Lost in the Starz

By Alex Rawls

Lost in the Starz
May 11, 2006

“I thought it just needed some paint or something,” a friend said.

She had emailed me a week or so ago saying she wanted to dine during Jazz Fest, then go to Angelo Brocato’s afterward. I told her that wasn’t going to be possible because Brocato’s was closed, so she drove by and was horrified to see that block of Carrollton still boarded up, nowhere near coming back.

The friend isn’t dumb. She has visited the city at least a dozen times and has been following what’s going on here the best she could from Los Angeles. Unfortunately, even those trying hard to keep up and be as supportive as possible are having a difficult time grasping what we’re going through and what has happened to the city. It’s understandable. The sort of destruction that happened here is almost unimaginable, and as hard as it is for those who were just here for Jazz Fest to believe, it was a lot worse last fall. The Lower Ninth Ward might look bad now, but it’s not as filthy as it was, and the houses that were one strong wind from falling are down. In December, there were still chairs mysteriously lodged in the tops of trees, and there was still a barge on land that floated through the levee breach.

The first 10 minutes of Robert Mugge’s "New Orleans Music in Exile" help make it clear just what condition the city was in. He shows the storm blow in and the flooding, and by relying less on aerial photography, it’s easier to appreciate just how much water there was. Seeing Loyola Avenue completely underwater was strangely affecting, and seeing the stretch of I-10 westbound between the Superdome and Carrollton exits underwater, with water stretching over to Central Lockup stops you. Freeways aren’t supposed to be underwater. Of course, stretches were deeper — or got deeper — but footage of water with a clear, recognizable landmark to give it context helps viewers appreciate what happened.

Mugge’s film debuts at Canal Place Saturday at 11:45 a.m., then at an invitation-only screening at 2:30 p.m. with Mugge in attendance (call 888-852-5000 to inquire about an invitation), and afterwards there’s a party celebrating the film’s release starting at 5:30 p.m. at Tipitina’s French Quarter featuring some of the talent from the movie — Irma Thomas, Kermit Ruffins, Theresa Andersson, Rebirth Brass Band and World Leader Pretend — performing. The rest of the country will see the movie a week later when it debuts on Starz’ InBlack channel Friday, May 19 at 7 p.m. CDT, then the next day at noon.

What becomes striking in the film is that damage is everywhere. Katrina wasn’t like a tornado that ripped a seam through a city or trailer park; it damaged almost everything. Irma Thomas walks Mugge’s camera crew through the Lion’s Den, her club that backed on Broad Street. She walks on Broad and it’s abandoned as she reads her nightclub’s sign, which is flat on the ground and covered with scunge. Inside, she points out the mold, the studs exposed after sheetrock was ripped out, and the spot where the ceiling broke through. Again, unlike a tornado, which sunders a house like a kid kicking apart a Lego fortress, the hurricane and the floodwaters destroyed so much, then left most of it where it was to become even worse until the resident or business owner could finally return and deal with it.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz wrote “The Media’s New Orleans Burnout,” discussing the shortcomings in the press coverage of life after Katrina. In it, he wrote, “Like many Americans, I’ve followed the Katrina story closely, but then tuned out for days when other news or the daily strains of life intervened. After eight months you assume they must be making some progress. Downtown and the French Quarter basically look fine; the worst damage by now must be limited to a few of the hardest-hit areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward.

“But then you come here and see the devastation up close, and discover that things are far worse than you imagined. And you realize that, despite the millions of words and pictures devoted to the hurricane's aftermath, the normal rules of writing, photography and broadcasting are just not equal to the task.” He continues, “Ride around the area and you find yourself staring in disbelief. Houses dented and bent and smashed like papier-mâche, many marked with the ubiquitous blue FEMA spray paint, destined for demolition. Massive trees, uprooted and lying in front yards. Cars caked with dirt, trunk lids open, many stripped of tires. And the tires — piles of old tires everywhere — and waist-high weeds covering the front yards are silent markers of abandonment.”

Unfortunately, right now New Orleans needs witnesses like Kurtz. We need people to see the city, see the condition it’s still in, and we need them to make people in their hometowns aware of what life is like here. Washington has played politics with the money we need to rebuild levees, houses, businesses and lives, and one thing that has made that possible is that many legislators have refused to come here and see what happened.

We appreciate everybody who came to town and spent money during Jazz Fest, but it’s more important that they go home and help people realize that — as so many acts announced from the Jazz Fest stages — we’re coming back, but we’re not as back as people might think. New Orleans Music in Exile helps make clear not only how widespread the destruction was, but how thoroughly it changed people’s lives.

... In other business, here my fascination with Tom Zé’s Estudando O Pagode comes to a conclusion for now. I was offered an email interview with the Brazilian Zé and I had to take it. Besides his international significance, a similar interview he did with Pop Matters was as much dada art as an interview. The chance to be a part of accidental, collaborative art was too much to pass up. I crafted questions with that in mind. More on them shortly, though, because he also sent this preface to help clarify his thoughts on his new album, which addresses the relationships between men and women in what he calls “an unfinished operetta.”

CLEARING UP
Before I start, I would like to clarify a bit the general attitude of this album, an operetta about the woman situation.

It is not a feminist work. Though it is not a machoist CD, it is, at least, “masculinist”: it calls man’s attention to the huge disadvantage he has created in his present relationship with women.

A woman, nowadays, is slightly suspicious and cannot permit herself the easy-going kind of well being of companionship that allows going from affection to a caress.
Women have incorporated a feeling of mistrust towards men. She is always tense, worried, confronted with a potential enemy, an attitude created due to the psychological context of his situation in the society.

Notice that (in English language — I see this sound-example because I speak Portuguese) when a child-that-will-be-a-man is born, he is like a sun arriving; the word “son” is pronounced the same way as “sun”. It means joy, happiness. But when a child of female sex is born, the ugly sound of the noun “daughter” is just grief and sadness. A daughter is born.

AS THE RESULT
The result is a bad thing for men because, if it is impossible for a woman to show the profound intimacy of the sacred secret, and she is never willing to feel in the presence of the man, he stays in a cosmic solitude, without companionship in the Universe.

In Europe they told me that the female situation was the same as the situation in Brasil. Perhaps a bit more sophisticated, more concealed. In the United States, if the woman question has been completely resolved, if the relationships between men and women are solved, for the good of mankind, then in the case of considering this record, it will simply be like receiving News of the Barbarian World.

HOMELESS, BEGGAR
The clothing the band wears for the shows for the album Estudando o Pagode — Segregamulher e Amor is a beggar’s costume. This depicts the actual situation of man in relation to woman: he became homeless, a being that lives in want of affection. And the women are quite right not to give it.”

Whether you buy that or not is neither here nor there, but Zé’s career started during the Tropicalia movement in Brazil, when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were imprisoned for making subversive art. Art and cultural politics were inextricably linked, and so they remain for Zé. His work is art-as-provocation, and you decide what is sophisticated play and what is serious. It’s the same decision you have to make considering his music.

My half of the interview began with the following note:
"Dear Tom:
I am writing from New Orleans, where almost all the relevant questions start with “Why”. Here we want to know why the government was so slow to react to a disaster they were told was likely to happen. We want to know why they’ve been so slow to help, why so many politicians are unwilling to come here and see the aftermath of the hurricane and the flooding. Why congressmen and senators tried to blame the deaths and destruction on the mayor and governor instead of the Army Corps of Engineers who didn’t build the levees properly. I could go on, but you get the picture. 'Why' is a preoccupying question, so I’m sure you understand why all my questions are 'why' questions."

I hoped a conceptual framework might give him something to work with as an artist, and, frankly, the world needs to know what we’re going through in New Orleans. If a paragraph in an interview gives him some insight, that might help spread the word.

He responded:
"On the disc 'Todos os Olhos' from 1973, I have a song on there called 'Dodó e Zezé,' which is full of 'whys.' Because of this, the last question is 'porqueporqueporqueporque?' (whywhywhywhy?) The response, where I changed the rhythmic accent in order to demonstrate the alternative and pose the solution is — 'É pôrquepôrquepôrqueporquepôrque' (it is becausebecausebecausebecause)."

OffBeat: Why an operetta?

Zé: a) Much of the popular music in Brasil tends to use words that lessen the importance of the subject. Vinícius de Moraes used to call himself “poetinha” or “little poet” when he would write lyrics.
b) In order to capture the listener’s attention with a promise of telling a little story
c) In order to create the illusion that each song was composed with the objective of succession in mind, each song succeeding the other.

OffBeat:Why is it unfinished?

Zé: Because I couldn’t and can’t create a solution to the problems between women and men.

OffBeat: Why now?

Zé: At the time that I made "Estudando Samba," which people in the U.S.A. know as "The Best of Tom Zé" this musical genre that is so traditional in Brasil — samba — was tainted.

OffBeat: Why a pagode?

Zé: I made "Estudando o Pagode;" in the case of pagode, it was already viewed negatively by the middle class and the creators of public opinion, especially because it was the music of the poorest, least educated classes. I chose it in order to show that if the excluded had the possibility to educate themselves, they could develop the genre-like I did, by trying to make pagode more aesthetically sophisticated.

OffBeat: Why make the treatment of women your theme?

Zé: Another motive for making "Estudando o Pagode" was that one of the most prestigious universities in Brasil, the USP (University of Sao Paulo), published October 2004 research that detailed how 70 percent of women 15 to 25 years of age complained of a lack of sexual pleasure because their boyfriends did not care about their pleasure and well-being, many of them complained about the absence of longer foreplay that induces vaginal lubrication. Sexual acts often end after the male has been satisfied, which means that these women don’t experience full pleasure.

This research was conducted in one of the most educated environments in Brasil, with educated university students as participants.

OffBeat: Finally, one historical question. Why do you think so many musically progressive musicians came from Bahia [the province in Brazil that was home to Zé, Veloso, Gil and many others associated with Tropicalia]?

Zé: There are two serious responses to this: the first is that we inherited 8 centuries of Arabic invasion on the Iberian Peninsula. The Arab population possessed one of the most sophisticated cultures at that time on this entire planet, and the Portuguese that colonized Brasil were impregnated with that cultural stimulation when they arrived in the Northeast of Brasil. It was in the Northeast that this cultural stimulation was maintained in popular dance, folklore songs and traditional festivals.

Secondly: The second possibility, equally as important as the first, is the following: the historian José Reis says in A Rebelião dos Malês that the black slaves from Bahia were highly educated, often more educated than their Portuguese masters, who were adventurers and often illiterate, these people who are our grandparents. There was mixing that created the first Brasilian ethnicity: the mulatto: half black, half white, the caboclo: half white, half native Indian. This situation where slaves being better educated than their masters is similar to a previous situation in the history of the world: when Romans enslaved the Greeks, who had more culture.

He added a final note: "I am going to provide an answer to something you didn’t ask me: This whole CD and the whole history of the operetta was created with love and in order to offer an important topic to the people who get to know me through this CD."

If this last month’s dalliance with Zé has piqued your curiosity at all, I recommend Caetano Veloso’s "Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil." Veloso’s music has mellowed in a way that Zé’s hasn’t, but the book not only makes clear a time in a country’s existence when being a popular, progressive musical artist was genuinely dangerous, and Veloso’s dissection of his own early material articulates a dense network of associations, wordplay and musical parody that suggests how subversive pop music can be.

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