Through the Water
by Joshua Ellison · 11/16/09
There was one more band to hear before I left. On Sunday night, in a neighborhood where bail bonds and fried foods make up much of the local commerce, the Free Agents Brass Band has a weekly gig at the Chocolate Bar. A hulking doorman let us in, politely but without much expression. The place was surprisingly upscale, with expensive drinks and cool, blue neon. On several flat-screen panels, a CNN special on the state of black America was playing without sound.
The Free Agents were crowding on the low stage, with horn players lined up in front and drummers in back. A mirror was angled down on the far side of the bandstand, visually doubling their numbers. As the night went on, the size of the band swelled even larger. An auxiliary flank of musicians and friends stood in the wings, hopping on to add a cowbell rhythm, or clap along, or shout a refrain. Like most musical moments in New Orleans, the barrier between performer and spectator was nominal, or at least fluid.
Near the end, a new song began with a rising trombone line, and the snare drum rolled in. Th e horn players clapped together. They started to sing, in unison, with an affirmative echo from the rear: I’m going back, back/to my city, city/New Orleans. Then, an explosion of sound and the next line, stronger:
I’m so glad to be back home!
In those two lines, they played out a whole trajectory. Th e compression of time and distance, the elision of journey and destination—it felt familiar, because it’s the thing both Jews and African Americans do in their best art. Going back home, and already there. A real place to which we can return, but also a metaphysical one; somewhere we might approach, even touch, but never quite inhabit for good.
We made it through that water, they sang next. This was another dance against death, a happy rejoinder from the edge.
That muddy, muddy water.
Then, two horns started a familiar melody. “Wade in the Water,” the old African-American spiritual. Wade in the water, children, they sang together. But with a change to the last line: We made it through that muddy, muddy water. With that, they had brought a little bit of the past into the story, which started with an aspiration and now ended with a memory.
A reminder that in New Orleans, like everywhere else, forward is not always life’s native motion.
