Brass Band across the Generations

Featuring Keith Frazier and Philip Frazier of the Rebirth Brass Band with Ray Johnson, band director of John McDonogh High School and Derrick Tabb and Glen Andrews, also of the Rebirth Brass Band. Marching band students in attendance represented John McDonogh, Clark, McDonogh 35, and St. Augustine.

Keith Frazier: I’d like to thank Matt Sakakeeny, and the band director of John McDonogh, Ray Johnson, and Shannon Haynes from Clark High School and all you guys who came out tonight. When they asked us to do this a couple months ago, right away I said, “Yeah,” because we like giving back to the community in this way.  One way to learn is hands-on.  The way we learned is we got together as a band and we actually did it.  You actually have to go out there and practice your craft in order to get good at it.  When they said they wanted to do a workshop, I said, “Yeah, let’s do the workshop. And if they want to bring their instruments, they can do that and we can give them a few pointers, and we can talk about what we do.” We also want you guys to ask questions and we’re gonna try to get everyone together and play a couple numbers with you guys and see how that turns out. [applause]

What we do—as y’all will find out later—is more than play instruments. We try to uplift our community through music. I was talking to a friend of mine earlier tonight—thank you for being here—we were talking about the medicine, or the way our music helps to revive people spiritually.

Philip Frazier: How you doing? My name is Phil Frazier, the bandleader for Rebirth. I’m gonna give you a little bit of history about our band. Rebirth started in 1983 at Joseph S. Clark Senior High School, that’s where Shannon, right there, is band director. We just saw them this Saturday over at the game. Nice tubas, brother! Loan me one, please! Give me one! Give me one of them shiny tubas!

But, like Keith said, back then when we started back in 1983, it was like a school project. We had our band parent club, they said, “Philip, why don’t you get together with all the section leaders and start a brass band?” Which was easy to because we growed up in the Tremé area—we’re from the Ninth Ward but we growed up in the Tremé area—and we used to see all the legendary brass band musicians play on the street. “Tuba Fats” Anthony Lacen, he’s no longer here. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The Preservation Hall Brass Band. So we got together and started playing, like, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” That was actually one of the first songs that we actually started playing.

The band consists of eight members. Kermit Ruffins—everybody knows superstar Kermit—started with the Rebirth Brass Band.  Right now, me and Keith are like the last two founding members of the Rebirth Brass Band.  Mr. Derrick Tabb, right here. He went to John McDonogh, gotta give him some love. [applause]. I know Mr. Glen Andrews, his son go to John Mac. [applause]. It go to show that it’s already in his genes and it’s been passed on from generation to generation already.

When we started, we used to watch the old musicians. We really didn’t get a chance to interact with them and took from the stuff they was doing, and I’m trying to see if tonight we can just pass it on to y’all.  This is the first time something like this has ever been done, so hopefully this won’t be a last minute thing, hopefully it’s something that will grow and grow and grow and hopefully y’all become musicians, too. Because, you never know, maybe we’ll need y’all to play in our band one day.

Anybody here play saxophone? [one hand raised.] I don’t understand, that’s one instrument right now it seems like you can’t get anybody to play. Everybody wanna play tuba and trumpet or trombone. But we need some saxophone players. We got one saxophone in the back.

Derrick Tabb: He gonna make a lot of money.

Philip: He gonna make a LOT of money. How many sousaphone players we have in here tonight?

Students: Who?

Philip: Sousaphone.

Keith: John Philip Sousa.

Philip: John Philip Sousa. That’s who the sousaphone is really named after. And sousaphone’s just part of the family of the tuba. But everybody in New Orleans is like “play that tuba.” It sounds better than “play that sousaphone.” So how many tuba players in here? Two. How many trumpets? [audience oohs and aahs.] How many trumpet holders? [laughs] Any trombone players? All right. I know the number one question: How many drummers? We got a lot of drummers.

But actually, my brother Keith Frazier, who’s the bass drummer in our band, he didn’t start on bass drum. He played baritone before he got on bass drum. So he’s a secret weapon, he can play the baritone horn and play the drum.

Keith: So, before we get started, how many of y’all know anything about brass bands and how it came about? By a show of hands, how many of y’all have ever done any research on brass bands?  Anyone? Okay, well, let me give y’all a brief overview of what brass bands are all about and a little bit of the history.

Brass bands in New Orleans started at the end of the 19th century. West Africans, who were brought here as slaves, when they had the opportunity to express themselves it was done on Sunday at Congo Square, which is still here in New Orleans right at Louis Armstrong Park.  They would have Sunday meetings where they would just get together and dance to the drumbeats.

There were also military bands in they city of New Orleans after the Civil War, and when they went back to their communities, a lot of the former slaves took up the European wind instruments with the drums, and that was basically the beginning of the brass bands. There were a whole lot of brass bands at the turn of the century. They used to play traditional music, and what I mean by traditional music is, the music that they brought from their country that was passed down to them. And that’s basically all traditional music is.

You had a lot of brass bands in the city of New Orleans, like the Eureka Brass Band, Olympia, the Onward in the early 60s, the Tuxedo. And as those guys got older, the younger bands came along, such as the Dirty Dozen, the Chosen Few, and the Pinstripe. They began to change the music, because they played the music of their day, which was the music from the radio, whatever they heard in their community, and they just added on to what they had learned from the older guys. And as I always try to tell people your age: If you wanna learn more about the tradition, there’s a jazz archives right here in the city of New Orleans at Tulane University. It’s on the third floor of Jones Hall, which is across the street from the Tulane University Library, and it’s a real good place to get a start on learning about the tradition of brass bands. The current curator, Mr. Raeburn, is very helpful.

As I was saying, the brass bands came about at the turn of the 19th century, going into the 20th century. The uniforms that they wore were basically the uniforms that the military bands wore. If you look at the old pictures of the Olympia Brass Band, they had striped pants on and a uniform jacket.  When we came about in 1983, after the Dirty Dozen, we felt that it was cool to wear that kinda stuff, but since it was so hot we would just wear whatever we had on. It was no disrespect to the tradition, we just felt that we could perform better with the clothes that we had on at the time. We also had uniforms. If you go back to some of our old pictures from 1983, you’ll see us with the blue Dickie pants on with the stripes on, the T-shirts with the stripes and everything like that, just trying to show some respect to those guys.

There’s a big argument about the younger brass bands today, such as ourselves, the Hot 8, the Free Agents, and others about traditional music. Although we try not to get into that, when we started people said we weren’t playing traditional music, we just played music from the radio. Now Rebirth music is actually traditional music because we’ve been around for 25 years.

Rebirth plays some of the traditional music. When we started, like my brother Philip said, one of our first songs was “The Saints.” And we just took it from there. Right now we do a lot of songs that are very modern. People hear them and they’re like, “Well, that’s not traditional.” And what we try to tell them is, “When you say tradition, what do you mean by tradition? Something that’s passed on or something that’s just old?” And they say, “Well, we talking about the music that was just passed on.” We say, “OK, we understand that.” So, whenever we play, like at the Maple Leaf – some of you guys may be too young to come there – we try to start our set off with “Lord, Lord, Lord,” just paying homage and respect to, like I said, those guys from the past.

So tonight, when we start, we’re gonna do something traditional. We’re gonna start with a traditional tune and then we’re gonna take it from there. And we also gonna try to do something we did in a workshop we did at Tipitina’s one year. We’re gonna try to create a song. That’s one of the things we do today, we always try to create whenever we play. Before we get to taking out the instruments, if you have any questions to ask us, please feel free to do that.

[An audience member invites all students to attend a weekly workshop at the National Jazz Historical Park, with the Tremé Brass Band and the Storyville Stompers, arranged by Sunpie Barnes, in conjunction with the Black Men of Labor, from 11-12 on Saturday mornings, which has a band called the New Orleans Young Traditional Brass Band.]

Ray Johnson: Okay, I guess I was asked to talk about the education of music in the classrooms. Let me say welcome and thank you all. I have some of my students from my old school, St. Augustine, that haven’t been recognized. The fellas are from the Marching 100, in the back. [applause] And I see some gentlemen from McDonogh 35 and I see some Warren Easton alumni around. [applause] Barbara Schuler, she’s the head of the Music Department for the Recovery School District. [applause] And my band assistant, Mr. Wright, is standing over there. [applause] I can say that I have at least about 5 or 6 of my former students that are band directors right now, and I was taught by one of the best, Mr. Hampton at St. Augustine. [applause] We all came from marching bands.

I wanna just start out by saying that music—and we all follow it very closely, it changed our lives—is the foundation of this city. And without it, we probably wouldn’t be here. Education is the foundation.  You can’t just play in band.  You have to go to school, go to classes, do your homework, and pass your classes in order to participate.

Music, marching band, drum corps, different things like that—that’s a privilege. Nowadays, it’s hard because music has been taken out of the schools, the junior highs and the lower-levels, but it’s important that we have those in the schools, because once these students get to high school, us high school band directors have to teach from the beginning.  You have 80, 100 plus kids say, “I wanna join the band.”  I’ll say, “Okay, well, have you played before?” “No.”  Our job now has become twice as hard. But most of the students that go on to become professional musicians, they play in bands. It can take you around the world, as these gentlemen here can testify to.

The most important thing, if you love music, is you have to build the foundation of it. It’s not just about playing and—the terms they use today—cranking, just blowing, and not reading music. You have to learn the whole elements of the system, and that starts from the basic fundamentals. Remember, musicians have a good life, but it's something that you have to work for.  Make sure you go in the classroom, go to your classes, and do what you can do to participate. [applause]

Keith: All right, I just want to add to that. I appreciate Mr. Ray for saying that. When we were in junior high school marching band, one of the things that our band director did was he went around and checked your schedule, and if you didn’t have math on your schedule, you couldn’t get in the band. Because he said, “If you can’t count, you can’t get in the band.” Because music is just basically counting.  He said, “if I don’t have good math students in my band, then I don’t have a good band.”  And that’s very important. You have to stick it out in your classes. Not just the math classes, but all your classes. Because, like he said, it’s a privilege. It’s not something that’s just give to you.

We also need musicians on the technical side. We need engineers, cause when you’re old enough to come see Rebirth play at a show, if the sound isn’t right, it’s not gonna sound good. And those people doing the sound, they’re good in math as well, so evidently they were good in math in school. So I just want to add that to that.

Question:  I just wondered what else you got out of your band director besides the music, because I know teamwork and discipline are a part of it.

Keith: We got a lot. I mean, the lessons of life we got from our band director. My junior high school band director was Mr. Jerry McGowan, who’s at McDonogh 15 right now. And before we picked up the instrument, he would just lecture us all day about going to class, doing the right thing. We couldn’t do anything without a lecture first. Just his talks alone actually got a lot of guys through school. Even if you weren’t in the band, if you were in the band room listening to him give a lecture, you kinda straightened it out. There’s so much that you get from a band director, and as Ray said, the band directors now have twice as much to do. Because if you picking up an instrument in senior high school, as opposed to picking it up in elementary or junior high school, its gonna be twice as hard to teach you how to play that instrument, so I applaud those band directors.

And looking at where the bands are today after Hurricane Katrina, I’m amazed that the programs have come back as quick as they have come back. And that’s a testament to the band directors as well as you guys, the students, because just being here shows that you guys are interested not only in marching band but you’re interested in the culture of New Orleans. One day you guys will be the future musicians. I’ll just say that, little do you know.  When I got involved, I never thought I would play a bass drum in a brass band. I always played baritone horn. I was like, “Well, I’ll let this take me as far as I can go.” And  when my brother was like, “Hey man, I need you on bass drum.” I was like, “Bass drum? I don’t know nothing about drum.” He said, “Well, just get on it.” And hey, here I am 25 years later, so you never know. So you have to take it very seriously, because like I said, you guys are the future of the music here in the city of New Orleans. [applause]

Question:  I’m just wondering if you could talk about all the places that you’ve traveled and where the music has taken you.

Keith: We’ve traveled to just about every state in the United States. We’ve been to Japan. We’ve been to Cuba.  Africa. You can think of a spot and we’ve probably been there. We’ve been to spots in the United States, and people are like “Why would you go there?” “People love music there.” New Orleans music is well received everywhere.

We went to Syria one year. We were supposed to go to Africa, but there was a civil war in Algeria, and they said, “Well, we have to send you guys to Syria.” We were like, “Syria?” They say, “Yeah.” So we go to Syria and they say, “The people will not dance.” We started laughing. They say, “What are you guys laughing at?” We say, “We don’t care, if you’re dead you won’t dance, but if Rebirth plays, you gonna get up and move something, you gonna dance.” [laughter] And they got up and they danced. They say, “Man, you guys are great. People in Syria never dance.” I say, “The Rebirth’s never been here before.” [laughter.]

Even in our rap music, I don’t know how many of you guys know that Mannie Fresh was a big drummer at Kennedy [High School]. When you listen to his beats, listen to the rhythm patterns that he’s playing in the beats, and they’re so funky and so groovy, you can’t do nothing but feel it, and that’s just the way it is. It’s New Orleans.  When they say New Orleans, they think of Mannie Fresh, then they think of ‘Lil Weezy, so that’s just the way it is.

Question: Tell us a little bit about what it takes to have a second line officially in the city now.

Keith: Officially in the city now, it takes money.

Philip: It depends on what kinda second line.

Keith: It depends on what type of second line you’re having. You could have one hosted by a social aid and pleasure club, you could have a jazz funeral. Sometimes you have an impromptu second line like we just did for my brother Kerwin James who just passed away, but it takes a permit now. Unfortunately, it takes a permit. It takes a band. If you have a second line for a social aid & pleasure club, it takes the club to get their stuff together to have the parade. They have to get the permit. They have to get the band. They have to get the police. It takes a whole lot, and after Katrina its taken a whole lot more than people would even imagine, because you have to get the people in your club who are willing to do it, you have to get the people in your neighborhood who are willing to put up with a parade for four hours.

Now that we have a lot of new people in our communities, they kinda don’t understand what it’s all about. And Thursday night, I’m gonna try to help them understand when I go to the Tremé Neighborhood Association to give a speech over there.  We’re always grateful that people do come out to the second lines, because you could always be doing something else on a Sunday. It’s not a must that you have to go to a second line. You don’t have to practice your culture or even understand it if you don’t want to. So when people come out, not just to see the second line club, but to listen to our music, it’s greatly appreciated. Sometimes when we’re in the third hour of the second line, we’re worn out, like “Phil, man, we don’t wanna do this.” We just keep on playing because the people say “Man, give it to us.” And when they say “Give it to us,” we can’t do anything but give it to them.

Question: At some moment in your life you made a decision that what you we’re going to do for the rest of your life was raise your families and do all the things you want to do, as a musician. My question is: When was that and what was the first step after that decision?

Keith: Well, it was really like an unconscious decision.  We were just doing it and before you knew it, it was just a part of who we were.  If you’re growing up around people playing instruments, you could just pick up an instrument. I mean, if you’re growing up around people who are racing cars, you become a racecar driver. So, in New Orleans, you have no choice. I mean, most of you kids will attest to that. You have kids who pick up instruments who have never read a sheet of music a day in their life, and they could just hear it, and they just start playing it, and I’m like “Whoa, that’s amazing.” And they say, “Well, we hear it all the time.” It’s just something that’s in you.

You really don’t think about that decision when you say, “Well, OK, I’m gonna be a musician. I’m gonna be a working musician. I’m gonna be a professional musician.” It’s just something that happens and once you get into that position you see the joy that you bring into people’s lives, so you just like, “Man, this is bringing some joy into people’s lives.” At a funeral. At a party. At whatever event that goes on in New Orleans. So you say, “I have to continue to do this. If I could uplift somebody in that particular way, then why not do it? And I’m getting paid to do it and I enjoy doing it, so hey, I’m gonna continue to do it.”

I’ve never thought about doing anything else. Even tonight, when I was talking to my mother, I was like, “Ma, you know what? I’m tired. I’m about to go home.” Because I’m still living in Texas. She said, “What you mean ‘I’m tired’?” I said, “I’m tired of getting up, dealing with some of the situations I gotta deal with.” She said, “Baby, let me tell you something. God gave you something, you gotta continue to use it.” You know, I sat down and I broke down and I cried. I said, “What?” She said, “Yeah. Keep on doing it.” She said, “When you’re out there and you’re uplifting people like that, you don’t know what you’re doing.” I was like, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” My brother Phil picked me up on the way over, I said, “Man, you know what? I gotta continue.” So that’s just the way it is.

Question:  I see several young ladies in the house, and I’m just wondering, we have a woman speaker of the house, we have a woman secretary of state. When are we gonna see a woman really in the heart of the brass bands?

Philip: Well, they got the Pinettes.

Question:  Do you think we’ll see more?

Philip: I hope so, in the future.

Keith: When we started in 1983, there was a girl in our band. Miss Cheryl McKay. She plays with Higher Ground. And the only reason she got out of the band is because she had to work that summer. She was like, “Well, Phil, I have to work this summer. It’s a bunch of guys. I’m not really sure I can deal with this.” And we always encouraged Cheryl to play, because she’s still a great clarinet player. She picks up the horn today, and it’s like “Cheryl, its like you never stopped, and that was like 25 years ago.”  We always encourage young women to get involved with music, just like we encourage young men to get involved with music.

Last Thursday there was band that played before we opened up our set at the Howlin’ Wolf. There was a girl on sousaphone, she was playing with some guys. Now, she wasn’t the greatest sousaphone player in the world, but after Phil went out. He said, “I talked to her. Man, she’s good. She got everything she needs in order to do this type of music.” I said, “Yeah, well, let’s just continue to encourage her to do it.” So, we wanna see young women get more involved in brass band music as well as other aspects of the music industry here in New Orleans.

Question: Do you all hear things on the streets?

Keith: Oh yeah, the streets played a very vital role in who the Rebirth Brass Band is. Because a lot of what we create is actually created right out on the street. My brother Philip will start a bass line. I’ll come in with the bass drum beat. Mr. Derrick Tabb, he’ll come in with something, and Mr. Tabb is great for lyrics. This guy comes up with lyrics, I’m like, “Man, where’d you get that from?” Some of the things are a little bit, you know, things we can’t repeat. But he’s just coming in with lyrics and, before you know it, the crowd is just chanting to what he’s saying. It’s like a rolling party.

It’s like a football player. Some guys who play in the National Football League are good at running, some are good at passing, some are good at catching. Some guys are just naturally talented, that when they get off the field you say, “How’d you do it?” “I don’t know how I did it, I just went out and did it.”  A lot of stuff that the Rebirth Brass Band does is just impromptu, it’s at that moment. Like when we play, we don’t have a set list. We’ve never had a set list. It drives me crazy, because I’m the kinda person that, I like to know where I’m going. But my brother Phil is like, “No. No set list.” He’ll just get up and start playing and we’ll just take off. Every night, whenever we play, it just happens. And sometimes that’s the best way for that to occur.

Question: The focus this month has been on the Nine Times Social & Pleasure Club. I take it you’ve played that gig in your early days.

Philip: Yeah, before it was the Nine Times, it used to be an Easter parade on Sundays.

Derrick: The Big Nine, too.

Philip: It goes way back to this club called Nancy’s. She used to own this club back there on Mazant Street, so that’s how it really developed. See, they build on that—that’s how the Nine Times was born.

Question: It must have been quite a thrill for them having a second line…

Keith: It was a thrill for us just for them to ask us to play. We was like, “You want us to play?” They was like, “Yeah.” “All right, we’ll play.”… Are there any questions from the students? I wanna hear what the students have to say.

Question: I know you talked about playing in high school, but did y’all start on y’all’s instruments earlier?

Philip: I started in fourth grade.

Glen Andrews: I started when I was like 7 or 8. Actually, my family had a band. Our band was the All-Star Brass Band. I’m practicing with my sons. They back there now, they got their little band. I practice with them every day. Y’all be sure to check them out, the B-Boyz Brass Band. My son plays with St. Aug's. He play trombone with St. Aug's, but he play snare drum [with the Baby Boyz]. My other son plays trumpet. My little cousin, he play trumpet with [McDonogh] 35.

Philip: And all their names are Glen! [laughter.]

Derrick: I learned how to play when I was at Craig [Elementary School], but I didn’t have no technical parts of it until I got to Bell [Junior High School] under Mr. Donald Richardson. He taught me how to really play a drum, and learn how to be more disciplined and keep my mind off the streets and more on that drum. About 12, 13.

Question: I have a hard time reading music from a staff.

Ray: That’s why you gotta come to class! [laughter] We had a gentleman there asking about how we started out and what made us choose music. I was passionate about it because of the teachers that I had. They made it look so much fun. Now, what these gentlemen do looks easy. They’ve been playing 20-30 years. Me personally, I had some of the best band directors growing up, and they treated me like their own children. And that’s what I do my students. And they know. I whip their butts when it’s called for. They got to be in class, and they gotta come to school, the whole nine yards. But one of the main things is, we don’t do this for money. We teach for love. I don’t have a Bentley sitting outside. Yet. [laughter] After the tragic storm, I chose to come back to the school where I was. Most band directors changed. But we teach out of love because we want you to be serious about it, because it can change your life. And it’s something you’ll be talking about later in life.

Keith: All right, so we’re gonna try to get into the performance side of it now. We’re gonna get the instruments out, start out with something traditional and then go a little more modern from there. We’re gonna try to get some of the students up to play with us.