As Mardi Gras Rages, New Orleans' Music Scene Struggles to Recover

Sweet Home New Orleans is a needs-based organization that helps musicians and "culture bearers" such as Mardi Gras Indians and members of social aid and pleasure clubs with housing and work-related issues. It was founded as the New Orleans Hurricane Relief Fund in the days after Katrina, and it has given more than $2 million to more than 2,000 musicians. So far, benefits organized by ATC and national non-profit Future of Music Coalition have raised more than $50,000 for SHNO.

According to executive director Jordan Hirsch, the challenge in New Orleans is simple: "The cost of living is going up and opportunities to earn income are going down." The agency conducted a study of its clients, many of whom are the city's jazz, brass band and R&B players, and found that musicians played an average of 10.5 gigs a month before the storm, but they only play 5.7 dates a month now. Not only have the occasions to play decreased, but so has the per-gig take, down from $131 a night to $108. That represents a loss of nearly $750 a month, which is tough to absorb in a city where the cost of apartment rentals has gone up 46 percent and the amount of low income housing has gone down.

The housing shortage is partly the result of the Road Home's regulations, which make it difficult to rehabilitate rental properties, and partly the result of the decision to raze four housing projects, regardless of their condition after the storm. HUD and the city's housing authority decided that mixed income housing developments are preferable, even though such developments will mean an 82 percent reduction in low income housing units when they're eventually completed. When Morello was in New Orleans last year on the Axis of Justice tour, he visited the Lafitte Projects which were slated for demolition even though Katrina's floodwaters never entered many units. "There's a conscious effort to write off the poorest and blackest neighborhoods in New Orleans, and it's not an accident that this happened," he said in an interview before Bush left office. "It's a crime that this happened, and those criminals are loose and they're wandering around the White House."

For the working musician in New Orleans, making a living has become harder than ever. Ellis Joseph plays bass drum with the Free Agents Brass Band, a brass band that he formed after Katrina with other then-unaffiliated brass musicians. He works three jobs and takes care of his 17-year-old cousin. "I'm trying to make sure he doesn't go to waste," Joseph says. He used to play almost daily, never less than three times a week. These days he plays once a weekend, trying to get $400 for a gig so everybody can put $50 in their pockets. That can be tough money to get, though. "A lot of people are undercutting because they want to get the gig," he says.

Convention gigs were once a staple of the working jazz and brass musician's income. "If you get one, you could guarantee yourself $100 per man," he says. According to Jordan Hirsch, some dates playing for conventioneers were so lucrative that a musician could make his or her rent at one show, but the reduction in the number of conventions and the slowdown in the economy means those gigs aren't as numerous or profitable as they once were.

According to Hirsch, "the reduced size of the audience is the biggest issue we're facing." That's affecting everybody, not just jazz musicians. Susan Cowsill of the family band the Cowsills has established a career as a roots-rock artist in New Orleans, but she has had to tour more than ever before to make ends meet, which is tough for someone raising two kids. "We play out of town for the majority of our income," Cowsill says. "Right after the storm, things were going pretty well. People were so happy to be back and out and to see each other again, but that has waned. I don't see people coming out to see local music these days. I couldn't make a living playing here alone. Before the storm, it was a place where you could conceivably get three gigs in a month and do fairly well financially."