NOT JUST THE NORMAL

Just wanted to say thanks for the kind words and the article [“Sounding It Out” by Paul Sanchez, November 2013]. It was really a fun read on my end, as a music fan. Not just the normal, “Here’s our new record, and we’re doing x-y-z,” type of piece. I really appreciate you giving us a chance to be ourselves in an interview, and letting that come across in the piece. It’s the kind of article I’d like to read as a music fan.

—Jonathan Pretus, Breton Sound, New Orleans, LA

PROUD OF GLEN

I am so proud of Glen David [Andrews] and so very overjoyed for his new lease on life [“Premature Burial” by John Swenson, November 2013]. Thank you for your musical soul! We sure love having you here in Hollywood, Florida, or at d.b.a. with our brother Josh on guitar! Looking forward to next time!

—Holly Spillane, Hollywood, FL

WAREHOUSE FILM

Thank you OffBeat for promoting this film [“Bill Johnston’s Warehouse,” November 2013]. My uncle Bill Johnston had a vision back in 1970 and made it come alive with the help of many wonderful people. This film [A Warehouse on Tchoupitoulas] shows how close the Warehouse family was back then and it really amazed me how close they still are when we were laying my Uncle Bill to rest back in August. He worked closely with Jessy [Williamson, film director] even in his last few months and I know he’s very proud of this film, so thanks again.

—Christopher Jon Doerr, Louisville, KY

YAKIMO

I never throw away OffBeat, so I got to re-read Drew Hinshaw’s “Iko Iko: In Search of Jockomo” [April 2009].

When I first heard “Iko Iko,” I heard “Yakimo,” because that’s the way I remembered my grandmother singing it. The only thing she sang other than spirituals and classical music was children’s rhymes. She loved the line, “Set yo’ tail on fire!” I didn’t.

When I moved to New Orleans and heard, “Set yo’ flag on fire!” and “Jockomo,” I simply ignored their misspoken words as I ignore, “When the sun refuse to shine,” knowing the “correct” (sic) wording is “when the stars refuse to shine.” The words refer to the biblical end-of-world concept when the stars will no longer be seen because the sun will fill the sky both day and night. Of course, people will never live to see it because we will all be burned to a crisp long before the sun goes nova. Expanding to a red sun will kill all life upon the Earth, boil away all water, and set the volcanoes ablaze. The Saints will have marched on in by then.

It is also interesting to consider that the Italian and Spanish Y, I and J are used with different pronunciations—Yah, Jah, Wah—and that Yahway is a Yiddish (Jewish) word for God and Jah is a Jamaican word for God. Yakimo or Jockomo, as God wills.

I always find it interesting that those non-literate shepherds from Africa had the order right for both the beginning and the end of the world: from a gas bubble without form and void to a blazing fiery finish. The time frame is immaterial. It doesn’t matter because people always expand time and/or contract it.

I’m not the least bit surprised that so much of African culture defied the slave masters: from the matriarchal black mamas who still hold their families together regardless of trifling men, wars, and rape, to the dip the African and African-American men both inculcate, to the great food and, of course, to the music, which is easiest to retain and pass on, even when words get massacred.

Thanks for a great article.

—Roselyn Lionhart, New Orleans, LA