Tanglewood Jazz Festival 2008 Terence Blanchard
A Tale of God's Will A Requiem for Katrina
By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 01, 2008
Trading the final notes of the summer season of the Tanglewood Music Festival 2008 the trumpet player, Terence Blanchard, and tenor sax player, Brice Winston, stomped and hollered the anthem "A Tale of God's Will" as they backed off the stage of Ozawa Hall. It marked the final moments of a stunningly poignant and ambitious, evening long composition, for Blanchard's quintet and the 34 piece Tanglewood Jazz Orchestra, dedicated as a requiem for Hurricane Katrina.
This closing to the Labor Day weekend's Tanglewood Jazz Festival 2008 was intended to be a musical memorial for the natural disaster which devastated New Orleans, the home of Blanchard, which occurred just over three years ago, on August 29, 2005. What was planned in solemn remembrance became all the more emotionally intense on an evening underscored by the evacuation of some 2 million from New Orleans and its surrounding area.
The nation watched and prayed as Hurricane Gustav, downgraded overnight to a Category Two Hurricane, slammed into the coast and lashed at the levees which faced their first test having been rebuilt over the past three years.
Several months ago we spent a day in the devastated Ninth Ward, the poorest, and hardest hit neighborhood in New Orleans. Even three years later the destruction was still visible as the rebuilding process has been agonizingly slow. The brightest sign of hope was the emerging Musician's Village with more than a hundred new homes being constructed by volunteers organized by Habitat for Humanity. We talked with the workers as well as individuals sharing their memories of surviving Katrina.
When Katrina struck Blanchard and his family evacuated to Los Angeles where he has an apartment. At the time, he was working on music for "Inside Man" with Spike Lee. He has also written scores for other Lee films including: "Mo Better Blues" "Malcolm X" and "The 25th Hour." Lee offered to come to California to continue working together.
In an evening dedicated to the orchestral suite "A Tale of God's Will: A Requiem for Katrina" Blanchard offered a running commentary on the music and the project that evolved from his anger and mourning."The first thing that came out of Spike's mouth when he walked into my apartment was 'we're going to make a documentary about Katrina.' "
Less than three month after the hurricane Lee was on location in New Orleans shooting the HBO film "When the Levees Broke" for which Blanchard not only wrote the music but appears in with his mother.
"My mother was missing for two weeks" Blanchard said. "We couldn't find her. But she had a cell phone and I called her religiously every day. Finally she answered. When I asked her why she didn't answer she said 'I knew there was something ringing in my purse.' "
Later, he flew her to LA to join him in the studio as he worked with Lee on the score. During a break Lee talked to her and then informed Blanchard that he intended to film her returning to her destroyed home. Terence talked with her and asked if she fully understood that a film crew would be on hand for a very private and emotional moment. Her courageous response was that "I want people to understand what we are going through."
That moment proved to be one of the most emotionally devastating in the powerful Lee documentary. We viewed the film when it was presented as a part of the Whitney Biennial. "People ask about my mother" Blanchard commented. "She's fine. The house has been rebuilt and she is back at being a Mom. People say 'She's such a sweet lady.'" To which Blanchard did an amusing double take as he has another opinion of a rather feisty lady. Dedicated to her was one of the most lyrical and beautiful moments of an emotional evening, the lush arrangement of "Dear Mom."
As the evening progressed we were exposed to many emotional facets of the artist and his music. There was wonderful warmth and humor as well as anger, torment and outrage. This was expressed verbally as well as through phenomenal playing and interactions with the other superb musicians in the quintet. Blanchard was strongly pointed in his anger at the Bush administration. "I pay taxes like everybody else. I have a U.S. passport like everybody else. But when I thought about an inept administration that allowed bodies to go unburied for weeks and left the elderly and infirm without food and water, I did not feel like a citizen."
Infamously, President George W. Bush with alarming enthusiasm while visiting New Orleans shortly after Katrina, said to Michael Brown, a political hack and then director of FEMA "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Just ten days later Brown resigned amid disgrace and scandal regarding the mishandling of the natural disaster.
When he visited the city shortly after the Hurricane Blanchard recalled talking with people and asking them a litany of questions. How did you survive? What did you go through? "I met a 73-year-old man who described spending four days on a roof, no food or water, with two women in their seventies. When helicopters flew overhead they shouted but nobody spotted them. He saw a boat floating in the distance and swam to it. A man in his 70s jumped into the water and brought it back. He tied it up next to the roof so the two women would have something flat to sit in." In dedication to that spirit he performed the composition "Levees."
There has been an ongoing debate regarding the mandate of the Tanglewood Music Festival and its classical traditions. The season ending Jazz Festival has now taken root with broad audience support. But there is still the prejudice that jazz is a stepsister of "serious" music and, as such, belongs on the margins of programming. There is a compelling argument that it deserves to be more integrated into the mainstream. For hard liners this is the enemy at the gates and the battle cry of vulgarians.
During intermission we chatted with Edith, an usher, who vividly recalled, as a girl of 16, attending the 1938 Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert. It was the first example of the music in such a venerable setting. "You should have heard the remarks that people were making." It is sad to hear and read (in the Berkshire Eagle) these same slurs and arguments half a century later.
The compelling response to such self appointed keepers of the flame was the truly magnificent collaboration, last night, between Blanchard's quintet and an orchestra of 34 classical musicians. It was indeed the emotional and artistic apogee of a remarkable Tanglewood season. It raised the bar to another level of innovation and excellence. In paying tribute to the orchestra Blanchard remarked that it had taken just one rehearsal to master the arrangements. "They are such superb musicians. That allowed me to go back to my room and chill." Most remarkably, the orchestra was really swinging and seemingly much enjoying the opportunity to stretch out. They were attentive and moved by the emotional performance of Blanchard and his group.
The music was programmatic and richly descriptive. It is the best jazz writing we have heard since the great collaboration between Gil Evans and Miles Davis reworking Rodrigo's "Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra" into the seminal "Sketches of Spain."
In addition to Blanchard other band members contributed to the Katrina suite. They performed "Ashe" by the quintet's former piano player Aaron Parks. In the language of West African Yoruba it means "and so shall it be." Brice Winston wrote "In Time of Need" and the drummer, Kendrick Scott, composed and arranged "Mantra."
When the bass player, Derrick Hodge, brought "Over There" to the project, at first, Blanchard did not understand what it was about. Blanchard explained that it evoked the notion of jealousy and how we feel that there is a better relationship, career, house, or even dog "Over There." Too often this distracts from appreciating just what we have.
While the suite, in addition to Blanchard, has four other composers and arrangers it is remarkably cohesive. They were responding to a common experience. There was a the unifying need to explore and express responses to a tragedy that destroyed much of a city with such rich cultural traditions and took so many lives.
In the music of New Orleans, the birthplace of Jazz and heart and soul of America, there is no greater tradition than its funeral music. This was stunningly evoked by Blanchard's "Funeral Dirge." One could feel the legendary horn playing of the "Ghosts of Congo Square" including Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Bunk Johnson, and Satchmo, Louis Armstrong. Blancard evoked a dirge of generations. It was chilling as he paid tribute to all of those lost lives and great suffering. In New Orleans there is the slow, mournful march to the grave site accented by Scott's solemn beat on the snare drum. But on the way home the Second Line kicks in and oh didn't we ramble.
Yet again our thoughts and prayers reach out to the Crescent City.