Black History: New Orleans, the epicenter of artistic expressions
26th February 2024 · 0 Comments
New Orleans’ reputation as a wellspring of artistic talent is world-renowned. The crescent city draws millions of tourists worldwide to marvel and enjoy the many forms of art created in the city.
From being the cradle of America’s first indigenous music forms, blues, jazz and R&B, to its fabulous French Quarter ironwork and unique architecture, to its mouth-watering creole cuisine, especially its world-famous gumbo, New Orleans draws scores of people to see, hear and taste its art.
New Orleans is famous for its musical families and countless scores of world-acclaimed musicians.
The city’s musical roots started long before Louis Armstrong put the city on the world’s map. Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park is credited with being the birthplace of what became jazz. Enslaved people were allowed to congregate and play “crude handmade instruments” on Sundays there.
These enslaved people passed down the musical legacy to their descendants and spawned the blues, jazz, brass bands, R&B, funk, hip-hop and performing artists traveling worldwide by popular demand.
Musicians from other regions of Louisiana continue to climb the music charts with the sounds of zydeco from Cajuns and country music from rural artists.
New Orleans and Louisiana musicians collectively have earned more Grammy Awards than other places in America. Six Louisiana musicians and bands garnered Grammy Awards in 2024: Lainey Wilson won Best Country Album; PJ Morton featuring Susan Carol won Best Traditional R&B Performance; and Bobby Rush won Best Traditional Blues Album.
Some music created by New Orleans musicians defy categorization. However, the Best Regional Roots Music category fits what jazz patriarch Ellis Marsalis called “traditional music,” which others call jazz.
Two Louisiana groups tied for Best Regional Roots Music Album: “New Beginnings” by Buckwheat Zydeco Jr. & The Legendary Ils Sont Partis Band and “Live: Orpheum Theater Nola” by Lost Bayou Ramblers and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
Trumpeter and composer Terrence Blanchard won Best Opera Recording accompanied by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor; Ryan Speedo Green, Latonia Moore and Eric Owens; David Frost, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus).
Jon Batiste, a member of New Orleans’ musical Batiste family, is a world-renowned musician, bandleader, and television personality. In 2022, Batiste won big at the Grammy Awards. He won Album of the Year for “We Are” and five other Grammys.
Louisiana artists contributing to the winning “We Are” album include P.J. Morton, Hot 8 Brass Band, Gospel Soul Children Choir, St. Augustine High School Marching 100 and Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews.
Batiste’s other awards include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe Award for his original score in the Disney-Pixar film “Soul” (2020). He also received a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards as part of the ensemble for the 2023 film “The Color Purple.”
New Orleans Queen of Soul Irma Thomas and R&B artist Ledisi are also Grammy winners.
The Nightcrawlers Brass Band and Rebirth have won Grammys, as have Chris Thomas King, Evelyn Cox, Sidney Cox, Willard Cox, The Neville Brothers, The Meters and many others.
There is not enough space in this newspaper to name all of the Grammy awardees, but check out Louisiana Magazine at www.explorelouisiana.com/articles/louisianas-grammy-award-winners for the list of Louisiana Grammy-winners from the 1st Grammy Awards up to the 65th Grammys in 2023.
New Orleans has been dubbed Hollywood South. Even before the state began offering alluring tax breaks, New Orleans’ mystique, southern charm and colorful residents urged Hollywood to come calling.
New Orleans and Louisiana have drawn filmmakers and television producers here for decades. Antebellum locations, architecture, southern hospitality, great music and food and tax breaks have made the city a popular place for movies and television series.
The television series shot here include “Tremé;” “NCIS: New Orleans;” “The Originals;” “Scream Queens;” “Queen Sugar;” “Interview with the Vampire;” “Mayfair Witches;” “American Horror Story;” and “Your Honor;” to name a few.
Countless movies have been filmed here, including “The Green Book;” “Interview with The Vampire;” “Girls Trip;” “Now You See Me;” “Twelve Years A Slave;” “Angel Heart;” “21 Jump Street;” “A Streetcar Named Desire;” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button;” and, of course, “The Big Easy.”
Many more movies were filmed or set in New Orleans and Louisiana towns. Film critic Peter Athas researched 81 years of these films in “Bayou Brief.” Visit www.bayoubrief.com/2019/04/17/set-in-louisiana-top-40-movies-1938-present to see the rankings.
New Orleans and Louisiana are home to many visual artists, photographers, sculptors, dancers, Masking Indians, Social & Pleasure Clubs and Carnival organizations, including the Zulus, Baby Dolls and Skeletons.
New Orleans photographers Keith and Chandra McCormick, Eric Waters, C-Freedom, Richard Keller Jr., Girard Mouton III and others. Their lens captures the struggle, the ordinary and extraordinary ebb and flow of the Black experience.
If you haven’t visited the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) recently, experience “Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture.” The exhibition, which displays 250 photographs by 103 photographers and takes up two floors at the CAC, will be on display until April 29.
Resident CAC Curator shana m. griffin [sic] said Black New Orleans photographers have long used their cameras as a tool of resistance to racism, exclusion, invisibility and the Black experience.
A self-described artist, activist and feminist, who chooses to lowercase her name, griffin puts the spectrum of Black life on display in an intimate way that Black people will recognize instantly.
Images are placed in a “living room,” an old-school Black neighborhood bar, a photographer’s darkroom, and much more. The exhibition is an experience.
New Orleans’ visual artists’ artworks speak volumes. Murals of famous and not-so-famous New Orleanians adorn buildings and hang in art galleries. Artist Richard Thomas’s work can be seen on the original Louis Armstrong International Airport walls and selected Jazz Fest posters. Bruce Brice’s work stands out in art galleries.
Thomas’ and Brice’s artwork can be viewed on the walls of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, along with the work of other Black creatives that adorn the famous eatery’s interior.
Brandan “BMike” Odums uses walls as a canvas. His work appears in murals across the city and the walls of Studio BE, Odums’ 35,000-square-foot warehouse in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. Civil rights leaders’ and Black achievers are larger than life on his walls.
Willie Birch and Louise Mouton Johnson are sculptors who use mixed media to create artwork.
Sculptors John Scott and colleague Martin Payton taught at Xavier University and created commissioned sculptures around the city.
Kara Crowley is an artist who emphasizes the uniqueness of Black culture through portraiture paintings.
Ron Bechet, a nationally and internationally acclaimed visual artist, works in traditional drawing and painting mediums. He once shared studio space with the late sculptor John T. Scott.
The former chairman of the art department and a current professor at Xavier University collaborates with artists and serves on boards, including Antenna, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Board, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
The late Margaret T.G. Burroughs was a painter, poet, printmaker, political activist, and institution builder born in St. Rose, Louisiana. Burroughs moved to Chicago with her family when she was a child. She founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago.
The late Samella Sanders Lewis, born in New Orleans, was an American visual artist and art historian. She worked primarily as a printmaker and painter. She has been called the “Godmother of African American Art.”
Malaika Favorite, born in Geismar, Louisiana, is an American visual artist and writer whose artwork can be found in major collections in the U.S. She works mainly in oil, acrylic, and watercolor and has carried out experiments with folded canvas and written word as another dimension of a painting’s text.
In “28 Black Artists to Support in Louisiana,” writer Cynthea Corfah highlights some of today’s up-and-coming Black creatives. She profiles artists from a variety of disciplines. Check them out at www.thewallsproject.org/post/28-black-artists-to-support-in-louisiana.
In addition to Studio BE, several Black-owned art galleries feature the work of Black artists. The Stella Jones Gallery, Le Musee de fpc, The African-American Museum, Backstreet Cultural Museum, House of Dance and Feathers, George And Leah Mckenna Museum of African American Art, Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum, Donald Harrison, Sr. Museum.
Black History Month is a time to reflect on the Black experience and learn and pass down knowledge. What better way to experience this year’s Black History Month 2024 Theme of Art than to immerse ourselves in the art all around us.
This article originally published in the February 26, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
