Last year, in the turmoil that followed the murder of George Floyd, Ben Jaffe raised some of these issues without a bid. He spoke about questions about privilege and expression in the arts sought after by institutions like his. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he says he stepped into the spotlight out of necessity. “I knew I had the ability to raise people’s attention and awareness,” he said. More recently, however, he has become “very self-conscious that attention is being directed to me and that I am being asked more and more to need my opinion and my voice.” He even hinted that he was planning to step away from playing with the band. “The worst thing in the world is to have a picture of Ben Jaffe on the cover of a magazine and it will look like ‘Ben Jaffe’s Preservation Hall Band’.”
Still, 13 months later, it was Ben Jaffe on stage at Orpheum. And it is Preservation’s story of his hall, his interpretation of its history and significance, told and celebrated. In the intervening year, I have spoken with musicians, philanthropists, academics, community members, and other observers both in and out of Hall’s orbit. has produced various quiet and sharp divisions over the issue of what kind of music the band plays. Like jazz itself, Preservation Hall is a rich yet troubling legacy for New Orleans, Ben He Jaffe and musicians who have been a lifeblood from the beginning.
Alan and Sandra Jaffe stopped in New Orleans on his way back from Mexico City during his honeymoon. I met The pair of Barbara Reed and Ken Mills had been performing concerts for several years featuring veteran musicians at a gallery on St. Peter Street owned by an art dealer and entrepreneur named Larry Borenstein. In September 1961, with a glimpse of profit potential, or at least increased professionalism, Bollenstein handed the keys to the more business-minded Jaffe. (It is to this date that the current hall celebrates its anniversary, not historically.)
Half a century ago, jazz was born in the brothels, bars and street parades of New Orleans. It is one of the few, if not the only, public expression of Black people in an era of institutionalized white supremacy. Its foundations (polyphony, syncopation, call-and-response, improvisation) date back to Congo-His Square, a market outside French-his quarter where enslaved people were allowed to congregate on Sundays. There they fused what historian Joel Dynerstein calls a “new musical hybrid”, combining African, European and Caribbean rhythms and dances. But by the time the Jaffe family arrived, jazz’s creative and commercial center had been elsewhere for years. Groundbreaking musicians like Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet had long ago headed north or abroad in search of a more modern ear and a friendlier racial climate. “New Orleans music” came to mean the revolutionary rhythm and blues of artists such as Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew, while new post-war styles such as New York and Chicago dominated jazz clubs. I was. Older jazz styles are more likely to be seen as nostalgic background music at uptown white parties and restaurants, and more likely rebranded as “Dixieland” in clubs like the Famous Door on Bourbon Street. became.
The famous door was such a place that a preservation hall half a block away would define itself. The Yaffes refused to sell alcohol and demanded careful silence. Sandra was a legendary shasher and quick hook. If she determined a visitor was intoxicated, rowdy, or not inclined to appreciate music properly, he was immediately redirected next door to Pat O’Brien’s bar, home of Hurricane Cocktail. The stage was filled with giants who found themselves either poorly employed or completely away from music. George Lewis, Punch Miller, Sweet Emma Barrett. Some were present to hear the earliest incarnation of jazz, jazz, like bassist Papa John Joseph, who played with Buddy Bolden himself. Joseph has spent the last few decades working as a barber.
Both Famous Door and Preservation Hall, in their own way, marketed the fictional New Orleans. The first evoked a familiar pre-war idyll. The other is a more contemporary fantasy of a place whose creolized history, relative tolerance, and shared passion for its own black culture provide a safe harbor from the storm of racial struggle swirling outside. is. It’s a kind of south out of the south. New Orleans business has always, to some degree, been a New Orleans fantasy business. This dynamic reached a new level of urgency by the 1960s, just in time for the birth of Preservation Hall. Historian J. Mark Souther notes that as the other industries that built New Orleans (shipping, banking, oil) declined, what remained was “culture”—food, architecture, music, etc., most of which All black and Creole population of the city.