A few years back OffBeat ran the provocative story “Is New Orleans R&B Dead?” Michael Urban has provided his own examination of the question in his new book. Urban, a rigorously disciplined academic with a feel for street culture and an affinity for music, carefully sidesteps answering the question by examining it with the tone of an omniscient narrator, but his method conceals a clever piece of misdirection. By narrowing his subject to R&B he allows himself space to observe a much larger cross-section of post-Katrina music while not committing himself to the near-impossible task of covering all aspects of music in the city since the 2005 flood.
He summarizes his findings at the outset by noting, “the striking thing would be how much each of them has absorbed and, in turn, reflects a sense of the community in which they reside. Every bit as much as one’s street address, place of employment or the style of music that one performs, it is participation in this vibrant, affable, and, at times, agreeably eccentric musical community that entitles one to be called a New Orleans musician.”
Urban interviewed 56 musicians and observers of New Orleans culture (myself included) with an advocate’s zeal but an academic’s remove, leading some of the subjects to initially balk at discussing his premise. But his rigorous interview style eventually broke down all skepticism, and what we are left with is an unsatisfying account of the state of R&B but a very valuable analysis of New Orleans music as it relates to the city’s culture and even more importantly to the musicians’ own aspirations for it.
Urban is far from rosy in his final assessment. The book makes it clear that the indigenous black population of New Orleans was shipped out against its will and given no encouragement to return. The disruption of the neighborhoods and the incursion of wealthy white residents have changed the environment that nurtured New Orleans R&B, perhaps permanently. Without that nurturing environment, the future of New Orleans R&B appears very bleak indeed.
Still, those who stay will make of it what they can.
“I don’t know what those of us who remain, and the younger ones coming along, are doing or think they’re doing, but they’re not bringing anything back,” Ed Volker tells Urban. “It can’t be done. We can only be inspired by all these dead souls, I figure, and the best homage is not to literalize the bounty of their harvest. So what is going on here today? I’m not exactly sure, but it feels like a scene when I’m down on Frenchmen Street. And I’m glad it’s there. It’s a lot more lively than it ever was before, even if there are no Bookers or Kings or Fesses shouting at us from the edge of things we can’t even imagine.”
