Keeping the Beat on the Street (24 page)

That's when we hit a nonsound, that's not human, in my estimation. You cannot disregard the human presence and then say you're going to do something that's going to express a totality of that. One reason why, whether it was Red Allen or Louis Armstrong or Mr. Dejan—I mean when Harold said, “Everything is lovely”—that's not secular, that's a spiritual thing. When we had the Tambourine and Fan, Milton Batiste would always come around. He had a dominant presence that attracted kids like a kind of Santa Claus. On the streets, with that horn, his presence, his whole style was a major attraction
.

One of the key things—I'll be writing a note to the folks in the city and in the school systems—is that it's important that they cultivate the audience for the music. Musicians gonna come, one way or another, but it's important that the music be played. Like with the Armstrong centenary—you have all these big celebrations, the this, the that, the airport—the sin is, you don't have the music and the children's ear: that will reach their heart. Except for youngsters who are around musicians and round Tambourine and Fan, but just generally. That's because they don't play it. The key is that, with the neighborhood breaking down, it needs to be played in the schools. Not as a lesson or a classroom assignment: it has to become part of the fabric. A daily thing: when you come in on certain days, you play Armstrong. Other times, it's the Olympia band. The music would become a part of the children's daily lives. You cultivate the audience, and they're going to make the appeal for the music. They have to know that the music is of them, and from them
.

There's a lot of social and pleasure clubs, but that's not really a good measuring stick; I think the activities that don't exist in the neighborhoods is a better measure. You don't have unorganized consistent music activities that was popularized by a certain kind of lifestyle, where bands would come through if it was a prize fight—in the back of the yards for neighborhood suppers, bands would just come in, and folks would be just playing on the porches and stuff. Now this is not professional activities, and the folks would come and sit in. Most of what you see now is organized activities—that's a little different
.

With the Batiste family here, any day or night somebody might start beating on a garbage can; a line would form up and go round the block, just for the goodness of doing it. We had a high school not too far from here, Clark High School. They turned out some great musicians that came from around here—one was James Black—oodles of musicians that was top of the heap. Most of the them was exposed to that concept of the music being locked into the block, locked into the house. That's gone
.

For example, we used to be coming down the street, going to school, say from first grade up until high school, and you would hear them singing the different sounds on the street. “I got rags, I got rags….” And the cowbell ringing. And on another corner, “Watermelon, red to the rind…. Tomatoes, bananas.” You go up two blocks later, different time of day, I'm talking about serious tap dancers—lyrical dancers. All this is right in the neighborhood, just saturated with it
.

When the society was tight, segregation was rigid, rigid, rigid. We needed to invent things to maintain sanity, beyond commercialization. Now that's not needed, to deal with sanity. The music is driven by a desire to make money. Originally, it was based on a need to survive—the money came into that too, because you could make money dancing and singing, and you could eat. But there was also this other thing, like it was also done just for the goodness of doing it. The people—not the professional musicians—the presence of the music in their lives, as Joe Blow, playing the drums, playing the saxophone for the joy of it, this gave the music a foundation
.

One of the dangers of the civil rights thing was there was this great desire to assimilate, into the unknown, and we lost something in the transfer. When we had segregated schools, we had full-time music people. Years after so-called integration, there's no full-time music teaching—this situation has existed for years. What I'm saying is there is a negative in terms of the way people relate to themselves. In terms of broad-based racism, in terms of certain kinds of personal dignity, the civil rights movement did that
.

But there's some other things that were lost—looking at ourselves through someone else's eyes, where we would open up to our own spirit and maintain the rituals that enabled us to cross the bridge, the rituals of faith that enabled us to survive the indignities, to fight against them. Once we thought we had a clearance zone, we separated ourselves from certain things. And that indeed was a loss. In this community, where you would be slapped in the mouth for not saying “Good morning” or “Good evening,” “where you would be punished for passing your neighbor's garbage can and not taking it out of the gutter and putting it by the step, those things mere all wrapped into the artistic expressions, too. We see that in many mays. Some of those things me are trying to reestablish, having young people not only to look at what's being generated by their day but spend time trying to discover more about the men of the music and how they entered the music
.

My position is—as long as babies are being born, and there's not universal abortion—it's our obligation to flash the light. If you try not to see the day through your eyes—because sophistication sometimes brings about a blindness—see it through a kid's eyes. If you can find some may to enter that, you can be a force of guidance, backwards and forwards, understanding that at some point, you have to back off and trust the experience that you shared with them
.

We had a thing where some youngsters wanted me to go and listen at a rap thing some of them mere doing. So me struck this bargain. I said, “Well, look. I'll go to this if you go hear Miles.” Miles Davis mas coming in to do the Jazz Fest
.

And so they went to hear Miles. And a youngster came out of the concert, and he said, “You know what Miles reminds me of?” I said, “No, what?” He said, “Miles reminds me of a Mardi Gras Indian.” Miles has a habit of bringing the musicians to him and sending them away again—which is the exact same thing as a Mardi Gras Indian does. I didn't see that, the kid did. And then the kid says, “But the other thing is, Miles mixes it up.” Another kid said, “Miles sounds like a flower.” This is a youngster around five or six
.

The greatest moment I ever had mas with Louis Armstrong in 1949 when he mas by the old Caldonia—he mas on a float for the Zulus, and there mas all these elderly people coming. This mas like Mardi Gras day. They mere so excited—until the day mas no longer Mardi Gras—they mere so excited, they mere crying. And it wasn't about Zulu, it wasn't about Mardi Gras, it wasn't about none of that—for some of those people, they mere old enough to remember Louis as a child. And that's what I witnessed, right on that corner. They mere just locked into him. I thank God I mas able to witness that. Some of them couldn't believe it. It mas as though it wasn't Louis Armstrong the great world musician; it mas more like Louis Armstrong mho mas walking the streets, playing in the neighborhood round here—it mas that Louis Armstrong. It mas like they knew something about him that the world did not know, that mas special to them. That mas a moment. I'm telling you
.

With young people and the music—if they get close to essentials, they bring something forward, if they get close to a linkage
.

With the absence of Milton Batiste, Harold Dejan, and Danny Barker, Lionel Batiste Sr. is the link. Not just in terms of his instrument, but he's the last of the old-time stylists. You can have him, and these younger drummers, like Tanio Hingle and Keith Frazier, and this one and that one—if Uncle Lionel is there, the kids that's five, six, seven, they're going to listen to Uncle Lionel. There's something about the way he plays
.

Back in 1970, we all danced off the bass drum. But that's not so now. With Tanio, Fatman [Kerry Hunter], James Andrews, some of the younger cats, they can enter that old thing, and the bass drum gives you recovery times
.

Even with all the things we spoke of, there's a uniqueness of expression about music in New Orleans, and a feeling that it's not all over
.

BORN
: New Orleans, November 14, 1969
Began at Tambourine and Fan with the Bucket Men Brass Band, which became the Junior Olympia; now plays with the Olympia Brass Band and leads the New Birth Brass Band
Interviewed at 3621 Burgundy Street, November 2002

My name is Cayetano Miller Hingle—they call me Tanio. My name is Spanish. I was in Spain with Milton Batiste and the Olympia Band and there was a street called “Cayetano.”

I started out with the Tambourine and Fan band on Hunter's Field. They had a lot of organized athletics. I had attended the elementary school that Tambourine and Fan was associated with; they had their own social and pleasure club. That's when Danny Barker came over to the club on Hunter's Field and started a band called the If, Roots of Jazz. That was in 1983
.

I picked up drums from listening to Leroy Breaux and Lionel Batiste. Mr. Milford Dolliole gave me my first drum. He lived exactly across the street from the school I was going to. We would see Duke Dejan picking Mr. Dolliole up to work with the Olympia Brass Band. I was still playing ball out there with the youth, but when we went to get dressed, we could hear the band practicing. Danny was teaching all those young cats how to play
.

At Tambourine and Fan, we started a little band—we were just going around playing with boxes and stuff. The guy who was over Tambourine and Fan, Jerome Smith, he went to Milton Batiste and asked if he would come and help the kids. I knew about the old tradition, by me being at a lot of old jazz funerals. My daddy was part of a social and pleasure club, the Sixth Ward High Steppers. That was one of the original clubs that first came out. And there was the Sixth Ward High Rollers, and the Sixth Ward Diamonds, and the Old Money Wasters, the Old Caldonia. I was just out there watching the parades, and the bands coming down the street. The feeling I used to catch when we were there was just like, wow! It was a joyful feeling at all times
.

I started playing bass drum in the band they had at my elementary school, at the age of eight. Straight march music, but the first song we learned was “The Saints.” We played it off the music, but by the time sixth grade came, a couple of guys in the neighborhood was in a band, and they was from Tambourine and Fan. We heard the music on the Hunter's Field at the same time, so we took it on our own to start a little jazz band
.

At first, the name of the band was the Bucket Men Brass Band. There was me, Stafford Agee, Abraham Cosse, Kenneth Terry, Kerry Hunter. Jerome Smith's son, Taju, he was a bass drummer also; we played together. A couple of years later—we were still with Milton [Batiste]—Mr. Dejan came out. He said, “Hey, Bat! You keep holding them boys in the shade—when are they going on a gig?” So Bat said, “Would you want them on a gig?” Duke said, “They know ‘Lord, Lord, Lord!' They're ready.” So after that the Olympia had a gig one night; Milton told us to put on our red jackets, black pants, white shirts. We went to the gig, and next day, Harold said, “That's the Junior Olympia.” Milton said, “You know what? That's a good name.” They named it right then and there
.

When we were coming up, we had to be at Milton's house every Tuesday at five o'clock to practice—we learned “Lord, Lord, Lord,” “Just a Little While,” and so forth. For the traditional songs, we were working out of the Fake Book. That was at the beginning, but after about two weeks, the book had to go
.

Erskine Campbell played the clarinet and saxophone. A couple of weeks later, Revert Andrews and Glen Andrews came in; they're first cousins, their mothers are sisters. I tried to keep the traditional beat on bass drum; I like that groove
.

In the last eight years, I changed a little bit. Now I play with and lead the New Birth Brass Band. Some of the music we play is contemporary, but we play more traditional music than any of the other younger brass bands—we learned from tradition, playing under Milton Batiste. The New Birth was formed in 1987, from part of the All Stars and part of the Junior Olympia. Our tuba player, Kerwin James, was with the All Stars, but he was also the backup tuba player with the Junior Olympia. His brother Philip Frazier is the leader of the Rebirth Brass Band
.

When we started, it was a French Quarter thing. At that time, we didn't want gigs. We were making more money playing on the street. We'd set up in the Quarter around ten o'clock in the morning, get finished at seven in the evening, and that's that. We played on Jackson Square—Tuba was on one side, we were on the other. Half an hour each, that was us. There was a regular seven people in the band. Sometimes, we'd go out with eight
.