Places, words, images, even smells can act as touchstones, enabling through memory a co-presence with the past in the present. In my American Studies class this week, we discussed the challenge of reaching such an “intimate communion” with the historical past. No matter how far I have traveled, I have always been able to reach intimate communion with my hometown of New Orleans through its music.
During the past week, as images of natural and human disaster have dominated television and the Web, I have turned to the city’s music, not only to return to a place that may never again exist as it did, but to keep alive a city that lives in human culture, not just in brick and mortar.
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
As I watched the images of ruptured levees, flooded neighborhoods, and increasingly desperate New Orleanians, I could not get a particular song out of my head. “Louisiana 1927” is a song about the human consequences of another natural disaster, the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. The historical echoes are significant: rainfall in late 1926 and early 1927 caused severe flooding down the length of the Mississippi, displacing hundreds of thousands and threatening to overflow the city of New Orleans. In an effort to reduce the pressure of the floodwaters threatening the city, Louisiana leaders authorized the destruction of a levee south of the city, releasing waters into rural communities in Plaquemines Parish. As in the 21st century, New Orleans’ geography met natural threat and government decision-making to produce a human tragedy.
Expatriate Louisianan Randy Newman, best known for his award-winning film scores, wrote “Louisiana 1927” and recorded it on his Good Old Boys album (1974). Newman employs the voice of someone displaced by the flood, not only to mark the tragedy, but to testify to the class politics at play in the decision to save urban New Orleans rather than rural Evangeline. The refrain is plaintive and angry, seemingly speaking for the crowds of evacuees abandoned after Hurricane Katrina in the Superdome and at the Louisiana Convention Center:
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
All week, I have been playing Marcia Ball’s version of Newman’s song in my mind. Like Newman, like me, Ball was born in Louisiana, but moved elsewhere. From her base in Austin, TX, Ball records and performs rollicking boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues and roots music. Ball’s version of “Louisiana 1927” has echoes of Western Louisiana and Texas, marking the common suffering of people throughout the Gulf Coast region. Ball’s version speaks for and to the women whose suffering seemed to dominate cable news coverage of the aftermath, not only the good old boys. Through Ball’s performance, we hear the song voicing concern for the naked, dehydrated child, limp in the arms of her mother, waiting for relief.
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re trying to wash us away
In a made-for-TV benefit concert last week, Aaron Neville performed “Louisiana 1927,” closing the circle, making the song speak for the majority African-American population of New Orleans caught in the current crisis. Neville’s version imagined the song as gospel, adding a spiritual dimension to the lament, linking suffering to salvation. With his brothers, Neville has performed lifeblood funk and rhythm and blues, the pumping beat of the heart and soul of New Orleans. Neville’s rendition took the song into the city, recognizing the commonality of the rural and urban poor, and insisting on an accounting, on justice, if not on earth then in heaven.
Each spring during study days, while my students prepare for finals, I slip off campus to return home to attend the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. With much of the city in sunken ruins, I have no idea when I will be able to return. This week, listening in my head to Newman, Ball and Neville sing “Louisiana 1927,” I am both here and there.
