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Abstract

The history of black people in the United States is an epic saga of dislocation, dispersal, and dispossession. Consequently the instability, insecurity, and disruption that accompany displacement have been a persistent part of the black experience in the United States. The post-Katrina crisis confronted by black New Orleanians was yet another chapter in this ongoing saga. This article seeks to explore the ways in which the culture and music of New Orleans has functioned as a reservoir of human resilience and resistance. Specifically, in addition to reflections on the impact of enslavement, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration on the cultural history of black New Orleans, this article considers the cultural significance of the Crescent City in American history as one of the major reasons why issues of resettlement must be central to rebuilding efforts.

Keywords

music culture dispossession dispersal resettlement

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References

Joe Trotter and Johanna Fernandez, personal correspondence, March 2, 2006.

Mindy Fullilove, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It (New York: Ballentine, 2005).

Quoted in Sarita McCoy Gregory review of Michael Eric Dyson's "Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster," Souls 9, no. 1: 80-82.

"Foodways" is defined as the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period.

Sidney Bechet , Treat it Gentle (New York: Da Capo , 2002), 6.

Ibid., 18.

Salim Washington writes that for Bechet jazz is: "African music made American through the crucible of slavery, told in a remarkable romance that includes, slave owners, slaves, maroon communities, psycho-sexual expressions with respect to race, dismemberment and loss, disenfranchisement and other topics of historical and cultural significance." See Salim Washington, "Has Katrina Failed to Blow the Wool from Over Our Eyes? Why I Disagree with the New Jazz Orthodoxy," All About Jazz, November 9, 2005, http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php .

Bechet, Treat it Gentle, 80-81.

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall with Charles Henry Rowell, Callaloo 29 no. 4 (2007): 1049-55.

10.

According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (2001-2005), Coureurs du bois were "unlicensed traders during the French regime in Canada" who "defied regulations and ventured into the Canadian wilderness"

11.

Ibid., 1051.

12.

Eileen Southern , The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: WW Norton, 1997), 136.

13.

William Wells Brown , My Southern Home or the South and Its Peoples (1880), electronic ed. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000).

14.

Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 137.

15.

A practice whereby the hands clap the thighs, chest, and other parts of the body as if on a drum.

16.

Roget D. Abrahams, Nick Spitzer , John F. Swzed , and Robert Farris Thompson . Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America's Creole Soul (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 54.

17.

Samuel Floyd , The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

18.

Joseph Roach , Cities of the Dead: Circum Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

19.

Southern, The Music of Black Americans, 132.

20.

R.W. Apple , Jr. , "Pralines Seasoned with Tears," New York Times, November 20, 2005.

21.

Fred Bosman , Henk Bakker , Pieter de Wit , Eric Noorthoorn , Robert Fullilove , and Mindy Fullilove , "Envisioning `Complete Recovery' as an Alternative to Unmitigated Disaster," Souls 9, no. 1, (2007): 19-27.

Children of Omar

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