Since August, I have had the pleasure of working with the ReNEW SciTech Academy Marching Band as the Woodwind Instructor. The band is comprised of mostly first-year students between 2nd and 8th grade.
This carnival season, the students will be marching in 8 parades, playing a challenging repertoire which they hone at rehearsals every day after school. The Sweet Sound of Uptown will appear at the following parades: Friday, Feb 22 - Krewe of Excalibur - 7:30pm Sunday, Feb 24 - Krewe of Femme Fatale - 11am Wednesday, Feb 27 - Krewe of Nyx - 7pm Thursday, Feb 28 - Krewe of Chaos - 6:15pm Friday, March 1 - Krewe of Hermes - 6pm Saturday, March 2 - Krewe of Iris - 11am Sunday, March 3 - Krewe of Bacchus - 5:15pm Fat Tuesday, March 5 - Krewe of Zulu - 8am
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Thanks to Johnny Ginn and Care Diem Films for shooting this video at the Dumaine St Gang secondline feat. the Young Rollers and Da Truth Brass Band.
Earlier this year, legendary drummer Tony Allen came to New Orleans and put on two amazing shows with Kumasi Afrobeat Orchestra. After the success of that first weekend, Tony and the lovely folks at the Music Box Village decided to do it again! October 12-13 we will be kicking off the Fall season at the Music Box with another fantastic show featuring Fela Kuti's longtime drummer and pioneer of Afrobeat music performing with a number of local artists: Kumasi Afrobeat Orchestra, Rhythms of Congo Square ft. Bill Summers, and Bounce Stars Ha Sizzle and DJ Lil Man. Get your discount advance tickets at: www.musicboxvillage.com Enjoy this clip from February's show with Tony Allen Performed with Sabertooth Swing this morning on two local media outlets to promote the band's new record Extinct Possibilities. Thank you to WWL channel 4 and WWOZ for featuring us.
You can buy the Sabertooth Swing record (CD and digital download) here: https://sabertoothswing.bandcamp.com/releases Jazzfest 2018 was one for the books. The first weekend, Kumasi played an early slot at the Jazz and Heritage stage, and more and more people came to fill up the area in front of the stage over the course of our set. We received great feedback from the festival and from the audience. The sound on that stage was crystal clear and the technical team was super professional.
The last day of the fest, I performed with Glen David Andrews in the Blues Tent. We've played to a room of 5 people before, but yesterday we played in front of 5,000 people. He knows how to entertain. And he ALWAYS gets off the stage and sings into the crowd without a microphone. Glen David Andrews band is: Eddie Christmas on drums, Ron Lockett on bass, Jesse Smith on guitar, Dave Specter on guitar, Gene Harding on percussion, Nick Etwell on trumpet, myself on saxophone, and LeAnne Binder on vocals. Got to perform at Muses parade with Bate Bunda this year. It was a blast, and the highlight was seeing some of the floats that well represented 'A Night at the Museum.'
Didn't get a shoe but what I did take away from the experience is the feeling that big parades like this are extremely wasteful. Performing towards the back of the line, we were literally marching through a river of plastic. Little bags that throws come in were everywhere. Beads, bottles, and cups littered the streets for the whole route. How can we do better? Why do we produce tons of plastic just to throw it all in a landfill? If we insist on producing this much stuff, we might as well invest in compostable bio-plastics that are not harmful to the environment. Why must this be the price for fun? HONK!Fest is more than just a music festival, it's an activist rally that features dozens of marching bands to carry the messages of freedom and justice. This year, that feeling of social action was the strongest it has ever been, for me at least. I've attended HONK!Fest since 2009 or 2010 and have always been moved by the raw power of the all-acoustic, community-based brass bands. This year, a group of over 200 musicians from various HONK! bands used that power to bring music to incarcerated folks at the Suffolk County House of Corrections in Boston, while protesting their detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). We congregated on a ramp along Rt-93 and played to the walls of the prison as the inmates pushed up against the bar-covered windows to hear our message. Read the story as covered by the Boston Globe here. The other highlight of the festival was seeing and hearing School of Honk perform on Sunday. This is a band that features HUNDREDS of beginner and amateur musicians, led by HONK veterans from the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band. They sounded amazing.
Learn more about School of Honk here: https://schoolofhonk.org/about/ Always hoped my first cover would be on @thrashermag but this is cool too! #howl #partybaaand 📷: @unguidedtor
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