At the Public Gallery down on Lafayette Street the Texas photographer Leo Touchet is showing large and striking black‐and‐white photographs that document the jazz funerals of New Orleans. My only knowledge of the jazz firnerals of New Orleans comes through these photographs and the brief explanatory text on the gallery walls, but I feel that I know them well. I have a strong impression that they are a kind of solemn ceremonial Mardi Gras unlike anything that occurs elsewhere in the United States —a manifestation of popular feeling, half African, half Catholic European, that could only occur in this most Caribbean of North American cities.

The jazz funerals of New Orleans begin with a procession on foot through the streets with marching jazz bands and crowds of spectators watching or joining in to dance in the streets to the music of the bands. The very idea of a funeral procession on foot is strange enough in a great American city. In other American cities funeral Processions occur, if it all, as a line of limousines with the headlights turned on, trying to keep from being separated the usual heedless traffic.

Stranger still is the idea of jazz bands playing and people dancing in the streets for jazz, we all know, began in honky tonics, while dancing in the streets is for life and joy, not death. Strangest of all, however, is the grave solemnity with which all the participants take part in these apparent carnival festivities.

The spectators, white and black, line the sidewalks or perch on the above‐ground tombs of the New Orleans cemetery, as solemn as ravens and ghosts. The black musicians, splendid in uniforms and polished brass, march with a gravity worthy of bishops and kings. Even the street dancers who follow the funeral procession have solemn unsmiling faces. They are carrying open umbrellas though there is no rain, and they seem to be dancing not for the fun of it, but in tribute to the awful power of death, in whose fearful presence the only truly appropriate response is a solemn affirmation of the sweetness of life.

I am truly impressed by Leo Touchet's Success in recording this strange and moving ceremony, and I hope that someone will want to make a book of it. The Public Gallery, where the pictures will be on view through April 29, is in the lobby of the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street, just south of Cooper Union and Astor Place, and unless it is show time you may have to push your way through a rust colored curtain to find it.

NOTE: This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

A jazz funeral in New Orleans is an experience which transcends all others. More than a congregation of mourners, it is a piritual meeting of souls; an uplifting occurance dealing with the properties of life and death. It is also an intangible feeling as real as a trumpet solo and as important as the message it carries. The New Orleans jazz funeral photographs by Leo Touchet capture this spirit in fine artistic terms, making this exhibit the next best thing to being there.....This photographic display is the finest exhibited in this city in a long time.

“REJOICE WHEN YOU DIE” was what it said in the “subject” line of an e-mail somebody sent me. Oh great, I thought, another one of these. Well, imagine my surprise when I realized that the potentially vicious message was merely notification that I was being sent a review copy of Rejoice When You Die: The New Orleans Jazz Funerals , an attractive volume of black-and-white photographs by Leo Touchet, with text by Vernel Bagneris and an introduction by Ellis Marsalis Jr. (New Orleans native Bagneris is a playwright whose works include Jelly Roll! and One Mo' Time, and who also acts, most recently in Cy Coleman's Broadway hit The Life. Marsalis is a pianist, composer, educator and New Orleans jazz scholar. Some of his sons are trying to break into the music business.) And, if anyone was wondering, the book's title comes from the verse, “You cry when you're born/So rejoice when you die.”

In Rejoice, Touchet's photojournalistic--and yet otherworldly--images capture the solemnity, the ritual, the mourning and the ebullience that attended the traditional jazz funeral. The sashes, banners, musical instruments, handkerchiefs and umbrellas all bestow a mystical symbolism on the proceedings. Touchet's scenes depict the seemingly ancient roles played by funeral officials, musicians and mourners, in beguiling tableaux peopled also with locals, onlookers and even tourists.

In Marsalis' introduction, he explains these New Orleans burial rites as a function of the social-aid clubs and benevolent societies that became a necessary part of black life after Emancipation. Since the 1880s, Marsalis writes, the grass-roots safety net these societies provided also included funerals with the accompaniment of local brass bands. The book's two parts are “Funeral Procession” and “Second Line.” The opening section details the mournful march to the graveside service; the concluding one describes the exuberant procession after the burial. The “second line beat” was the lively tempo that marked the return from the funeral service. The “second line” was also the assembly of friends and relations that offered support to the family of the deceased. (And to think of the raucous, joyful music that concludes the jazz funeral, I can't help but think of it as a prime example of contradictory American celebrations, like the celebrity roast.)

In jazz funerals, Touchet believes that the umbrella-tradition came about in imitation of whites, who were known for carrying parasols to keep the sun off their skin. This was not for the avoidance of skin cancer. In the intensely color-conscious world of New Orleans in the past, the deeper one's shade, the lower one was ranked in the imposed social order. Whites were said to have been worried that getting a tan might lead to being mistaken for a creole.

The positions that some mourners assume in the photos are somehow reminiscent of ecstatic dancers from North Africa or other locales. “There definitely was a feeling of it,” said Touchet. “There's a certain strut, a certain style. And it didn't matter what the music was--I learned the movement more than anything else. I'm not really musically inclined. I just learned the movement and was able to photograph it that way. I've seen funerals in the Islands and they did this very similar strut. And that's very much African, there.”

Bagneris' text explains that there was a palpable element of fear in the funerals, as legend had it that the soul of the newly-interred might recoil from the hereafter and possess one of the mourners: “So, the family would shake from head to toe waddling back home. That would keep them from being easy targets. It was an eerie sight to see.”

But these photographs also show more mundane accoutrements, such as a bass bedecked in what looks like flowers for the procession for a deceased bassist. Touchet recalls a drummer's funeral where his drums were draped in black cloth for the funeral procession. “They would usually carry the instrument of the person who died,” said Touchet.

To remind readers of what an authentic jazz funeral sounded like, the publishers of Rejoice When You Die make available an accompanying CD of music traditional to these rites. The selections, chosen from a list compiled by Touchet, Bagneris and Marsalis, include gospel classics “Old Rugged Cross,” “What A Friend” and “Amazing Grace,” as well as more secular themes “When The Saints Go Marchin' In” and “Didn't He Ramble?” New Orleans-based ensemble DeJan's Olympia Brass Band performs the classic material in the classic style, under the direction of Milton Batiste.

A lot of crying and rejoicing has always gone on during that most unique of New Orleans traditions, the jazz funeral. And that powerful combination of grief and glee comes alive in this moving collection of black-and-white photographs and colorful words fo two Louisiana artists.

From 1968 to 1970, photographer Leo Touchet followed many of the musical memorials. "I photographed them," he explains, "simply because they were a part of the life of New Orleans, with all their sadness and dignity, their pride and himility, their stillness and motion."

New Orleans native and Broadway actor Vernel Bagneris provides the text, which uses song lyrics, bystanders comments, and imagined thoughts of the departed themselves to capture the somber mood of the march to the cemetery as well as the exuberance of the �second line� revelers as they accompany the family home.

In his introduction to the book, jazz expert Ellis Marsalis, Jr., laments, "It was in the 1970es that jazz funerals began to change irrevocabley from their traditional form." Those changes lend even more poignancy to the scenes captured by Touchet's cameras more than 20 year ago, and give jazz fans everywhere a reason to rejoice.

A jazz funeral procession is one of New Orleans' most distinctive cultural event - and like so many things that characterize the city, it has a dual nature. It is a public procession underlaid with private emotion, a public observance of a private passage, the last parade, if you will. It has deep cultural roots as a community ritual both of loss and of celebration, a recognition of the many lives a single life embraces. It has its elaborate codes of dress and conduct and music, its beginning, its middle, its end, and its room for improvisation. In this elegant, solemnly lovely book, Leo Touchet, Vernel Bagneris and Ellis Marsalis, Jr. illuminate this custom and its many, many meanings.

A jazz funeral procession is one of New Orleans' most distinctive cultural event - Photographs from several jazz funerals between 1968 and 1970 are telescoped into the procession that is the flow, the photographic narrative, of this book. There is the departure from the church, the progress along the way, the solemn leadership and accompaniment, the reaction of the observers, the second-liners and the return, until finally, we see a musician heading home, carrying his horn, broken into two parts.

A jazz funeral procession is one of New Orleans' most distinctive cultural event - Touchet's evocative and powerful black and white photographs, more than 100 of them, capture the emotions of the mourners, the solemn responsibility of the grand marshal, the emotional energy and release of the second line as it breaks into the joyful return from the cemetery after cutting the body loose. Many are shot from unusual angles, though they are perfectly composed. Some are somber portraits, while others are filled with joyful noise and movement.

A jazz funeral procession is one of New Orleans' most distinctive cultural event - Ellis Marsalis' introduction illuminates the customs of the jazz funeral, and shows how these photographs capture it at the end of an era, when traditions were just beginning to change, to give way to modern music and large crowds. In his impressionistic and poetic text, actor and playwright Vernel Bagneris gives us glimpses into the emotions of the mourners, the observers, even, in one instance, the deceased himself, the history of the city, the ritual. “You cry when you're born, so you should rejoice when you die.”

A jazz funeral procession is one of New Orleans' most distinctive cultural event - To accompany the book, there is a remarkable CD of traditional jazz funeral music by the Dejan's Olympia Brass Band, with 13 standards, including “Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Call Him Up,” “Amazing Grace,” “Didn't He Ramble?,” “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” and “ When the Saints Go Marching In.”

A jazz funeral procession is one of New Orleans' most distinctive cultural event - Listening to the music, looking at the photographs, it is easy to imagine the energy of the crowd, the feeling of the pavement beneath dancing feet, the sounds of the city at one of its most meaningful moments. In this uneasy age of intrusive onlookers, tourists who think a jazz funeral is just another attraction for their pleasure, it is important to be reminded of the solemnity, the gravity of such an occasion. The sadness and the joyfulness of that march toward the final resting place - death and life, as we celebrate them so well here - are writ large on every page of this book.

Rejoice When You Die gives readers an intimate look at jazz funerals via photographs by Leo Touchet and accompanying text by entertainer and native son Vernel Bagneris. Ellis Marsalis provides a brief historical introduction to this New Orleans institution, which, he laments, is losing its traditional elements as the oldest musicians die and jazz funerals become tourist attractions. Some of the last of the "classic" funerals are shown in Touchet's beautiful black-and-white photos, which were taken between 1968 and 1970 at the funerals of musicians including George Lewis, Alcide Pavageau, Paul Barbarin and Leon Shelly.

Rejoice When You Die doesn't set out to be an authoritative history and cultural analysis of jazz funerals; rather, it's a collection of timeless images and sensory text that attempts to relate the processions on an emotional level. Bagneris' words richly describe the atmosphere of the somber funeral march from church to gravesite and the joyous second-line home. It's an appealing approach to explaining this phenomenon and certainly beats tagging along at jazz funerals as a camera-toting crasher.

Abbeville native Leo Touchet's photographic documentation of the New Orleans jazz funerals has long been recognized as among the best work on the subject. That work has now been published by LSU Press in a book entitled REJOICE WHEN YOU DIE - The New Orleans Jazz Funerals, with a text by noted playwright Vernel Bagneris.

The book is a celebration of a cultural activity that itself is a celebration of passing from one life into the next, with umbrella twirling second-line dancers following the casket and a brass band. A compact disc of processional jazz music accompanies the book, which comes with an introduction by New Orleans' jazz legend and teacher Ellis L. Marsallis, Jr.

New Orleans native Bagneris, created and starred in Jelly Roll!, an off-Broadway musical adaptation of the life of jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton, for which he won an Obie Award and an array of other honors.

Touchet's photographs have been exhibited throughout the country and have appeared magazines including Life, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Paris Match, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post. His work is included in various public and private collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Ce livre est un recueil de photographies d'enterrements e la Nouvelle-Orleans. De magnifiques cliches qui montrent une population en mouvement, dansante et surtout bigarree. La familles et les second line, les parapluies, les chapeaux et les orchestres sont, le, representes et mis en scene par les auteurs.

Une premiere partie grave et lente (les processions) et une seconde exuberante et desordonnee (les second line). Un tres beau livre qui donne, grece e de bonnes photos, une image precise de ces celebres enterrements new-orleannais.