Advance ticket sales have ended but plenty of additional tickets remain available at the door.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “What It Means to Hear New Orleans,” a Fat Tuesday feast of knowledge about the music traditions of the Crescent City, with Grammy-winning music writer Kip Lornell, who teaches courses in American music and ethnomusicology at George Washington University.
This year’s Fat Tuesday brings you a chance to get the skinny on musical traditions associated with New Orleans. Serving up this delicious gumbo of musical knowledge will be an ethnomusicologist who has published 17 books about our nation’s musical traditions and teaches a course focused on jazz in American culture and on New Orleans jazz bands.
Dr. Kip Lornell will start his talk by introducing you to the Louis Armstrong that you might not know, who burst onto the music scene like a trumpet blast in the 1920s and emerged as one of the most important and influential musicians in 20th century American music. Innovating on many levels as a musician, vocalist, and Civil Rights activist, Armstrong influenced countless others who came after him, and gave his listeners reason to sing “What a Wonderful World” along with him.
Then we’ll learn about the brass bands of New Orleans, which trace back to the late 1800s and gave Armstrong his start. We’ll become immersed in that musical tradition and learn how it thrives today with the Soul Rebels and Stooges Brass Band, which have helped pull this tradition into the 21st century by mixing improvisation, funk, and hip-hop into a sound like no other.
Finally, we’ll explore the city’s most visually stunning and fascinating musical representatives, the Mardi Gras Indians, whose costumes, traditions, and music are utterly distinctive and have been an integral part of February in New Orleans since the mid-19th century.
There is a lot more to the jazz-based music of New Orleans than you’ll get from hearing anonymous “Dixieland” band yet again play “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Learning about it through a talk accompanied by video and music clips will be a perfect way to cap off Mardi Gras. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in. Please also bring proof of Covid vaccination and be prepared to wear a mask except while seated and eating or drinking, as Profs and Pints reserves the right to require both if necessary in response to local infection rates.)
Image: The Stooges Brass Band plays for the second line of the Lady Jetsetters marching club. Photo by Derek Bridges / Creative Commons.