As long as I’ve been involved in business in New Orleans, I’ve been subjected to turf wars. You’d think that was a pretty normal situation in business. You’re always trying to suck some of your competitor’s market share away. It’s the nature of the beast.
But what I’ve also seen is this same mentality in groups dedicated to the arts, specifically music, which to me is a really dumb way to create an industry or to promote a brand.
Music is a potentially huge brand for New Orleans. It’s never taken the steps to create and to promote the New Orleans music brand. If we approached our music resources holistically, we could use them to literally create and promote and brand that not only visitors, but locals, would respond to, enthusiastically. Other cities have done this: Austin, Memphis, Clarksdale, Mississippi, Seattle, Cleveland. Why not New Orleans?
The Rock & Soul Museum in Memphis
We shouldn’t have Dixieland jazz versus traditional jazz. Or one festival competing against another for sponsors. There’s certainly no room for racism in music. Music is all one color.
We need to coordinate our efforts under one umbrella that recognizes that our music is not only the basis of our cultural economy; it’s also a tool to create jobs (not just for musicians) and to increase the city’s visibility worldwide.
Right now, there are many resources and organizations that exist that have music as their focus and foundation: the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, Festival and Archives; the French Quarter Festival; Voodoo Experience; Ponderosa Stomp; the Backstreet Cultural Museum; the Tulane Jazz Archives, the Louisiana State Museum’s Jazz Museum; WWOZ; the Preservation Resource Center’s Ladies in Red program (which helps focus attention on musicians’ historic homes); the National Jazz Historical Park; the Mardi Gras Indians and social aid and pleasure clubs; the jazz and music studies programs at the University of New Orleans, Loyola University, Dillard, Tulane, Delgado Community College and other local institutions; NOCCA; local music clubs and venues; the Treme neighborhood; Congo Square; jazz tours and historic sites. I could go on and on.
Yet, when a visitor comes to New Orleans and wants to dig into the history of why New Orleans is considered a good music town, there’s really no place to experience all of it. There’s no holistic approach to our music scene or our music community. There’s no one place that celebrates and informs our residents as well as visitors, gives them a taste of the tremendous history of our music and musicians, our traditions, our festivals, historic places, resources. In other words, there’s just not a holistic approach to New Orleans music. This museum/visitor center would be centered around music and where to find all aspects of it in New Orleans. We need this, desperately.
New Orleans needs such a place, which is the main reason I’ve been advocating that we create a music museum on Canal Street that’s highly accessible to visitors and easily accessed by locals. The interest is there; the funding isn’t—of course—but I’m a huge believer in dreaming big. Devise the plan, and the money and visitors will come.
