As City Hall, the Mayor’s Office and the City Council grapple with the best approach to instituting an equitable city-wide noise ordinance, one issue that has been knocked into the spotlight is the existing curfew forbidding musicians from playing on the street after 8 p.m.
Bonerama’s Craig Klein spoke out frequently from the stages of Jazz Fest about the importance of striking down that law and allowing musicians to play on the streets freely.
It’s an issue the veteran trombone player, who has played with dozens of musicians and bands over the past two decades, holds close to his heart.
Craig Klein performing with the Storyville Stompers at Jazz Fest 2014. (Photo by Kim Welsh)
“It’s all about protecting the culture of what we have here,” Klein said. “To have a law that says you can’t play a musical instrument on the street after 8 p.m., what kind of society are we living in?”
While the law has been on the books since the 1950s, Klein said it has traditionally gone unenforced, which has allowed a vibrant musical culture to develop on the street.
“Brass bands have to play on the street,” he said. “They’re designed to play on the street. You can’t take that away from these bands.”
Klein, who has been playing on the street and in clubs, festivals, and private events with the Storyville Stompers for over 20 years, said he feels privileged to have watched the current crop of stars hone their craft on the streets and public spaces of New Orleans.
“When Trombone Shorty was a kid, I used to see him and Trumpet Black, just the two of them, sitting in Jackson Square playing trumpet and trombone together,” he said. “We don’t want to discourage those kinds of things because that helps develop musicians. There’s going to be another Trombone Shorty in a couple of years, there’s going to be another Louis Armstrong, and they are going to have to be able to develop on the street and not be worried about the police shutting them down.”
Not all complaints from residents and business owners against musicians playing in the street are unfounded, and everything has an appropriate time and place. Klein stresses that it is essential for street musicians to respect their surroundings.
“You have to have musicians who must be understanding,” he said. “If you’re playing out in front of Jackson Square on a Saturday and there’s a wedding going on, you have to have some consideration. It has to be a little bit of give and take from both sides.”
Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s office has announced that it will no longer enforce the curfew, which Klein called a huge step forward.
“Mitch Landrieu has been really great,” he said. “He had a meeting with the musicians, probably 10 or 15 of us, and he just listened to what we had to say.”
After listening to the arguments from business and property owners and weighing both sides, a commitment in writing from the Mayor’s office and City Councilmen James Gray to eliminate the curfew was handed down, Klein said.
But there is still cause for concern. A larger vote on the noise ordinance issue scheduled for late April was postponed without a vote.
“It’s a great step, and it’s a step totally in the right direction that the Mayor’s office has made a decision to not enforce this curfew,” he said. “We still have to worry about the City Council. There are a lot of people who live in the Quarter and who live near Frenchmen Street, and they are complaining, and they are big donors to the politicians, and it’s the donor pool that the politicians are going to follow. Whether you’re a good or a bad politician, you’ve got to follow that donor pool.”
No matter what happens, musicians need to be able to continue playing on the street without fear of breaking laws, no matter how deep the pockets of the people filing complaints, Klein said.
“It just goes to show you what kind of banana republic we still have going on that people are worried about the almighty dollar instead of the almighty culture,” he said. “The bottom line is the music and preserving what needs to be preserved so musicians can still grow while playing on the street.”
