New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition

by Lewis Watts, Eric Porter

Overview

With New Orleans Suite, Eric Porter and Lewis Watts join the post-Katrina conversation about New Orleans and its changing cultural scene. Using both visual evidence and the written word, Watts and Porter pay homage to the city, its region, and its residents, by mapping recent and often contradictory social and cultural transformations, and seeking to counter inadequate and often pejorative accounts of the people and place that give New Orleans its soul. Focusing for the most part on the city’s African American community, New Orleans Suite is a story about people: how bad things have happened to them in the long and short run, how they have persevered by drawing upon and transforming their cultural practices, and what they can teach us about citizenship, politics, and society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520273887
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/07/2013
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Eric Porter is Professor of American Studies, History, and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of What Is This Thing Called Jazz?, winner of a 2003 American Book Award, and The Problem of the Future World.

Lewis Watts is Professor of Art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a photographer and visual archivist and coauthor of Harlem of the West, The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era. His photography has been exhibited internationally and it is in the collections of major museums across the country.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Foundations: Plates 1–16
Section 1. New Orleans, America, Music
Section 2. Reflections on Jazz Fest 2006
Hurricane Katrina: Plates 17–43
Funerals and Second Lines: Plates 44–62
Mardi Gras: Plates 63–80
Section 3. Parading against Violence
Section 4. Reconstruction’s Soundtrack
Section 5. To Reinvent Life

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"[Provides] stunning insight into the day-to-day lives of the citizens of New Orleans, both before and after the storm."

Critical Studies in Improvisation