It somehow seems fitting to launch “Adventures with Susie” with the place of biggest adventure for me: The City of New Orleans. New Orleans is a place for sensory overload. It can be an overt assault on the senses or a gentle manipulation, but one cannot deny the never-ending stimuli of smell, taste, and sight. But, today, now, I want to talk about sound. So many people associate the City of New Orleans with her music, and rightfully so, but I want to share with you my recent emotional journey with the more subtle, or if not subtle then less-mentioned, sounds of my city.
The Calliope
Even though I didn’t get to hear this quintessentially New Orleans sound on my most recent visit, I was in an emotional place flooded with memories in which the calliope played a part. When I lived there, the calliope was a given. Sometimes it was an alarm clock – that sound was the call to board for the 11AM sailing of the Natchez, which sometimes translated to an “oh shit” moment for me. More times than I care to admit, I was still in the throes of the “drink-and-drag” early-morning walk, so the calliope was the alarm clock telling me it was time to get my butt off the barstool and get the dogs back home. Many, many times, I had piddled or procrastinated and the sound of the calliope was the call to action for my day’s activities. In my later years as a resident, I had an 11 o’clock start for the Hole in the Wall, and I would pedal my bike in time with the notes of “The Entertainer.” More than a few times, the onset of the calliope music was the impetus for a text saying I was running late. When there in New Orleans this last October, I just stood on the 1100 block of Bourbon Street, where I lived for a bit, and the calliope was the internal soundtrack for a flood of memories. But, the story that most says “New Orleans” for me was when a friend from Tunica County, Mississippi, by way of Las Vegas, came to visit and go to the Saints/Cowboys game. He had never been to New Orleans, & after three days of hearing the calliope from the porch of my home in the Marigny Triangle, he asked me if there were some sort of carnival or traveling show in town. I realized right then and there just exactly how much I took that unique New Orleans sound for granted, and I was reminded how lucky I was to call New Orleans home.
The Beat of the Street
Back in the late ‘80s, or maybe even early ‘90s (‘cause you know I drink and I’ve killed some of those memory cells), my now long-time friend Danny T. recorded a song “Beat of the Street” and the eponymous album (actually cassette tape). The song opened with this really cool montage of sound. He actually carried a boom-box up Bourbon Street on his shoulder, recording exactly what he was hearing as he walked. In hindsight, I don’t know if my decades of loving Bourbon Street are because of that recording, or if the recording affected me so much because I was already pre-ordained to love that damn street. Sideline, that can also be said of New Orleans as a whole. I don’t know if I am who I am because of my time in New Orleans, or if, there, I found who I was already meant to be. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, the biggest part of that love comes from the cacophony that IS Bourbon Street. When Danny made his recording all those years ago, the Street was overwhelmed with urban kids with impromptu taps made from crushed beer cans or bottle tops on their sneakers, clapping & tapping on the sidewalks for tourists’ tips. Some of those kids (and I swear some of them are the same kids, now adults, some 30 years later) are still there, but lately it’s mostly “drummers” beating on upside-down buckets. I know locals don’t care for them. Bartenders, the ones who hear the same “bump bump BUMP, badump badump BUMP” for hours on end, especially don’t care for them. But to me, their noise is equally a part of the soundtrack of my City as the live music coming from the clubs and the buskers with their guitars, violins, and clarinets. It’s been a while since I’ve heard “Ro-SES! Ro-SES! Get that beautiful lady some RO-ses!” or the shoe-shine man literally singing his own praises to attract customers. Tommy Austin is no longer around to shout, “Eat, eat, eat, you’re on vacation!” There are, however, still countless doormen doing their thing to convince the tourists their vacations aren’t complete without a visit to that particular establishment. And the sounds of the establishments themselves! I don’t intend to talk specifically about New Orleans music, but hearing the tiniest of snippets of so many styles of music just bursting out onto the street as one walks by? Well, I can tell you from experience, that doesn’t happen anywhere else. Other music cities have their own streets – Memphis has Beale St. and Nashville has Broadway – but Bourbon Street has its own sound, its own composite of traditional jazz, swamp pop, contemporary jazz, blues, country, zydeco/Cajun, and even something to please the Parrotheads, all side by side by side. I challenge you to take your feet, and your ears, down to Bourbon Street, because all these sounds are inherent to that place, and are therefore uniquely New Orleans sets of noises. And I miss them. A lot.
The Call to Mass
How many times, how many YEARS, have I heard the Call to Mass of The Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France? It’s rhetorical, because seriously, it’s more than I can even pretend to count. Yet, every time, every single time, I stop whatever it is I’m doing and just listen. I don’t know if it’s a ritualistic Catholic melody or pattern, or if it’s specific to this parish, or even unique to this Cathedral itself. What I DO know is that it sounds more beautiful here, in this city, than any other church bells I’ve ever heard. Every single time I hear it. I have heard the Call to Mass from my barstool in Harry’s Corner. I have heard it on the banks of the River. I have heard it echo off the buildings in the CBD. I have heard it while starting a walking tour in Pirate’s Alley. I have heard it over the sounds of the brass bands and street magicians at the Square, & over the sounds of the hawkers and doormen on Bourbon Street. I’ve even heard it as it was intended, as I was actually on my way to a Sunday-morning Mass. So, yeah, as you’ve probably gathered, I really dig the beautiful sound of the Call to Mass. But stay with me here. When I was there this past October, I heard it on the morning after a pretty serious rain storm. The street was steamy in the sunshine of the morning, and it was one of those days that you breathe more water than air. The Call to Mass that morning was spectacular. The air held the sound, kept it muffled, then let it go. It was like each note, each individual chime, lasted forever, first muted, soft, like on the other side of a concrete wall, then loud and lovely, as if it broke through all that humidity just to get to my ears. It was Heavenly. It was cathartic, because I felt like I had been taken by the hand and escorted to a place of auditory beauty, but it was somehow still grounding because I was lucky enough to physically be where such things are so normal they’re hardly even noticed. It was like a private message, just for me because I was listening, but still there for anyone and everyone who wanted in on the secret.
“Awwww, Bay-bee”
My last little auditory vignette goes like this: A friend who lives close to Cabrini Park was asked if the sounds of the dogs barking in the park bothered him. He laughed, said no, absolutely not. He said the sounds of dogs-at-play are pleasing to him, his own little nod to the City sounds that make him happy; however, the sounds of the humans, he said, the ones shouting at the dogs to shut up, are his personal version of nails on a chalkboard. I understand. Shouting instructions to be quiet is a baffling concept. I would presume even more so for a dog. Later, that same day, I was sitting on the banquette of my aforementioned apartment in the Slave Quarters on lower Bourbon Street when I heard THE most New Orleans exchange of sounds. To be completely clear, because I tend to be redundant and repeat myself for the sake of clarity, I didn’t SEE any of this, only heard it all. First, a horn honked, then the same horn honked again, but with much more meaning. Significant, angry, aggressive, insistent meaning. Then, some overly-loud, angry, aggressive, insistent human shouted, “SHUUUUUUT UUUUUUP! Shut up shut up SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!” Then, what sounded like the oldest black man alive said most un-angrily and un-aggressively, “Awwwww, bay-bee, no call for all dat racket. Dis da Quarters.”
So, here’s to New Orleans, the city where the fog horn of an ocean-bound vessel on the River overlaps with the rumble of the passing freight train and the "dink-dink" of the streetcar bell. Where musical laughter is part of every day, and conversations at the bar include every accent for every demographic on the planet. Where compelling jukeboxes and insistent buskers compete for your dollars, and where there are active city ordinances to keep us quieter. We already know that all our senses overlap, and that, to some degree, we are able to “tune out” which stimuli are not pleasing and embrace those that are. Understood. And appreciated. With that said . . . nothing, and I mean NOTHING, compares what I feel in my gut, in my mind, in nothing less than my soul, when New Orleans blesses me with her very own cacophony.