"It ain't easy in the Big Easy"

Sunday's Musicians Solidarity Second Line found members of the Treme Brass Band and some two dozen other musicians, instruments in hand, assembled for a traditional second-line parade. At a typical second-line, a brass band plays, and supporters follow along, dancing and clapping out rhythms. The events, held nearly every weekend from September through June, are powerful expressions of community and culture. Since Katrina, they have taken on deeper meaning as assertions of determination and domain. But on Sunday, not a note was played, not a step danced. And the message was clear: New Orleans' musicians need better support, lest the music that lends this city its identity one day fall silent.

The only other time I'd experienced a noiseless second-line parade was seven months ago. Hundreds gathered at the gate to Louis Armstrong Park. The silence -- unthinkable throughout the hundred-plus-year history of this raucous tradition -- was a carefully thought-through statement. It addressed the violence afflicting the city, the desperately slow process of post-Katrina recovery, and the enabling power of jazz culture for disenfranchised (in many cases, still displaced) communities. Two miles into that procession, not far from where M.L. King Boulevard meets South Liberty Street -- the statement having been made -- the men of the Nine Times Club (in lime-green suits and royal-blue fedoras) and the Prince of Wales Club (in red suits and mustard-colored hats and gloves) started jumping and sliding to the irrepressible sounds of the Hot 8 and Rebirth Brass Bands.

On Sunday a slow, steady rain lent dramatic drips to homemade signs that read: "Living Wages = Living Music," "Imagine a Silent NOLA," "Keep Our Story Alive." But this day, the procession didn't explode into music. When it reached the French Quarter's Jackson Square, Musicians Union president "Deacon" John Moore, a guitarist who played on several seminal R&B hits during his career, addressed the small crowd. "It ain't easy in the Big Easy," he said. "Our musicians are suffering. We hate to come out here like this but we have no alternative."

Benny Jones Sr., the drummer and founder of the Treme Brass Band, has been making music in New Orleans for some 50 years. "It's always been a bit of a struggle," he said, "but now it's become a losing proposition." At issue were the pressures of a hard-hit tourism industry, the increased cost of living in New Orleans, and the need for musicians to demand better pay and some element of nurturing during tough post-Katrina times. Several nonprofit organizations -- the Musicians Clinic, the Renew Our Music Fund, and Sweet Home New Orleans -- have risen to the latter task in the past two years. But while the need they serve remains daunting, the flow of contributions has begun to ebb. Sweet Home director Jordan Hirsch estimates that of the approximately 4,500 working musicians and others in the New Orleans cultural community, "about a third are back and doing OK, a third have yet to return, and a third are here but in unstable situations."

"Historically, musicians have been taken for granted here because it's so common and pervasive," said Scott Aiges, a director at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and a former city government official, who walked along the parade route. "It's such an intrinsic part of our culture that, when we hear a brass band it's just another day." Aiges thinks there are public-policy solutions to some of the musicians' problems, ranging from promotional strategies to zoning ordinances, and especially tax and other incentives to those who employ musicians. "See, New Orleans culture developed out of a hustle and will always be a hustle," said Ellis Marsalis, the pianist and patriarch to the New Orleans jazz scene, the other night in between sets at the Snug Harbor club. That hustle won't suffice, it seems, during the slow crawl of recovery: Some public policy may be in order.

I went back to Ronald Lewis' house the other day, and he showed me his House of Dance and Feathers, the small museum of artifacts he's collected through his years of involvement with Mardi Gras Indian tribes, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, and jazz musicians: There are books and photos, fans and feathers, masks and drums, most of which were assembled anew after Katrina wiped out his original collection.

"They say we're dumb, illiterate, poor people. They chose to put those labels on us. But this is a blue-collar community. We bought houses, raised families, came back," Lewis told me. "I'll draw you in with my culture, but really I want to have a conversation about my community, who we really are."

Tomorrow marks two years since the city was devastated. There's still a great deal of work to do to right wrongs, rebuild homes, and ensure a safer future. President Bush is scheduled to speak at some point, though ever since his infamous Jackson Square address, with its yet-to-be-fulfilled promises, his words are largely unwelcome in this city. A Day of Presence march -- among the many events, some somber, some angry, some celebratory, that dot the day -- will convene at the Ernest Morial Convention Center, the site of last month's Essence Festival. "We're going to demand a regional Marshall Plan," said Edrea Davis of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, "to restore New Orleans and the Gulf Coast."

But beyond the rhetoric, immense challenges remain for the city's artists. As Grenada's Ambassador Antoine said at the cultural economy forum: "New Orleans is a perception. When we talk about safety: How safe do you feel? It's not just about crime, it's about how safe do you feel to be you?"

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