How funerals became New Orleans’ most joyful street parties
By Jenny Adams
New Orleans (CNN) — A bowtie is adjusted. A trombone is hoisted. On the corner of Dauphine and Toulouse, two motorcycle cops block the intersection.
The opening notes of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” emerge from a trumpet. The melody is carried as a saxophone and sousaphone join in. The band moves through the streets of New Orleans, the crowd right behind them. At first a dirge, then the tempo rises, and the hymnal swells. Block-by-block it grows reverent. Ardent, and joyful.
A funeral second line parade is an emotional experience –– a public, shared display of grief that evolves into celebration of a life. It’s a custom born of West African and Caribbean cultures, now entirely New Orleans.
The term “second line” refers directly to the people behind the musicians, i.e., the second line is any dancers, crowds and general merrymakers. As a term overall, it’s a name for certain parades in the city, honoring momentous occasions. Some are a few blocks, but for large events, they might march miles.
Second line parades mark funerals here, but also weddings, social gatherings and important events. New Orleans is a town where a trombone can cause a traffic jam, and a sousaphone can lure a thousand people into the streets.
At the heart of every second line is the brass band, those musicians in white, pressed shirts and creased black pants, who carry a weight heavier than their instruments. They carry community.
To mourn in New Orleans, one requires a brass band. To celebrate? That, too.
The DNA of a sound
“If you grow up here, the African drumbeats, the dancing, which goes back to slavery and to Congo Square, that stuff is in our DNA,” says Roger Lewis, 83.
He’s dressed in a crisp, paisley shirt, and he talks with his hands, as if he’s looking for an instrument to latch onto.
A New Orleans native, Lewis is an original member of Dirty Dozen Brass Band. He still plays baritone and soprano sax and contributes vocals to the group, which formed out of a church marching band in 1972. The Dirty Dozen is unequivocally the most famous brass band in the world today.
They’ve toured five continents, Amsterdam to Bangkok, Istanbul to London, and have played huge stadiums and small recording booths with Dizzy Gillespie, Elvis Costello, and The Black Crowes. The members earned a Grammy in 2023, have appeared in multiple films, and you can’t get through a day here without hearing their hit, “Feet Can’t Fail Me Now.”
After the interview, however, Lewis won’t get on a plane for an exotic locale. He’ll play in a Bywater warehouse. At a nonprofit, asking small donations at the door.
That’s how it is in New Orleans.
The rise of social clubs
Jazz legend Ellis Marsalis once said, “In New Orleans, culture doesn’t come down from on high. It bubbles up from the streets.” The streets remain the most rooted and emotional place to find brass music.
Brass bands first formed in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when a marriage took place between soldiers with military instruments –– now played in social, civilian settings –– and musicians with knowledge of African and Indigenous tribal beats.
As bebop waned and funk and rock music arrived, the 1970s and early ’80s witnessed a shift, not only in sound but also in the way onlookers behaved. As music and dance styles across America morphed, so did Second Line participation.
Social Aid and Pleasure Club organizations also formed around the turn of the century, initially, providing insurance and financial assistance to freed slaves. By the 1920s, they were covering funeral expenses, community events and parades. These clubs began hiring brass musicians, and top acts included the Olympia Brass Band, Eureka Brass and the Young Tuxedo Brass.
Songs were influenced by improvisational and bebop jazz, as well as gospel.
“I think we changed history,” Lewis says of Dirty Dozen coming on the scene in the 1970s.
“If you look at the 1950s, people were listening and politely sashaying down the street. We played the same, traditional songs, but we picked that beat up. I mean up. I used to say, ‘Wear tennis shoes and your jogging suit. You may lose 40 pounds parading with us.’”
Hometown sound
The dancing grew wilder, the parties expanded, and eager, young musicians noticed.
In the ’80s, Kermit Ruffins, Keith Frazier and his brother, Phillip, known as “Tuba Phil,” were classmates at New Orleans’ Joseph S. Clark Senior High, now closed but formerly located in the Treme neighborhood. Too young to play in bars, they took their sound to the streets. Some members were only 13.
That group settled on the name Rebirth Brass Band in 1984. Despite fame and a hard touring schedule that produced 17 albums and a Grammy, you can still see Rebirth every Tuesday for $30.
“We played Tuesday shows at Maple Leaf from 1992 until Covid hit. That place fits about 100 and we’ve crammed in 300,” laughs Keith Frazier, bass drummer. “Now, our Tuesdays are at the Rabbit Hole in Central City. I think, in terms of sound, we continued what the Dirty Dozen set down, adding in our own influences. Hip-hop and jazz and reggae… with these instruments, you can do anything.”
Among the dozens of established brass bands across New Orleans, some focus on second line parades, while others prefer bars or festivals.
You can see The Stooges, Hot 8, Soul Rebels, Treme, Kinfolk, the Young Fellaz and other brass bands at bars like The Spotted Cat, Blue Nile and DBA — all on Frenchmen Street — or at Kermit’s Tremé Mother-in-Law Lounge on North Claiborne Avenue, and at the Maple Leaf and Tipitina’s, both in Uptown.
“What’s cool is the neighborhoods have influenced the sound,” Frazier goes on. “Uptown guys play it a little faster. The Treme loves a more traditional set, whereas New Orleans East has a hip-hop fan base. I’m from the Upper Ninth Ward, which is kind of traditional mixed with modern. I think that’s the beauty of brass music. It’s never one thing, or even one part of the city.”
A modern mindset
One thing that has historically defined brass? It’s male-dominated. But even that has evolved over the years, albeit slightly.
Christie Jourdain is band leader and snare drummer for The Original Pinettes, the city’s first all-female brass band that formed in 1991. “I came out of the ‘80s/MTV generation,” she laughs. “I was listening to Peter Gabriel and Prince rather than the traditionals or Gospel.”
She also listened to Jeffrey Herbert, a high school band director at St. Mary’s Catholic School, in Uptown. A member of The Original Pinstripe Band, Herbert used his connections to help the teenage women find footing.
“He took a chance on us,” Jourdain says. “I remember people calling us ‘cute.’ Then we’d kick the doors down when we played.”
At a 2013 Red Bull Street Kings competition held under the Claiborne bridge, The Original Pinettes made the crowds go wild. They won, forcing the sponsor to change the name to Red Bull Street Queens. They now command stages at nearly every city festival, including Jazz Fest, Satchmo Summerfest, and French Quarter Festival.
“The Original Pinettes paved the way,” agrees Maude Caillat, leader of Bra’s Band Brass Band, a female group formed in 2021. “After Hurricane Ida, I got a request to put together an all-ladies brass group for the Krewe of Boheme Mardi Gras parade. I began reaching out, but it wasn’t easy. There aren’t enough women playing brass. We have a nine-piece band with about 10 to 15 members.”
That’s a common occurrence for the brass music scene. There might be a collective of 20 members, with only six playing at a given show or parade. For musicians in the current economy, one band or one residency isn’t enough for a full-time paycheck. In New Orleans, musicians diversify, stepping into open slots when needed, signing up for myriad parades and krewes. Krewes being the social organizations whose members build floats and create costumes and host the parades, parties and galas that make up Mardi Gras, but also holidays like Christmas, Easter and Halloween.
You can see Bra’s Band at events hosted by and for women, from the Easter Parade’s Krewe of Dolly Parton to the Fleur de Bra –– an October costume fashion show that supports breast cancer research.
When asked why women aren’t playing brass in equal numbers, Jourdain says it’s not merely the obvious –– hefting a tuba while marching for miles in the sun –– but also that women face additional burdens, including their obligations as mothers and wives. Health issues are a real concern.
“As you get older, parades take a toll on your body,” she says.
Now her group plays more festivals.
“French Quarter Fest is my favorite,” she says. “They recruit homegrown talent and pay well. I wish others would do the same. We all have second jobs now. That’s why a seven-piece band might have 12 members, so people can schedule around work. The pay is something we need to address as a city. Because what is New Orleans without brass music?”
Part of the social fabric
It’s a question that can’t be answered and hopefully never will.
In the words of Ron Rona, who served for two decades as the artistic director at the Preservation Hall, a musical collective and venue dedicated to protecting and promoting New Orleans music, the city’s musical culture is what makes it “truly singular on the world stage.”
He explains how interwoven brass bands are into the fabric of life in New Orleans, assuring they can endure for years to come.
“Many brass bands emerge from high school marching band relationships, and through the wider circles of local schools and communities, these musicians often end up knowing their bandmates for much of their lives,” Rona says. “Then, whether organically or formally, many serve as musical mentors to the kids coming up. It’s cyclical and familial, and that’s not something too many other cities can claim.”
That’s how it is in New Orleans.
Somewhere in the French Quarter right now, there’s a good chance a new bride is peeking out of a doorway.
Kinfolk’s trumpet player might ask, “You ready?”
She will nod and step out, parasol hoisted, new husband at her side. The band can strike up a celebratory take on the 1917 song, “Li’l Liza Jane.” The wedding party will take off, with a century of New Orleans tradition right behind.
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