and I will probably leave New ORleans this coming year.
Austin is one exception. Most American cities are cold, no soul, expensive, decaying and/or gentrifying.
New ORleans had something other cities, except perhaps Austin, doesn’t have: life and community, despite all of the problems. IT is a testament to the human soul that such community could sustain itself despite such poverty and corruption.
Cyrill Neville, and the music of the Nevilles, couldn’t have been born anywhere else. IT is sad that the birthplace of that music was destroyed in one storm, because of human neglect.
Duranta, have the suicides leveled off?
I don’t know. I can only know from my own experience that it is easy to succomb to mood swings here. You really have to take it one day at a time, like a recovery.
Let me just say that many dispersed residents badly want to come back, and some don’t. It is a real mixed bag. Most, for a long time probably, will not return. Some may never return because of economic restrictions. And I can tell you, this is breaking the heart of many New Orleanians.
It is much easier to take a swipe at the city if you are comfortably set up and accepted and wanted in a community. Many New Orleanians feel that they aren’t wanted, I have heard, because of the strain it is putting on city and town budgets and resources. These people…are even more desperate to come home.
I spent a lot of time earlier in life in New Orleans and couldnt agree with Neville more about the myth of NO. Here is another myth exploded –the foods not that good either.
You could make dogshit taste good if you used as much butter and cream as the “great” chefs of NO use. I cant count on one hand how many “great” NO dinners that made me quesy from all that deadly richness, if not downright sick at my stomach. Yecch.
Last but not least, Austin’s music scene is something of a myth as well.
Dallas Performing Arts High School has broken more local musical acts to national prominence in the past decade than Austin has in its entire musical history. If you need names, Eryka Badu, Norah Jones and Polyphonic Spree come quickly to mind.
Austin has Willie and Stevie Ray, but Stevie Ray actually is from Dallas and Willie came to Austin thru Nashville (born/raised in Waco area).
I have no idea why a poor black person who has been relocated to Texas would go back to their shitty slum life in NO. Louisiana’s slums are among the worst if not the worst in the country. The economy in NO has been in recession since forever even before the hurricane, and what good private sector jobs are available are generally available only to white folks with connections.
Many, many more opportunities exist for employment and education in Texas, as well as a much more vibrant and thriving arts and music scene.
I came here from Cali 15 years ago and found not only most of my prejudice of the south in general and Texas in particular to be just as mythological as the New Orleans cultural scene. Its all rooted in the past. I cant even stand to be in Southern Cal any more. Too much of everything is nothing and definitely less filling.
“Walk and dont look back”, would my advice to any New Orleanian who has nothing to go back there for.
There doesn’t seem to be an area of the country that you hold any fondness for. I am sorry for that.
I am fond of some elements of New Orleans life and culture, but other aspects are crushing to the soul: poverty that leads to crime, cronism, corruption, police harrassment and killings.
New Orleans though, had that charm that seduces even in the face of its monumental problems: witness the African Americans who badly want to come home.
What has seduced me here is the incredible architecture, the music that is constantly created here, awesome bands coming from this city, and the feel here, of age and decay. I hate newness, I’m fond of history and everything physical that represents where we have come from.
Then there are the “characters”. You didn’t have to go far here to meet the people who give this place its charm. We were driving around a nearly empty city and came across two African American men hanging out on a stoop in a deserted neighborhood. One was a Jamaican man who badly wanted to go home. The other man, a New Orleanian, was quietly stoic about his and the city’s predicament.
My friend handed him some of our literature, talking up our rally to save New Orleans from the developers, and the man said, “I believe you big daddy, ’cause you have a straight face”.
The New Orleans people, especially its African American population, are very dear to me. They are sweet and funny and humane.
Poverty and despair can drive a person to commit horrible crimes, and New Orleans was full of those. But the people’s spirit I will never forget.
you might want to check out the diary I just posted about this subject.
I love New Orleans. I love Texas. Austin is okay, but San Antonio is a better place to live. And the music is more authentic, too.
I love Boston, where I lived for a long time. I love NY where my daughter lives. I love Mexico. I love everybody, including you. I even love Brinnainne. 😉
I am not sure who you are but I havent forgotten your shameful spreading of urban myth (sometimes known as “lies”) during Katrina and all the “loving” ennablers here who goosed you on. I didnt love THAT and I spoke out about it both directly to you and to the community at the time.
Your hostility is inexplicable. I’m not sure what lies you are talking about. There are many unanswered questions about New ORleans, including the numbers of the dead, including the numbers of those women who were raped in the superdome. I suspect that some of your criticism is about those issues, although you don’t give specifics. CNN ran a report on the women who are coming forward who were raped at the superdome and convention center.
There was a breakdown of civilization, so horrible things did happen, and incredible things happened as well. Did you read the story I linked to about the Lafitte housing development people?
It is interesting that the city officially discontinued its search for bodies, several weeks ago. That’s when it opened up the lower ninth, and residents continued to find bodies. My view, is that the search was discontinued because there are some, that don’t want to know the numbers of dead. There were many bodies simply washed out to sea, and still more that haven’t been found beneath the rubble of the lower ninth, where little to no work towards reconstruction has begun.
Take care though. I certainly did’t mean any of my comments as hurtful to you. It is good to hear that there are places and people that you love.
I didnt want to rehash it. You either recollect what I am referring to or not. If you do not, I doubt a recollection of those events would register with you anyway. Probably should have let it drop. My fault and apologies to you. Your diaries were mostly good but you put yourself in a position of reporting facts. I felt like that obligation required some journalistic accountability ( I know, I know its an oxymoron).
I am not being hostile. Why do you jump to wrong conclusions from everything I write? The first one was “you hate everyplace” or something, when nothing of the kind could reasonably be inferred from my comment, which was critical of some overhyped aspects of New Orleans which are based in mythology, legend and marketing more than fact, and quite complimentary of the music in Dallas.
Now you say I am inexplicably hostile to you in a post where I declared my (platonic) love for you. Which is more inexplicable, my hostility or my love?
I TRULY do not mean to pick on you but I find more and more the responses to people’s comments, not just mine and yours, are so often “off” in some fundamental way. Its disturbing and fascinating to me at once.
And here I am writing in what I consider the most simple, straight forward fashion. 😉
Polemical to be sure. Hopefully, satirical at times. Generally outrageous nonsense on occasion.
But hostile? The lack of modifying equivocality must be experienced by the reader as hostility in blogland, I guess.
Sorry for this and have a nice holiday.
I read your original comment, way too fast, and thought you were also poking holes in Texas “mythology”. Every place has a mythology, by the way. Certainly, Austin and San Antonio are attractive cities. Some can’t see themselves in Texas though, because of its politics. But there is always something, isn’t there? I didn’t respond to your diary on New Orleans, because…there is just too much to say. I am in touch with people who badly want to come home. I also brought a public housing resident to the airport, and had been working with her for weeks, who said she was never coming back.
There are many issues regarding American cities, no? Issues that involve power structures, economic structures, that will take a long time to remedy. Certainly New Orleans exemplifies the best and the worse, of aspects of American cities, but certainly she isn’t the only one with major problems. I don’t think she justifies your condemnation.
I’m a socialist at heart. I think the capitalist model if failing most Americans, if not the world. There is much to work on, and we have our work cut out for us.
Sorry you didn’t like the food here. I don’t eat out. Can’t afford it. But the music…so many bands you didn’t mention: Astral Project, as well as all of the group projects branching off of the members of that group. Soul rebel, Rebirth, Kermit Ruffins, I can’t begin to name them all. The festivals in Louisiana and New Orleans are awesome as well.
I know the love of a city, is and can be an aesthetic issue. You’re entitled to your opinions, but I hope you don’t mind my love for the city, dispite her obvious flaws.
exploitative.
I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve done, but I have essentially tried to tell friends where not to go, especially on some of the tourista trails. Not everything is to everyone else’s liking in New Orleans.
I haven’t experienced the joys of Dallas, Houston or Austin. Frankly, there is much in Texas I loathe…I couldn’t see living there.
I’ve also learned that declared love is sometimes predicated with a knife, the tip of which is probably what Duranta felt.
I sure felt it, too.
But pax.
Just one more thing, if you don’t mind. I just read through the course of my diaries since the storm.
I stand behind each one of them, their overall implications. I know since then, some of the details have changed, with the found reality on the ground. I’d be glad to address any one of them you question.
Similar to Galveston– when I lived there- there was a lot of mythology- but there was also a lot of grit.
The charm was there and the crime was there- but all the BOI’s would never consider living elsewhere.(
A BOI is a ‘born on island’.)
The architecture and the history were so compelling- Did I mention that I cried and bitched all the way here to VA when I was forced to leave there?
Obviously-this has no possible relation to the people who were drowned out ,forced out, starved out, and downright killed in NO.It is just an affection for a place that I speak of.