AMERICAN VISIONS MAGAZINE

A Magazine of Afro-American Culture
The official magazine of the African American Museums Association

         This magazine did a cover story which including eight pages of photos. The text included a piece by Gary W. Bloom about the cemeteries and burial rituals which are so unique to New Orleans. Also included was a sizable excerpt from the introduction to the book which written by Ellis L. Marsalis, Jr.
         Edward Towles, the art director, did a wonderful layout which included nine photos from the book. The editor, Joanne Harris, is one of the nicest and most cooperative editors I've ever worked with.

 

         This book is a living treasure of photographs that Leo Touchet took between 1968 and 1970 at New Orleans jazz funerals. It was a time when funerals were only for jazz musicians or members of social clubs. Today, anyone in the Crescent City can have a funeral with music if they pay for it. It was a time when the music was traditional and the type of music was divided chronologically. Today there is no such break; all the music is lively and often popular.
         The brass band played dirges from the home of the deceased to one of the city's above-ground tombs. The mood changed from solemn to joyful when the family left the gravesite. But only at a certain moment did the public grieving offically end.
         Ellis Marsalis, Wynton and Branford's jazz educator-father, explains in his introduction: "When a respectful distance from the site has been reached, the lead trumpeter sounds a two-note preparatory riff to alert his fellow musicians. At this point the drummers begin to play what has become known as the 'second line' beat."
         Family, friends and thousands of anonymous spectators formed the "second line" of celebrants. People pranced, some with home-decorated umbrellas, to the tunes. A typical tune in the segment was "When the Saints Go Marchin' In." Originally a hymn sung in black Protestant churches, it was transformed and played during the recessional in its more familiar upbeat style.
         Touchet's photographs are a valuable document in and of themselves. But I think they will become more important in another 30 years as we review how Americans celebrated the stages of life in the 20th century.
 
        (Note: David Steinberg, book editor and an arts writer for the Journal, was a wide-eyed spectator at Paul Barbarin's funeral.)

 

         Ce livre est un recueil de photographies d'enterrements à la Nouvelle-Orléans. De magnifiques clichés qui montrent une population en mouvement, dansante et surtout bigarrée. La familles et les second line, les parapluies, les chapeaux et les orchestres sont, là, représentés et mis en scène par les auteurs.
         Une première partie grave et lente (les processions) et une seconde exubérante et désordonnée (les second line).
         Un très beau livre qui donne, grâce à de bonnes photos, une image précise de ces célèbres enterrements new-orleannais.

 

         The word "unique" is overused in general. And it probably should be banned, put on moratorium, stricken from the dictionary when it comes to things pertaining to New Orleans. Except when it comes to jazz funerals. What other word applies?
         As proof, Leo Touchet, born in Abbeville, Louisiana, the very heart of Cajun country, has assembled - with the help of playwright Vernel Bagneris and jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis - "Rejoice When You Die."
         The coffee-table book is full of black and white photographs that Touchet took between 1968 and 1970. It’s also full of life. That’s the unique part. Only in New Orleans could a funeral turn into a festival.
         A traditional jazz funeral starts off somber enough, as Touchet shows in the first part of "Rejoice." The grand marshals, hats in hand, strut before the procession. Gleaming hearses, natty pallbearers and a brass band wearing uniforms dark as a widow’s weeds follow.
         But on the way back from the burial, when the procession has reached what Marsalis, in his introduction, calls a "respectful distance," a trumpeter signals the drums to play. That’s when the umbrellas start blooming and the crowd forms a second line to dance along with the beat. The second half of Touchet’s book documents that colorful street party. Touchet, who took nearly 30 years to put "Rejoice" together, said he had to let the ideas stew.
         Marsalis thinks some of the traditions are in danger. Though jazz funerals are still a part of New Orleans’ black culture, Marsalis bemoans the switch from longtime standards to popular music and the loss of the quiet march to the grave. The most important change is that nowadays anyone can buy a jazz funeral, a rite that was once reserved for musicians and social club members.
         Marsalis is certain that the jazz funeral’s traditions go back to Africa, and they lay in hibernation through the years of slavery, only to be reborn after the Civil War, when social-aid clubs and benevolent societies, which are now dying institutions themselves, assisted former slaves with all means of support "that would have otherwise been difficult or impossible for them to enterain."
         Things like medical bills and insurance - and a funeral that benefited a man’s diginity and celebrated his joy. The cost? Marsalis says, "Twenty-five cents a week would ensure a member a proper burial."

 

         New Orleans is a strange place: a confluence of the very old Catholic French and Spanish cultures colliding and merging with both the decidedly strange Afro-Caribbean culture that came later and the Native Americans who were here before anyone else - all fusing into something completely unique to North America. And the music is likewise unlike anything else you'll ever hear: jazz so primeval that you'll swear that the loa themselves are riding the musicians. And jazz so sweet that you'll believe that angels themselves slumming.
         Jazz funerals have a long and complex history in New Orleans. And much of their appeal is in the visual impact of a full-blown funeral procession, Observe that I specifically noted the photographer (Leo Touchet) in the credits as the photographs are what make this book worth every halfpenny of its price. There are more than one hundred black-and-white photographs taken at jazz funerals between 1968 and 1970. In every photo Leo Touchet has captured the sheer joy inherent in the celebration of the life of a musician who lived life to its fullest. And the community who knew and loved that person shows that by partying in a manner fitting that of a jazz musician: loudly with much motion.
         The text by Vernel Bagneris more than amply frames the photographs that were taken at various funerals including that of Paul 'T-Boy" Barbarin and social club member Leon "Nooney-Boy" Shelly. Bagneris correctly notes that this is after all a party, a celebration of life, not a sad ending at all. Dance, music, food, and storytelling all fuse into something that's truly a revel. It's a fitting touch that Vernel Bagneris, a playwright, includes the wry observations of the recently departed.
         The final fitting touch is the insightful introductory commentary by noted jazz musician Ellis L. Marsalis Jr. who provides the necessary information to fully appreciate both the funerals themselves and the musical tradition that created them. REJOICE WHEN YOU DIE: The New Orleans Jazz Funerals belongs in the collection of anyone interested in jazz and jazz culture at its very best.

 

         Some things have changed in the jazz funeral over the years I’m not too happy about. The younger people have brought in more of that raggae "hop around" feeling to some of the music. I like that solid back-beat laid on the traditional march tempo. But that’s me. Some things though, I’m glad they’re gone. Like those horse drawn hearses. They were more elegant now, don’t get me wrong. But the stench from all those piles of droppings was enough to make you settle for cars. Another thing I can do without is all the fear that surrounded the funeral processions. People used to say that the soul, when first released at the graveyard, would try to invade the living persons present and take over their bodies, in short, retreating from the other world’s uncertainty. So the family would shake from head to toe waddling back home. That would keep them from being as easy target. It was an eerie sight to see. In later years, drums were added to lighten the ordeal for the already burdened loved ones. Friends and lodge members, known as "secondliners", would march alongside the family offering support, protecting them from possible harrassment by those with a "bone to pick" ill-tempered "other women" or rejected, illegitimate offspring. Now, the "wobbling" walk in fear of possession is just part of a farewell dance from the crowd as the family releases the soul to its destiny. More instruments have been added over the years - - playing spirituals and dirges when they first leave the church, then jubliliant, crowd-pleasing party numbers as they toast the dead.

 

         If Brassai was the "eye of Paris," a gentleman named Leo Touchet is the cemetery correspondent of New Orleans. He'll sign copies of his photographic book REJOICE WHEN YOU DIE - The New Orleans Jazz Funerals tonight at Paulies (amidst his "Desert Sand Dunes" exhibit) and tomorrow night at the Shrines of the Black Madonna bookstore.
         In 113 black-and-white photos, Touchet captures the elaborately decorated caskets, the solemn, slow-stepping marshals, the curious spectators, the brass bands and the feverish dancing of the dying ritual.

 

         “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.

 

         The collection of 113 black-and-white photographs chronicles the pageantry of the musical send-offs long a tradition at New Orleans jazz funerals. Spectators, marchers, and plain people are drawn by this final eulogy to the departed. Vernel Bagneris has provided the text for Leo Touchet's stirring images, which have appeared in Life, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, and The New York Times. The book rejoices, as do the onlookers, giving the reader an accurate and moving portrait of a unique rite of genuflection.

 

         Of the many new titles, our vote for Most Photogenic goes to Rejoice When You Die.
         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.

 

         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 then,” 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 1970’s 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.

 

         Leo Touchet’s photos of jazz funerals are straightforward and realistic in nature. His book is a comprehensive documentary of each step of the ritual -- from the slow march to the cemetery to the exuberant stomp after the dead man has been interred.
         Interestingly, he may well have recorded the beginning of the end of the jazz funeral as an authentic expression of grief in the African-American community. Taken from 1968 to 1970, Touchet’s photos capture the influx of white curiosity seekers to what had been for centuries an organic ceremony for the friends, family and community of the dead musician.
         Touchet pulls his lens back from the funeral cortege to show young, white, hip guys and gals, many sporting cameras around their necks, perched atop the tombs as the musician is being buried. The effect is sadness -- for the dead man, but also for an institution that was about to become one more cog in the New Orleans culture machine.
         Not surprisingly, Rejoice When You Die features numerous photographs of New Orleans cemeteries. Indeed New Orleans jazz funerals and cemeteries have much in common. Both celebrate death in a peculiarly Creole way. American culture, by contrast, abhors death. As this book makes abundantly clear, the ready acceptance of life’s end may well be the characteristic that most distinguishes New Orleans from the nation to which it ostensibly belongs.
 

         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.