Guess what? I just heard through the grapevine that the City of New Orleans is going to completely fund the building of a New Orleans Music Museum in the old Loew’s State Theater building on Canal Street!
April Fool.
I wish.
There’s a public meeting Thursday April 1, at 4:30 p.m. at Ashé Cultural Center at 1712 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. (old Dryades Street) for public input on how the new mayoral administration should proceed regarding cultural development in New Orleans. As anyone who reads my blog or columns knows, this is something I’ve devoted my life to and I take it very, very seriously. I purposefully chose to work with creative people (after having worked with “suits” most of my working career), and what I’ve found is that most citizens just don’t appreciate what our musicians, artists, performers, writers and photographers do to enrich our lives. I think the OffBeat staff and the people who work to support the arts are exceptions, of course. But our group is still pretty small in number. The key is, and always has been to convince the people who have the money—who are generally not members of the creative class—to value what artists do, to pay them, to create job opportunities for them, to educate them and make sure they are healthy. We all take our musicians and music for granted. Musicians are asked to play for “promotion” all the time; ditto artists; ditto other talented people.
Imagine living a city that didn’t have the rich creative culture that New Orleans has. I hate to say it, but it’s definitely that way in the suburbs; that’s not to say there aren’t creative people living there, but not nearly so many as are in the city. And surely there aren’t many in the ‘burbs who make their living making music or art or writing for a living. Anyway, if we didn’t have New Orleans’ unique culture to live “within,” where would we be? In any other homogenous town or city in the US. How boring and sterile that would be to people used to second line parades, creative graffiti, Mardi Gras Indians, French Quarter Festival and Jazz Fest, Frenchmen Street, Julia Street, Magazine Street, etc. etc.!
I think the solution to making New Orleans a real musical and cultural mecca is to have the tourism people promote it as such, but I’ve been saying this for years. Everyone knows you can come to New Orleans to “play” and to eat great food, but that’s way too ambiguous. Focus on the music first and foremost. That has the most cachet and most universal appeal outside New Orleans. That’s what the new HBO “Tremé” series is doing. I predict that this series will point so many more eyes and ears towards New Orleans that we’d be really dumb not to capitalize on it.
But while this is a window of opportunity for us as a city, we need to be able to give people what they expect when they come here: authentic jazz and local music and lots of it, on every damn street corner. And I don’t mean cover bands—or even worse—recorded music—blasting out of bars on Bourbon Street or Decatur storefronts. Create a financial incentive or subsidy for businesses to have live local music playing: a tax incentive plus an organized marketing effort for all of the venues that participate.
We need to demand a Music and Culture “Czar” in the Mayor’s Office that has influence and a real budget. We need a music museum; we need Armstrong Park to be revitalized. We need incentives for schools to institute music and arts programs, or else our culture standard-bearers are going to fade away, with no one to take their place. Show up at the meeting, and make your voice heard. This is your chance. I’m starting to rant here. Show up at the meeting on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. See you there!
