Groove Interrupted
Loss, Renewal, and the Music of New Orleans
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The recent history of New Orleans is fraught with tragedy and triumph. Both are reflected in the city's vibrant, idiosyncratic music community. In Keith Spera's intimately reported Groove Interrupted, Aaron Neville returns to New Orleans for the first time after Hurricane Katrina to bury his wife. Fats Domino improbably rambles around Manhattan to promote a post-Katrina tribute CD. Alex Chilton lives anonymously in a battered cottage in the Treme neighborhood. Platinum-selling rapper Mystikal rekindles his career after six years in prison. Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard struggles to translate Katrina into music. The spotlight also shines on Allen Toussaint, Pete Fountain, Gatemouth Brown, the Rebirth Brass Band, Phil Anselmo, Juvenile, Jeremy Davenport and the 2006 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. With heartache, hope, humor and resolve, each of these contemporary narratives stands on its own. Together, they convey that the funky, syncopated spirit of New Orleans music is unbreakable, in spite of Katrina's interruption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This wonderful celebration of the "vibrant, idiosyncratic music community" of New Orleans is a collection of profiles of individual musicians who all had their ability to make music threatened after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Born and raised in New Orleans, Spera has written widely about his hometown's musical culture for the city's daily newspaper, the Times-Picayune, and many of the stories presented here had their origin in Spera's articles written before and after Katrina. All of them show how artists as varied as blues guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard, heavy metal singer Phil Anselmo of Pantera, and New Orleans legends Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint tried "to make sense of the storm through music, comforting themselves and uplifting those around them." Some of the finest profiles and there is no weak one in the book detail a combination of sadness and joy, such as Aaron Neville's triumphant return to the city after the death of his wife to close out the 2008 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Neville sums up the feeling of all the musicians as they strive, post-Katrina, to uplift New Orleans through their art: "All of us felt the same way about the love affair we were coming back to, to the city, to the people."
