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According to an excellent piece in today’s New York Times, New Orleans’ murder rate in 2010 was 10 times the national average, “long before shootings on Halloween night in the crowded French Quarter revealed to a larger public what was going on in poor neighborhoods around the city every week.”

There were 51 homicides per 100,000 residents here last year, compared with less than 7 per 100,000 in New York or 23 in similar-size Oakland, Calif.

“From September of last year to February of this year,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu in a recent speech, after reciting a litany of killings from one city high school, “a student attending John McDonogh was more likely to be killed than a soldier in Afghanistan.”

The causes of the skyrocketing rate can be found in the economic devastation and social dislocation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Notorious corruption in the police department hasn’t helped, leading to a great mistrust between New Orleans’s citizenry and the force that is supposed to serve and protect them.

The narrower causes are less clear. There are no large organized gangs in town, nor are there major drug wars, though some killings are turf disputes over the drug market, made worse by the drastic reshuffling of the urban poor after Hurricane Katrina and the demolition of public housing projects.

Many killings in New Orleans are a result of conflicts and vendettas among small, loosely organized groups, the analysis concluded, but in nearly half the cases, the experts listed the primary motive as uncertain or unknown. Only about half the homicide cases are cleared.

In the end, its not the living who pay, but the victims:

The killers and their victims are overwhelmingly young black men, according to an analysis of homicide cases by outside experts last March, and sponsored by the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance. As police officials frequently point out to the anger of some families, most victims and offenders had prior contacts with the police, often for violent crimes. Less than a quarter were listed as having a steady job.

Read More In The New York Times

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According to Nagin, his outspokenness made him an easy target and a scapegoat in many situations.

“I was basically the last person standing that was one of the key leaders,” he said.

“There were open discussions about changing the social fabric of the city and very bold discussions about gentrification. I had to make a very tough decision to say that everybody had a right to return to the city of New Orleans and there was a heavy price I paid for that…”

Read more at BET.com

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Odyssey Records
1012 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112-2506

When: 1992

What: Using a “call and response style” party vibe, Mardi Gras Indian chants and dance call-outs, TT Tucker and DJ Irv’s single helps to launch the N’Awlins sound known as “Bounce.”

In celebration of Black Music Month, TheUrbanDaily’s “It’s All Black Music” presents 100 Rewarding Black Music Moments, sponsored by Southwest Airlines.

Each Black Music Moment is associated with an actual place that you can visit. During the month of June, check in to at least three of these places on Foursquare to unlock TheUrbanDaily’s exclusive “It’s All Black Music” Badge. Check out the locations and details on our Foursquare page!

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill.

The White House said the administration would appeal. It had halted approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium, arguing it was arbitrarily imposed.

Feldman agreed, saying in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium. He said it seemed to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

“An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country,” Feldman wrote. The 500 foot depth is about 152 meters.

Click here to view photos:

RELATED: Oil Spill Criticism Now Directed At Obama Administration

The moratorium was imposed after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers and blew out the well that has spewed millions of gallons (liters) of oil into the Gulf.

The Interior Department said it imposed the moratorium so it could study the risks of deepwater drilling. But the lawsuit filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, Louisiana, claimed there was no proof the other operations posed a threat.

The moratorium was declared May 6 and originally was to last only through the month. President Barack Obama announced May 27 that he was extending it for six months.

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal and corporate leaders have opposed the moratorium, saying it will result in drilling rigs leaving the Gulf of Mexico for lucrative business in foreign waters. They say the loss of business will cost the area thousands of lucrative jobs, most paying more than $50,000 a year. The state’s other major economic sector, tourism, is a largely low-wage industry.

RELATED: Political Patience Wanes As Oil Spill Grows

In its response to the lawsuit, the Interior Department said the moratorium is necessary as attempts to stop the leak and clean the Gulf continue and new safety standards are developed.

“A second deepwater blowout could overwhelm the efforts to respond to the current disaster,” the Interior Department said.

The government also challenged contentions the moratorium will lead to long-term economic harm. Although 33 deepwater drilling sites were affected, there are still 3,600 oil and natural gas production platforms in the Gulf, the government said.

NEW ORLEANS (AP)– The pre-dawn shucking of small mountains of oysters that is an age-old workaday ritual in New Orleans is coming to an end at the 134-year-old P&J Oyster Co., because of the oil spilling ominously offshore.

Barring an unforeseen reopening of the oyster beds that supply P&J, Thursday was to be the final day of shucking at the family owned business in the city’s French Quarter.

“I’m going to try and buy a few shucked oysters from some people in Alabama that are still processing oysters and once they stop, I’m done,” said Al Sunseri, who along with his brother Sal has run the business that opened in 1876.

Sunseri isn’t sure what will happen to P&J and its employees in the long haul. Other Louisiana oyster companies say their oyster supplies are also dwindling, prices are rising and the future of their business remains stark and uncertain.

Click here to view photos:

“The same thing happening over at P&J is happening over here also,” said John Tesvich, owner of Ameripure Oyster Co. in Franklin, La. His company sells pasteurized oysters to restaurants around the country.

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Tesvich said Ameripure may be able to hold on a little longer because it cultivates and harvests its own oysters, supplemented by suppliers. “But they’re on the point of depletion now,” said Tesvich, adding he’s hoping for “a few more good weeks.”

WATCH P&J’s Al Sunseri speak about the fate of the company:

Oyster growers and harvesters are facing a double threat.

On the one hand, oil gushing from the blown-out well off Louisiana could contaminate the beds, killing the oysters or rendering them unsafe to eat. On the other hand, a

method of fighting the encroaching oil by opening inland water diversion gates in hopes of pushing the oil back also could kill oysters. The fresh inland water dilutes saltier waters oysters need to thrive.

Complicating the problem is the fact that it’s spawning season for young oysters that usually take 18 to 24 months to grow to market size.

Third-generation oyster farmer Wilbert Collins, 73, said it could take three years to replenish the stock on some of his leases where fresh water is encroaching.

RELATED: Political Patience Wanes As Gulf Oil Spill Grows

Collins said he owns three boats. Two are idle, one is doing oil cleanup work. He’s not sure what the future holds for his business — or for his sons and grandson who work with him.

John Rotonti, owner of Felix’s Oyster Bar and Restaurant, said recently he has yet to run out of oysters for the raw bar at his eatery just off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter tourist district. Still, he’s having to absorb price hikes and uncertain supplies.

At some point, he said, he’ll have to close the raw bar that is the trademark of his business and probably lay off a half-dozen shuckers.

Tesvich, Sunseri and Kevin Voisin — an executive with family owned Houma oyster processor Motivatit Seafood — all say they worry not just for themselves but for their workers. Some of their employees have been with the companies for years.

“There’s 200 families that eat because Motovatit Seafood exists,” Voisin said.

Nowadays, the owners of the companies said, they are at varying stages of filing claims for aid from the oil giant BP that has spent weeks trying to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf.

jive (origin unknown) – 1. the jargon of jazz musicians or enthusiasts. 2. deceptive, nonsensical or glib talk. 3. to play or dance to jive music.

jazz (Origin unknown) — 1. music originating in New Orleans at the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently developing through various increasingly complex styles, generally marked by intricate, propulsive rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, virtuosic solos, melodic freedom, varying degrees of improvisation and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre ranging from simple scale playing, through chromaticism, to atonality. 2. liveliness; spirit; excitement.

Jazz comes from the mixture of blues, ragtime, brass-band and syncopated dance music that could be heard in the streets of the Storyville red-light district of New Orleans at the turn of the last century. The first music known as jazz was the New Orleans style, (later called Dixieland) in which each player in a small group would collectively improvise, or improvise in such a way that the parts combined into a balanced, integrated whole.

Jelly Roll Morton is considered the first true jazz composer – he was the first to write down his jazz arrangements in musical notation — “Jelly Roll Blues,” in 1915, was the first published jazz arrangement in history — and Jelly Roll wrote many of the songs that would become staples in the jazz repertory.  In the Twenties virtuosos like trumpeter Louis Armstrong began to fly high on solo lines separate from the accompanying instruments, which became the formative idea of jazz for the next few decades.

The big band swing era of the Thirties and Forties brought harmonic and rhythmic revolutions to jazz, exemplified by the work of Count Basie and Duke Ellington.  Ellington has been called “perhaps the single most important creative talent in American popular music history.”  The Duke’s unparelled genius as a composer ranged from three-minute pop jewels like “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing),” the song that gave the swing era its name, to ambitious works like “Black, Brown and Beige,” a 50-minute classical-style suite introduced at Carnegie Hall in 1943.  While the Duke was commended for his composing skills, the Count was lauded as “the” bandleader of the era, nurturing the talents of such powerhouse soloists as saxophonist Lester Young (Young, or “Prez,” was “Lady Day” Billie Holiday’s favorite musician  — they gave each other those nick-names) and vocalist Jimmy Rushing.

Be-bop was pioneered in the late Forties by artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Charlie Parker, and is considered the first kind of modern jazz.  Named by the onomatopoeic mimicking of the staccato two-tone phrase distinctive in the form, when it emerged, be-bop was rejected by not only the general public, but by many musicians as being unmusical and unlistenable.  “Cutting contests” were first seen between rival brass bands on the streets of New Orleans in the 1870s, and were popular among bop musicians.  Late into the night at after hours joints, musicians would try to play each other off the stage by creating a louder, faster, more brilliant or innovative sound.  Bop spawned  “cool”, hard bop and modal playing in the Fifties, first explored by Miles Davis.  Cool jazz derives its name from what music critics identified as an understated or subdued feeling Miles’ playing, and his 1949 ground breaking recording The Birth of the Cool.

In the Sixties, saxophonist John Coltrane combined Eastern and Western notions of improvisation, and another sax player, Ornette Coleman, began to rework the idea of collective improvisation from the early years of jazz.  Miles Davis experimented with a hybrid of jazz and rock that became “fusion” and spawned Seventies groups like Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and informed the work of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and Steely Dan.  In the Eighties and Nineties jazz came back to its roots in New Orleans as the horn-playing Marsalis Brothers and pianist Harry Connick Jr. found success with neo-traditional styles of jazz.  Today, jazz continues its tradition of change and continues to cross-pollinate: with punk, New Age, world music, rap and mainstream pop.

– Meredith Rutledge for the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

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The marina of this Mississippi River Delta community usually teems with fishermen, oystermen and shrimpers. But the scene on Monday afternoon fell far short of that. Only a single crew could be seen filling crates with plump blue crabs freshly pulled from the bays to the east, which is among the few stretches of nearby water where oil hasn’t been found. Men sat on stools outside the marina’s shop, sipping cold beers in the humid air. “There’s nothing else to do,” says Shawn Encalade, 47, a boat welder, looking out at rows of marooned vessels.

The worst oil spill in American history is being measured in environmental and economic terms — especially given the threat it poses to Louisiana’s $2.4 billion seafood industry. But the cultural toll must also be considered. The disaster may signal the end of Louisiana towns like Phoenix and Point a la Hache, which hug the Mississippi River and comprise one of the state’s largest stretches of African-American fishing communities. 

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On Monday afternoon, Clarence Duplessis wasn’t on a boat fishing. He was dressed in a dapper gray suit, testifying before a Congressional subcommittee’s special session in St. Bernard Parish, a New Orleans suburb about an hour’s drive north from Phoenix. “We watch our livelihood and even an entire culture being washed away by crude oil and chemicals that no one knows the long-term effects of,” said Duplessis, 65.

Click here to read more.

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From the NY Daily News:

NEW ORLEANS – Roy Bradley couldn’t sit still.

First he took a chair next to Mack Young, a friend from the Lower Ninth Ward. Then he ambled to the kitchen. Then he went outside to call his wife. Now, he was back inside. Bradley removed his Saints hard hat from his head and stared intently at the coin toss on a 64-inch flat screen TV. Then, just as the Saints elected to receive the kickoff, he jumped out of his seat and strolled to the kitchen again, refilled his black and gold Saints glass.

Hours later, when the seconds ticked down and a stunning 31-17 Saints Super Bowl victory was in hand, Bradley – who had lost his home in the Lower Ninth to Hurricane Katrina – sprang out of his seat and disappeared, whooping and hollering, into the New Orleans night.

Click here to read more.

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