BackTalk with Harry Connick Jr.and Branford MarsalisBy Jan Ramsey and Alex Rawls In early January, Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis came to town to do damage control. As the public faces of Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village, they appeared on WWOZ on Bob French’s morning show and did interviews with television crews at the Musicians’ Village site in the upper Ninth Ward. They did PSAs, met with journalists, and performed at Café Brasil the Monday before, sitting in with Bob French. The Musicians’ Village came under fire first last July when we published the story, “They Got it Bad,” about the credit problems that were keeping many musicians from qualifying for Musicians’ Village housing. The murmur of discontent that story provoked was amplified when The Times-Picayune put a similar story on its front page, outraging many who found it at least ironic that musicians were in the minority in the Musicians’ Village. Connick and Marsalis were in town to answer the critics.
In a completed Musicians’ Village house, they sat down on the floor with OffBeat publisher Jan Ramsey, Alex Rawls and their manager, Ann Marie Wilkins to clear up some of the misconceptions about the Musicians’ Village.
—Alex Rawls
Jan Ramsey: What brings the two of you to town?
Ramsey: It seems like you had a fantastic idea for this Musicians’ Village and it didn’t fit within the parameters of what Habitat for Humanity does, and the way they sell houses. And the problem is, there may have been certain things you guys didn’t even anticipate—credit problems and stuff like that.
Branford Marsalis: One of the realities of this great city is that it is very family-oriented. Because generations of families take care of each other, it’s a very insulated community. One of the things that I realized when I went to New York—and I’m a pretty bright guy—I wasn’t really prepared for that—being on your own, and the way you have to live. In other communities where it’s not as insulated as New Orleans, kids are prepared for that at an early age.
With respect to that, one of the things that I’m very happy about with the way Habitat is setting this up is that they’re helping us move away from that insulated environment that the musicians used to live in, and having them think in a way that’s more in line with the market realities of this country.
I think that Habitat does a great job of making them—if they are willing to do the work—rectify their debt problems and understand what it means to be a homeowner, and most importantly, it gives them tools to help them keep their homes. You have to get the homeowner to eradicate the behavior that got them into their debt situation in the first place, or they won’t have their home very long. Habitat is in the business of building homes for low-income homeowners. Ninety percent of the people probably have credit issues. It’s not a musician-specific issue. Habitat knows how to do this. There are 200,000 Habitat homes around the world. They help people work through this.
Somebody told me last night that we’re out here raising money with their names, and we need to write them a check. The money is being raised to build the homes, okay, and if you’re a low-income applicant and you have credit problems, Habitat has the mechanisms in place. They have been counseling people, working with people. And the reason why the model works—the reason we’ve been with them 15 years—is that if you can convert a person who had bad habits, who didn’t pay their bills, to being a homeowner and a responsible person, to get in the habit of taking care of stuff. Families’ lives change.
Ann Marie Wilkins: This is not a big project. This is not going to be a panacea for the housing problems in New Orleans. This is a small project, but the people who have made the decision to be a part of the program; they’re making a commitment that they’re going to turn their lives around. That’s part of the impetus for it.
Connick: And that’s wise. I think about where my life would be if, every time I made a mistake, my father covered me. I went to school with people who did that. They didn’t do very well. My parents knew when it was time to let me dangle, when it was time for me to learn how to stand up on my own two feet. And I was blessed by that, and now I have my own children—my son is 21—and that has served me very well in my relationship with him.
Last night I was walking with my dad, and he and I were talking about this, coincidentally, and he said, “How do you think I treated you when you moved to New York?” I was 18 (when I moved). I said, “Great. Why?” He says, “Do you think that I sent you enough money?” He didn’t send me hardly any money. I lived at the Y. It wasn’t luxurious. He said, “It was very hard for me, but I had to not support you. You had to go find these gigs for 10 dollars a night yourself.” It’s an interesting coincidence because it’s a similar situation here.
Marsalis: There are some people who have unfortunately embraced a sort of insulated environment, and they say, “Well man, y’all are supposed to just take care of this for me. I want a house, and y’all are raising money in our name.” Which is an odd kind of mentality because there are 2,000 musicians in New Orleans, but the people who say that seem to take it personally as if they are the only musicians in New Orleans.
You have an opportunity to get an interest-free loan, pay less money than people are now paying for rent in the city, and own a home with house insurance. If that’s not worth getting up and doing some paperwork, and standing in a couple of lines, I don’t know what to tell you. But the idea that we’re supposed to eradicate all points of responsibility is just plain irresponsible.
Alex Rawls: Do you think that the people who have contributed to the Musicians Village understood the whole program? Do you think they saw this as a lever to get people to tighten up their lives?
Marsalis: There were a lot of people who knew what was going on in the mission, but there were others—some seventh graders for instance, in Durham North Carolina, who put together $250 selling cookies—who I don’t think knew, but they believed in the cause. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Harry is involved and I’m involved, and they believe that we’re not going to mess this up, and we’re not.
Rawls: Does it strike you as odd having a Musicians’ Village where musicians are, at least at this stage, the minority?
[It’s not obvious how the Fair Housing Act would prohibit an all-musician village. While that would certainly go against general notions of fairness, Section 804 (a) declares it unlawful to “refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Throughout the act, those are the conditions under which discrimination is illegal; occupation is not mentioned.]
Ann-Marie Wilkins: Can I just answer your question? You need to look at the program when the project is done. When the project is done, there will not be a minority of musicians. There are 28 musicians right now that have been approved, and in this core site there are 70 homes. It’s going continue, and when it’s done, look at the numbers.
Rawls: I understand what you’re saying about the housing rules, but this has been pitched as “the Musicians’ Village.”
[True, but New Orleans musicians have a reason to think otherwise. That was certainly the tone of the initial message, so much so that none of the stories written about the Musicians’ Village printed in New Orleans mentioned that the village would not be reserved strictly for musicians. Only one Associated Press wire service story raised that issue; it quoted Jim Pate, executive director of New Orleans’ Habitat for Humanity, as saying, “Habitat cannot reserve houses for a specific group, and non-musicians would also live in the village.”]
Connick: The girl who starred with me in The Pajama Game, Kelli O’Hara, comes from Elk City, Oklahoma, but I don’t see any elk there, you know what I’m saying? It’s a name; let’s be real.
Marsalis: But there are going to be a lot more musicians here than elsewhere in the city. I think there are people who either don’t understand what we’re doing, or quite blatantly don’t want to support it, and at that point you can use any level of minutiae. Anybody can take data and do whatever they want with it. You’ve seen that in elections. We’ll see what happens when all the homes are built, and then we can come back and have a discussion.
Ramsey: Can you give us a list of the musicians who have been approved?
Marsalis: 120 plus 28 is a majority of the total of 200 applications.
Connick: What we want people to understand is that there is a finite amount of real estate here. There are 70 homes and 10 duplex apartments. The intent of Habitat before we even got involved in this was to build 1,500 houses over the course of the next five years. So if musicians feel like they’re going to be too late for this particular spot, there are still five other areas in the city where Habitat is building homes that we would love for musicians to inhabit as well.
Rawls: Well, are they a minority now?
Connick: Nobody can expect this to be literally musicians’ village. The reason we are here is that in reality, there is going to be a ton of musicians here and I’m looking forward to coming to block parties, and I’m looking forward to going to club openings, and restaurants and all that other stuff. They have to be realistic and not expect us to be some cornered off place where only musicians live.
Marsalis: One thing about New Orleans, too, is people think things are going to happen overnight. That is just kind of the nature of the city. Long term planning and long-range division has never been a strong suit of big cities, but particularly New Orleans.
Connick: One thing New Orleans is really good at is waiting. They are good at that; they have certainly shown that in the post-Katrina thing, waiting for the city to come back and it doesn’t seem to be happening. This is a positive project. We are sitting in one of the houses now.
Rawls: Do you think that part of the heat that Habitat has received has been because there haven’t been other housing initiatives so people are to a great degree looking for this to be the solution?
If you look around the village and the musicians that are here now, none of them play the music that we play, not one of them. The ones that are qualified for homes, we couldn’t hire them to play in our bands. We’re not catering to any particular group, so the idea that any particular group feels they particularly deserve any more consideration then others is unfair.
[That notion didn’t come from an undue sense of entitlement. Jim Pate told reporters that the Musicians’ Village “will provide the mentors and teachers for the next generation of New Orleans jazz and blues musicians. . . . The next generation will be living side by side by the old legends and the older masters who will teach them at the Ellis Marsalis Performance Center.”]
Marsalis: I think part of the confusion is the fact that the Habitat model is not understood in the community. I think people don’t understand what it is that you do. Because when you see the publicity about it, they just tell you what it is that they are doing but not so much about the process. Someone could do a service to the community if they could write about what is that Habitat does.
I have listened to the complaints. We bought this land in January of 2005. By April or May, I was hearing rumors like, “Habitat had bought a toxic waste dump, and brothers shouldn’t apply because Habitat is going to build a village for white musicians in a better neighborhood. Wait till that happens.” One musician said that an organization in town was giving him gig money, and if he applied they were going to cut off his gig money: “Don’t go over there.”
I’m used to being talked about. You get bad reviews—what are you going to do? You’re going to stop what you’re doing? This is the right thing to do. They can say whatever they want. You go out there and you see any toxic waste out there? If you see all these white people out there building all these homes for black people, or the black people building the white ones, you know that kind of stuff is so silly. When this is all said and done, there won’t be anything to say. Subscribe to offBeat and receive a FREE JazzFest CD! |
