Stealing the Show

The New Birth -- some of them still wearing the rubber wristbands that marked them as temporary residents of the Astrodome -- were celebrating the death of the storm, and they were doing it in the way New Orleans has dealt with tragedies without number ever since French was the primary language in that city -- with music. More specifically, this unique style of music -- a fusion of American folk songs, European marches, West African/Caribbean rhythms, soul, funk and hip-hop -- a blend of music that was first cooked up by former slaves on the cast-off instruments of Confederate army marching bands. New Orleans has always been about partying in the face of death -- in the 19th century, the city's population was frequently purged by malaria and yellow fever epidemics, and for much of the 20th century, it has been the murder capital of America. It's a unique place in America in that life there is meant to be lived fully rather than long, and this music is the soundtrack to that philosophy. And as the aural expression of the soul of New Orleans, it seemed, for the first time that month, like the city might yet have some life in it.

As would Houston. The city's beleaguered music scene has long needed a funk-juice shot in the arm like this, and for about three months, spots all over the city were rollicking with these jams. The mind boggled at the possibilities -- the city's rap producers, bluesmen and rockers now had some of the finest horn players in America to work with. Perhaps a few New Orleans-style social clubs would open; maybe Mardi Gras traditions would even take root here -- the street parades and all-night parties. Houston and New Orleans have virtually identical humid climates and very similar swampy, live oak-studded topographies, if not cityscapes.

Maybe now Houston would start to sound like New Orleans as well as feel like it. This would be a case of a city without a soul finding a soul without a city.

But by the time the New Year rolled around, the party was fading fast. Only the echoes of the funky drums and salacious trombones could be heard -- their owners had gone back home or fanned out to gigs across the country and around the world.

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Until the holidays last year, it looked like the Katrina influx was going to be a positive development all around. The New Birth had relocated here, as had clarinet maestro Dr. Michael White and Ruffins, the genial trumpeter-singer who is as much a one-man embodiment of New Orleans's sunny, whistle-past-the-graveyard style as Dr. John and Louis Armstrong.

Ruffins, the New Birth and several related bands set up shop all over town. At first Sammy's was the hot spot, and later St. Pete's, Tommy's Steakhouse, Dan Electro's, the Red Cat and Under the Volcano all entered the fray. The New Birth had a long, Wednesday night residency at the Volcano, thanks in no small part to a relationship they had forged with Volcano owner Pete Mitchell a year before Katrina.

"I always wanted to have a brass band play for New Year's, and I was always kind of surprised that we weren't getting that music here being so close to New Orleans," Mitchell says. "At that time I thought it was sort of a dead culture -- I was ignorant to the whole thing. I thought Kermit Ruffins might know a couple of bands, so I got in touch with him, and he put me in touch with Tanio, and I found out there were all kinds of bands. We had them play for New Year's, and people had never seen them before, and they were just blown away."

Indeed, most people are blown away at their first exposure to the living art form. If you think this is the kind of stuff you hear at places in the French Quarter like Preservation Hall, you're in for a surprise. Yes, today's brass bands can play songs like "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Maple Leaf Rag," but they will also throw in snippets from P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Gerald Levert and 50 Cent. What strikes you most profoundly are the rhythms -- brass bands feature a bass drummer (who also plays a cymbal on the top of his drum) and a snare drummer (who also has a cymbal). Beneath both of them is a tuba player -- more accurately a Sousaphone player -- and atop it all is a horn section of trumpets, trombone and saxophone. But this music is all about the beat, a unique rhythm called the "second-line" that is truly the pulse of the city.