African Cultural Memory in New Orleans Music

Abstract

The symbolic language of a culture rises from its core, a vocabulary encoded by sound and sight, rooted in historical memory. In music and dance, in costumes and religious life, the past articulates its presence. The language lives in the marching dancers of a second line-paradestep improvisations, the feet hitting streets in cross-rhythm to the swish and thump of the big bass drum. And so with the elegiac funeral dirges, jazzmen slowly ushering the casket toward earthly rest, and then the cutting loose of trombones and trumpets announcing the soul's ascent. These are rituals of living history, when poetic movements of the street revolve around a vernacular of jazz. There was a time, deep in the city's past, when the reach of African memory cradled a portion of what is now Louis Armstrong Park. In 1800 the area was a grassy plain set back behind the Vieux Carre, surrounded by wood and swamps. Slaves gravitated to the site for large, Sunday drum-and-dance convocations. It became known as Place Congo, and in later generations, with English supplanting French as the local language, Congo Square. Congo Square was a phenomenon of the New World, but its essence came from West Africa. Like the macumba cults of Brazil, santeria of Cuba, and vodun of Haiti, a spiritual sensibility gathered ferment here, animated by percussive music and communal dance. These urges of the mother culture formed a vital link with rituals of the past; they connected people to their history. A river of percussions poured out of Congo Square, spilling into divergent tributaries as generations moved beyond slavery (see Berry, Foose, and Jones 1986, 207+). The currents branched into streams of jazz, of rhythm-and-blues, and of Mardi Gras Indians' music. Today, the imprint of those ancient hands and feet has left an indelible mark on New Or-