Published September 2014
New Orleans Tradition Comes to Town with Rebirth Brass Band
By: Willard Jenkins, WPFW 98.3
One of the oldest music traditions of the culture-rich city of New Orleans is the brass band. Fabled as leaders of the Second Line, the revelers who parade behind the band following the traditional New Orleans funeral cortege through the streets, the brass band has evolved from its more street-specific roots to club and concert stages. No band better typifies that evolution than modern keepers of the flame, The Rebirth Brass Band.
From its weekly, wildly popular Tuesday night hits at the Maple Leaf in uptown New Orleans, to all manner of festivals and concert tours, the Grammy-winning Rebirth Brass Band has become a world-renowned symbol of the Crescent City sound. Their raucous, infectious evolution of the brass band tradition brings equal parts funk and hip-hop to a Big Easy brew that is irresistible. The band authoritatively ranges from such traditional anthems as “St. James Infirmary”, “Big Chief”, “Shake That Thing”, and “Tipitina”, to such signature Rebirth anthems as “Feel Like Funkin’ It Up”, and “Do Whatcha Wanna.” As the New York Times noted “Rebirth can be precise whenever it wants to, but it’s more like a party than a machine. It’s a working model of the New Orleans musical ethos, as long as everybody knows what they’re doing, anyone can cut loose.”
Responding to the city’s need for youth alternatives to street life and draconian budget cuts to music education, Rebirth drummer Derek Tabb founded a renowned NOLA education program known as The Roots of Music. In a clear illustration that Rebirth is much more than a party and good time outfit, Tabb has engaged his bandmates in this successful grassroots effort. Rebirth has even soldiered on despite the sometimes-dicey New Orleans street scene and the effects of gentrification, which have sought to severely restrict the “street” nature of their marching tradition.
Rebirth Brass Band’s latest recording is the appropriately titled Move Your Body on Basin Street Records, including such special guests Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and his uncle Glen David Andrews. There is no way you will NOT “Move Your Body” when Rebirth closes out the 2014 Rosslyn Jazz Festival.
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The host of WPFW 89.3 FM’s ‘Late Night Jazz’ (10:00 pm – Midnight), Willard Jenkins is an independent arts consultant/producer, writer and broadcaster under his Open Sky banner. The co-author of the acclaimed autobiography of legendary jazz pianist Randy Weston, ‘African Rhythms’ (Duke University Press, 2010), Jenkins also has contributed to numerous local, national, and international publications, including JazzTimes, Inside Arts, DownBeat, Jazz Report, Jazz Forum, The Antioch Review, Attache, Jazz Education Journal, All About Jazz and many others. Jenkins’ new media contributions have appeared in Amazon.com, NPRJazz.org, NetNoir.com, Impact247.com, and Africana.com. He also writes and edits his own blog The Independent Ear. Jenkins is also an experienced interviewer who has conducted extensive oral history interviews for the Smithsonian Institution, and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.