Treme Brass Band: Keeping the Jazz Funeral Traditional in New Orleans

When a New Orleans jazz funeral leaves the church, the Treme Brass Band plays hymns and dirges, church music for carrying the body to the grave. Once the deceased is buried, the band turns up the tempo on the way back. Bandleader Benny Jones Sr. says he sticks to this tradition even as younger bands play modern, faster music for funerals. The band was named a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow for its New Orleans brass band tradition.

The band and its neighborhood

Treme, on the edge of the French Quarter, was the birthplace and home of generations of New Orleans's finest jazz musicians, and parade bands that play at traditional funerals, street parades and family celebrations are central to that tradition. Jones, a brass band veteran of fifty years and the son of the musician Chester Jones, founded the Treme Brass Band more than 15 years before the award. Before that he was a drummer with the Olympia Brass Band and a leader of the Dirty Dozen and Chosen Few brass bands.

Though the band is known worldwide from recordings and tours, it remains rooted in the street band tradition. It has played the National Folk Festival and the American Roots Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall. Veterans of the Treme band have gone on to found others, including the Rebirth, New Birth and Little Rascal bands.

In his words, paraphrased

Growing up. Jones began on pots and pans at home. His father, a drummer, played with old bands such as the Eureka and Allman brass bands and at Preservation Hall, and an older brother drummed on Bourbon Street for years. In the 1950s and 1960s the neighborhood had jazz funerals and parades passing by, and social and pleasure clubs that held annual parades. He started drumming at about 12 or 14, learned by watching older drummers and practicing at home, and began on bass drum.

Career. He started as a grand marshal with the Olympia Brass Band, then played snare in a second band while still on bass drum at Olympia. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he started the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, in which he played bass drum. Today he plays bass drum on some gigs and snare on others, and with many bands, from traditional to modern, and at clubs around the city.

Funeral and parade music. A funeral procession gets hymns and dirges such as "The Old Rugged Cross," "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "Sweet By and By" and "Precious Lord," played from the funeral parlor or church until the body is laid to rest. A parade or club event calls for up-tempo tunes made for dancing, such as "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Second Line." The band is usually eight or ten players, though for a convention it may swell to between 10 and 15 to lead hundreds or even a thousand people from the convention center to a hotel.

Hurricane Katrina. The storm scattered the band across the country, and most members' houses were damaged. Jones went from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Dallas and ended up in Arizona, where a man who called while he was in Dallas helped bring members together, find instruments and clothes, and book gigs. They stayed three or four months, and most returned to New Orleans, though one or two stayed behind. Many musicians left the city, and clubs closed or switched from guaranteed fees to a share of the door. Foundations helped musicians repair houses, including the Krewe of Araby, the Tipitina Foundation, Preservation Hall Foundation and Common Ground. Jones was living in a trailer beside his house while he rebuilt it.

Advice for young drummers. Show up on time, find out the uniform for the gig, and tune your instrument before you play.

Jones says music is what he lives for. He was semi-retired from driving trucks and made his living in music, loves making people happy and working with children, and tries to teach kids the bass and snare drum to keep the tradition going.

Sources

• National Endowment for the Arts, Treme Brass Band, NEA National Heritage Fellows; the interview is paraphrased and the band's photographs are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.