The reason for my trip to America has always been New Orleans. In fact, the trip has initially been booked as a two-week stay at Kitty’s, on Magnolia Street, New Orleans. But then we thought…hey, we’re going to the States anyway, we might as well go see New York!
So I cancelled the second week at Kitty’s and instead spent it at Michael’s, in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.
But my first choice has always been New Orleans. I remember telling everyone how much I loved jazz and that my biggest dream has always been to visit the place where it’s been brought to life – in so many different interpretations, by so many great artists, through so many voices and colours. And although I didn’t know anything about The Big Easy back then, I knew it was the place I’d be the most curious to see in the entire US.
As a matter of fact, my first ever atempt to volunteer was after Hurricane Katrina had stroke and destroyed most of New Orleans’ heritage. I remember looking for Associations of Volunteers that would get me there to help with the reconstruction of houses and do whatever it was necessary to save what was left of that incredibly rich land – historically, culturally, spiritually.
. I found an organization, but when they started adding costs to my trip, like plane tickets and the 150$ fee for more than a three week stay, whatever food I was going to have, I got mad thinking that I would gladly be giving away my time, health and energy for people who’d want to charge me for absolutely everything, as if I were going on a freakin’ vacation. So I replied “No thanks” and moved on.
Of course I couldn’t have simply moved on from all those beautiful, resounding, New Orleans born legends. Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Buddy Bolden, Sidney Bechet, Branford Marsalis, Lee Collins, Irma Thomas, Spencer Williams, Lee Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson (whom, when I was little, I used to call “Matahalia” – a romanian word that means “big creature” – after hearing her powerful version of “Silent night”) Louis Prima, Harry Connick Jr. I felt like I knew them all and they all knew me, that they had helped me so much during some of my weirder stages, whenever I’d feel unliked, unimportant, unsure, undeserving, they were all there, singing to me and through the pain.
So I had to come meet them many years later at their refurbished home, to thank them for the music. Unfortunately, to 99% of them, “home” was the cemetery. Of course most of them were dead, except for Harry (who recently held a concert in London). But the New Orleans rooted music lives on and so it will until the human race will no longer exist.
One of the biggest surprises I had back at the museum? The fact that Louis Prima, one of my favorite jazz musicians, was actually being celebrated. Not only that, but as we were passing through the museum’s garden, his daughter, Lena Prima and her band were performing some of her father’s most beloved songs. Right there, on an improvised stage, in front of not more than 50 people. For free. Needless to say she was beautiful and I got emotional and then, thanks to the couple next to us who happened to know her, I got to talk to her, embrace her and let her know how much her father’s music would always mean to me….I don’t know what I said to her exactly, I was so emotional I can’t even remember.
And then, after three unsuccesful attempts to pass through the front doors and set foot inside the most important museum in America as far as I’m concerned, we finally made it. And there they were: beautiful and quiet, Louis Armstrong’s first cornet, Fats Domino’s white piano, a 1917 disc of the first jazz recording ever made. And, of course, a whole floor dedicated to Louis Prima’s legacy including recordings of him and Keely Smith, him and Gia Maione, his stage clothes and jewellery, awards, busts, photographs of him acting goofier than the The Jungle Book character he’d given a voice to, the documentary “Louis Prima: The wildest” and, of course, a few photos of Sam Butera, Louis Prima’s saxophone player and another one of my favourites. I mean…”There’ll be no next time”? Pure gold!
And if you were to ask me what jazz is after all I’ve seen and heard, I still wouldn’t be able to define it. Because it’s more than mathematics, harmonies, instruments, sweating, scatting, improving. It’s becoming one with your pain, understanding it, learning to love it and writing about it, being messy, allowing yourself to be right there, in a moment, for as long as it takes to heal.
And Jazz is everything my soul will ever need.
