God don’t like ugly
I wrote earlier about the horror of the fake brass bands, but it’s not as if I don’t understand why people come to New Orleans craving an authentic experience. Take this email that my neighbor sent yesterday:
Tom is sitting on his balcony playing Honky Tonk Blues with a fellow musician. Tom is playing harmonica and the other is playing guitar. This is truly heaven.
The Tom she speaks of is our very own Tom Marron, a local musician by night and a carpenter by day. This is an authentic experience living in a neighborhood where most people know each other, a lot are musicians, and we have a temperate climate that makes sitting outside, picking on a guitar, with a friend the norm.
When people come to visit me, they get a first hand look at what it is like to live in paradise, on our terms, of course, they don’t as often get a look at Dumaine Street between Broad and Claiborne, they don’t read the headlines which vie for Saints or Murder coverage, and they certainly don’t understand what it is like trying to make a living in a city that care forgot.
But I am ambassador for this city, and now that I’m renting out my own house, even more so. I want visitors to see New Orleans in its grandeur, and I try to keep the ugliness at bay because as my neighbor is want to say, “God don’t like ugly.”
Which brings me back to the fake brass bands and why anyone sees the need to create an experience that is inauthentic. At once you have police and residents coming down on pop up brass bands on Frenchman and at the same time, you have a city condoning bogus parades. Something has to give.
If we want to continue to live in paradise two things seem clear – fostering a climate that allows for the free expression of music and the arts in our streets, in our homes, anywhere – along with a police and justice department that keeps all of us safe so our headlines can focus on the Saints. AND we need to have a culture that is not so dependent on the tourist economy that our musicians must sell their souls to march in the streets for tourists like trained monkeys.
We, they, are greater than that.