Keeping It “Reals”

By referencing what is real, or historical, a fictional narrative can speak in a powerful, full-throated way to the problems and issues of our time. And a wholly imagined tale, set amid the intricate and accurate details of a real place and time, can resonate with readers in profound ways. In short, drama is its own argument. . . . “Treme” is drama, and therefore artifice. It is not journalism. It is not documentary. It is a fictional representation set in a real time and place, replete with moments of inside humor, local celebrity and galloping, unrestrained meta. At moments if we do our jobs correctly, it may feel real.

Released in The Times-Picayune on the day of Treme’s HBO premiere, series creator David Simon’s letter to New Orleans residents reveals the contradictions of representation and performance: an artificial drama, he says, can feel real or historical. While some critics and New Orleans natives might cite the television series as inauthentic or take issue with the fictionalized portrayals of real-life residents, Simon’s theory about drama—that it feels real—is upheld in Treme’s general portrayals of the New Orleans jazz community and its history. Not only does Treme succeed in capturing multiple conflicting narratives about New Orleans jazz but the series also reflects on the meaning of jazz culture to New Orleans and the search for the “real” New Orleans jazz community that music scholars like Samuel Charters have made their life’s work. In his sixty-plus-year study of New Orleans jazz, Charters (2008, 6) suggests, “the development of jazz in New Orleans was a continued cultural interchange between societies that were more complex than can be easily comprehended.” That development includes many debates about the foundations of New Orleans jazz—the earliest narratives about the all-white Dixieland tradition, the 1939 Jazzmen-inspired narratives about the black community that led to further debates about New Orleans–style trad jazz, and the later melting-pot narratives sustained by Ken Burns and Ted Goia. ¹ The series subverts any one narrative about jazz history, thereby leading audience members away from an “authentic” narrative and positing multiple “reals” instead, and so the performances “feel real” to a wide audience of cultural insiders, jazz aficionados, and novice listeners. ² In this way, Treme plays to a general audience who might not have any knowledge about the city or its musical history, pleading for viewers to understand, as series writer George Pelecanos (qtd. in Cohen May 2010) says, that New Orleans “is a town worth saving and there’s no place like it in the world.” Perhaps in an attempt to convince viewers to save this musical city by visiting as tourists, Treme is sometimes guilty of sustaining the romantic melting-pot “gumbo” narratives about New Orleans jazz.

Music historians and ethnomusicologists have long argued about what is most important to the history of New Orleans jazz: the supposed origins in Congo Square or Storyville, the mythical image and unrecorded sounds of cornetist Buddy Bolden, the popularization by Nick LaRocca and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the contested contributions of trad jazz to modern jazz. While scholars agree that the music grew out of a culture of poverty and prejudice, some romantically view jazz as an art form that builds a multicultural transcendent community able to deconstruct the strict race and class boundaries of southern segregation. Treme easily uses this romantic narrative when, generally, scenes of tragedy quickly jump to music in the next scene. Whether performed on stage or streamed through the radio, the music ultimately unites the cast of broken characters, and reviewers of the series nearly all agree that the musical elements are the most compelling. In specific instances during the first season, Treme upholds romantic narratives about the ability of jazz to overcome race and class barriers. For instance, viewers watch Big Chief Albert Lambreaux’s success in keeping the Mardi Gras Indian tradition alive despite the loss of krewe members due to Katrina and despite his violent run-ins with the New Orleans police department. During the Mardi Gras episode, while viewers witness destructive and desperate acts by the characters, eventually music and carnival bring everyone back home and together. Similarly, the last scenes of the season one finale suggest that a jazz funeral can help the characters (and the audience) to cope with the horrific loss of LeDonna’s brother Damo, ending the season on a mostly hopeful note. In the first season of Treme, viewers experience the general feeling that music can unite diverse people and transcend tragedy, as some scholarly narratives about a multicultural New Orleans jazz history, like those of Burns or Goia, also suggest.

However, as the portrayals of the jazz community in the first season exemplify, Treme is about more than the triumphant second lines and jazz funerals, the successes of Big Chief Albert Lambreaux, or the unity brought about by Mardi Gras. Through the characters of Delmond, Antoine Batiste, Davis McAlary, and Sonny and Annie, the series posits another story about the indelible race and class divisions present long before and made internationally prevalent after the storm. Treme not only exposes the complexities of New Orleans jazz history to a general audience but also contributes to some of the scholarly discussions concerning an overtly romantic narrative about the city and its musical traditions. As jazz scholar Charles Hersch (2007, 8) suggests, the narrative of jazz as a “triumph of the American dream” is problematic: “Despite the appearance of trying to understand the birth of jazz in its social and political context, melting-pot narratives ultimately eliminate race, seeing racism as simply an obstacle to be overcome rather than something that affected the music itself.” The two characters that perhaps best portray the strengths and failings of New Orleans jazz, trombonist Antoine Batiste and trumpeter Delmond Lambreaux, highlight the poverty and racial violence that African American musicians still experience in the city.

Previously, in season one, the audience has witnessed Delmond’s tense relationship not only with the tradition of New Orleans music but also with his father, Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Lambreaux, who echoes Treme’s tagline, refusing to bow in the face of tragedy and masking in order to get this message out. ³ In the season two opener, Treme revives Delmond’s conflict with his musical heritage in order to deconstruct earlier narratives about the racial politics of New Orleans jazz, specifically as rooted in the debate between proponents of trad jazz and modern jazz. In the 1920s, when the origins and definitions of the music were contested, the importance of New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz was diminished or altogether ignored. Bruce Boyd Raeburn (2009, 19) suggests, “In the press, jazz was often associated with large Northeastern metropolises like Chicago and New York, while its Southern origin, particularly its New Orleans connection, was trivialized.” The regional debate turned to one of social ideals and jazz aesthetics after the 1939 publication of Jazzmen, which championed the New Orleans–style as created by African American musicians and worked against earlier stereotypes of New Orleans music as violent and hedonistic, instead arguing that the music offered a way to transcend social inequalities in poor black neighborhoods. This led to what Raeburn (2009, 6) terms the “total war” in the 1940s between traditionalists and modernists, when “jazz historiography was up for grabs within an intellectual minefield characterized by two antithetical versions of jazz history and aesthetics—one modern (representing swing and bebop), the other traditional (representing New Orleans style).”

In Treme, the still-existing conflict between traditionalists and modernists is clearly introduced in the second season opener when Delmond is confronted by his New York compatriots with a consistent narrative about the tourist nature of trad jazz (which, for popular audiences, might be best symbolized by Louis Armstrong, the highly successful trumpeter often criticized for perpetuating minstrel images and selling out to white audiences). After a gig, Delmond’s friends excessively compliment his style and how he “transcends New Orleans like all ex-pats do,” mentioning contemporary artists Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr., and Christian Scott. Del’s friends describe New Orleans jazz as that “Dixieland Shit. Preservation Hall” which is “caught up in that tourist economy like a minstrel show” (Simon and Overmeyer, April 24, 2011). The petty comments of Del’s friends mirror earlier modernist arguments that often failed to recognize New Orleans as the origin of “real” jazz and instead viewed New Orleans–style jazz as profit-oriented entertainment without social or artistic merit. Particularly, after the 1960s, with the continued success of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the establishment of Preservation Hall, New Orleans tourism campaigns began to feature jazz as a cultural export, which led many critics to further devalue the style and merit of the music. In later arguments, modernists view bebop as a New York evolution fueled by the rise of Civil Rights, and New Orleans–style jazz becomes a minstrel show created for profit.

If Del’s New York friends represent a modernist reading of New Orleans–style jazz, Delmond quickly corrects them with his response: “A.) It ain’t Dixieland. It’s trad jazz. B.) There’s a lot of great players at the Hall. It’s a living tradition.” Del’s mention of saxophonist Donald Harrison furthers his argument that musicians can vacillate between the traditions of New Orleans–style and modern jazz harmoniously. ⁴ However, Delmond’s friends continue to criticize New Orleans–style trad jazz, incorporating the melting-pot narrative, which they feel is falsely marketed: “Yea, yea. Inflected with the blues. ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing.’ New Orleans is a great big gumbo. We know the rap, the buzz words” (Simon and Overmeyer, April 24, 2011). Delmond responds with “Fuck y’all” and storms out of the club. Later, Delmond’s girlfriend remarks that she has heard him make the same complaints about the tradition, and the angry Delmond retorts that he would “never diss the Hall . . . never use the word minstrel” (Simon and Overmeyer, April 24, 2011). Delmond’s anger at the use of the word “minstrel” and his respect for the “living tradition” of the Hall shows his renewed belief in the African American traditions of New Orleans jazz that triumphed and survived despite segregation, and now, despite Katrina. In these moments, Treme represents arguments that mirror the early defenders of the New Orleans style, who suggested that the music was both entertainment and social protest born out of the circumstances of racism and poverty.

Through this quick exchange (which is broken up by Antoine Batiste’s performance for an excited Tipitina’s audience that perhaps symbolizes the still-living tradition in New Orleans), Treme invokes one of the major debates about New Orleans jazz as portrayed by historians and cultural critics. The New Yorkers, who represent the modern jazz scene, poke fun at the mythical cultural melting-pot narrative they believe is sold to outsiders, while Delmond, who represents New Orleans–style trad jazz, evinces a belief in the “real” spirit and community behind the music of his hometown. Through fictional exchanges like this and representations of musicians like Delmond, Treme reveals the complexities of the New Orleans jazz scene while enticing a general audience to uncover the major historical narratives about the music. Is the music motivated by a blending of cultures and styles that transcends social barriers, or has that musical myth been created to better sell New Orleans to tourists? Is New Orleans jazz for “real,” or is that reality false?

In contrast with Delmond’s conflict over modern jazz and his trad jazz heritage, Antoine Batiste embraces his role as a trombonist from one of the oldest music families in the city. However, Antoine’s social position differs greatly from that of Delmond. In the first season, Antoine struggles on as a self-described “broke-ass horn player” living “hand-to-mouth” in his position as a “deep-fried musician, forgotten or about to be” (Simon and Overmeyer, May 2, 2010). The storm relegates Antoine to living outside of Orleans Parrish, where he shares a small apartment with his girlfriend and baby daughter, and throughout season one, he must comically negotiate with cab drivers for a ride into the city. Antoine takes on a host of different gigs: first begging Kermit Ruffins for a night at Vaughn’s, then moving to a strip-club gig on Bourbon Street, and then landing a spot in the airport band. None of these gigs proves permanent, and Antoine’s adaptable lifestyle is portrayed not as romantic but as destructive, as viewers watch him struggle to maintain sobriety, living costs, and his relationships. His situation mirrors that of real-life New Orleans musicians, many of whom relocated because of the lack of once-plentiful gigs post-Katrina (Le Menestrel and Henry 2010, 185). Through Antoine, Treme not only highlights musicians’ new found poverty after the storm’s destruction but also the racial violence that still exists in New Orleans, as well as the class distinctions among musicians who remain and those who have left the city.

Delmond is one such musician who has left New Orleans before Katrina to pursue his career in New York City. As previously described, Delmond plays in the modern bebop tradition, and in the first season, he often refuses to acknowledge how New Orleans traditions contributed to modern jazz (although much of his resistance is motivated by his strained relationship with his father). Although Antoine and Delmond’s paths never cross, perhaps to accentuate the differences in their social statuses, Antoine’s plight is actually best described by Delmond. When discussing music with fellow New Orleanians in the first season, Delmond says, “There’s a big world outside of New Orleans. Places where they actually respect musicians. In New Orleans, they hype the music but they don’t love the musicians. Dudes have to leave to get their due. Pops, Prima, Wynton. That city will grind you down” (Simon and Overmeyer, April 25, 2010). When Delmond’s cohorts argue back that “there’s no place like New Orleans,” the scene cuts to the bleeding Antoine in an Orleans Parrish jail.

After Antoine finds out he wasn’t invited to a Lincoln Center benefit recording session, he drunkenly stumbles into the French Quarter and accidentally bumps into a New Orleans Police Department car with his horn. The police violently beat Antoine to the ground and take his trombone as they drag him to jail; he later discovers that the trombone is not in police evidence but in a pawn shop. Antoine’s experience, coming right after Delmond’s impassioned speech about the grinding qualities of New Orleans, recalls the history of mistreated jazz musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, who eventually left the city and who often spoke about the looming threat of police abuse and lynch law (Hersch 2007, 171, 187) or perhaps the better examples of Joe Oliver, who left for Chicago after an arrest during a police club raid, and Kid Ory, who left for Los Angeles after a club-owner organized police raids during his gigs (Peretti 1992, 40). Through Antoine’s experiences, Treme shows the lingering effects of past racial violence, and in doing so, Treme contributes to recent arguments by scholars like Hersch and Charters who consider the ways racism affected jazz. Because New Orleans jazz offered what Hersch terms “impure” spaces for carnivalesque behavior in nightclubs, parades, and other social affairs, the mixing of many different ethnic and class groups often led to violence, and opponents (whether black or white) sought to demonize the music and turn it out of the city. This narrative of violence and impurity is what the Jazzmen authors combated when they championed the communal value of jazz in the African American communities of New Orleans. However, as Hersch (2007, 9) describes, “a relative tolerance in particular neighborhoods did help bring jazz into being, but violent racism was an undeniable part of the city’s culture.” While the series centers on the Tremé as one of these nurturing neighborhoods, the series also makes plain that jazz performances do not transcend racial barriers.

In fact, the character of Davis—a white upper-class Uptown native and amateur musician—shows viewers how the racist white power structure, which once threatened early formations of New Orleans jazz, leaves a lasting mark on the relationships between musicians in the present day. Davis is steeped in the New Orleans music tradition. His recurrent interactions with Antoine, John Boutte, and Kermit Ruffins highlight his connection with the “real” New Orleans musicians. His character promotes an “authentic” narrative about jazz’s sustained origins in the poor black community, as shown when he sends a group of young Wisconsin volunteers off the beaten tourist path of Bourbon Street to the 7th Ward to experience the “real” New Orleans. However, Davis romanticizes the jazz community, naively considering himself a cultural insider just because he knows and appreciates the music. Davis buys into the transcendent melting-pot narrative that he feels allows him entrance into the jazz community. This is clearly shown when, after a shooting at a homecoming second line, Davis invokes Antoine Batiste’s use of the slur “nigger” in a predominantly African American bar in the Tremé, believing that because he lives in the Tremé and because he quotes his black musician friend, he can reclaim the term like an insider (Simon and Overmeyer, May 9, 2010). In this scene, as with those that feature Delmond and Antoine, Treme again dispels the romantic view of second lines and jazz music as a multicultural transcendent space. The music’s melting-pot aspects might allow Davis a way in, but when the second line is over, boundaries are reset and a history of injustices is revived by Davis’s casual use of a racial slur. After Davis refuses to stop saying the word, one of the bar’s patrons beats him, and Davis limps out of the bar, rightly placed as an outsider in his own neighborhood. Viewers clearly see the falsity (and the violent consequences) of the melting-pot “gumbo” narrative that establishes jazz as an erasure of race and class boundaries.

After the 1950s, the melting-pot gumbo narrative was also employed in the tourist campaigns to sell New Orleans as the “Birthplace of Jazz,” where the music and good times never stopped despite the poverty and crime. Treme suggests a connection between the romantic narrative and the tourist campaign through the characters of the street musicians Annie and Sonny. However, like Davis, Annie and Sonny also reveal the ruptures in the narrative about “authentic” New Orleans music born out of cultural diversity. Annie, a classically trained violinist from New York, and Sonny, an amateur keyboard player from Amsterdam, recall the origins of New Orleans jazz as it is often represented: an amalgamation of musical traditions ranging from classical to self-taught erupting from a global community settled in the city. The two lovers contentedly struggle for rent money on the French Quarter streets, engaging in a Bohemian lifestyle far from the realities of Antoine and Delmond and much closer to Davis’s laissez-faire existence. Like Davis, Sonny considers himself a cultural insider, evinced by his annoyance with the same Wisconsin tourists who describe how they were compelled to volunteer by the post-storm television coverage of the 9th Ward. Sonny smarmily interjects, “You ever even heard of the 9th Ward before the storm? Why you so fired up about it now?” (Simon and Overmeyer, April 18, 2010). However, Sonny’s ideals are less romantic than Davis’s. Instead of denying the existence of race and class issues, he challenges these outsiders’ ignorance about the many inequalities before Katrina.

When the tourists begin to look uncomfortable after Sonny’s accusations, Annie quickly chimes in and asks for their requests. Here, Treme shows its viewers how New Orleans music can be employed to mask the city’s impoverished reality, and in turn, to make money for its struggling musicians. When the tourists ask to hear something “authentic,” Sonny somewhat sarcastically offers them “When the Saints Go Marching In,” citing it as “real New Orleans music, as real as it gets” (Simon and Overmeyer, April 18, 2010). Annie quickly negotiates a $20 price tag for their rendition of “Saints,” and the tourists happily sing along, forgetting their ignorant complicity in the state of pre-Katrina New Orleans. When Annie and Sonny perform the melting-pot “gumbo” narrative that clouds the race and class issues, any “real” narrative of jazz history is called into question. Sonny and Annie, clearly outsiders, are able to sell a jazz standard that originated as an 1896 gospel anthem during the same year as the historic Plessy v. Ferguson case and market it as “authentic”—a common occurrence in New Orleans since music became a main component of the cultural tourism campaign after the 1950s. Raeburn (2007, 814) describes how “over the past twenty years, ersatz second lines have been used to escort conventioneers from their hotels to receptions at the Cabildo . . . or to the House of Blues . . . or to mourn a bad season for the Saints . . . or to provide ‘a taste of the real thing’ to tourists.” As Raeburn’s discussion shows and Treme also reveals, New Orleans jazz can be commodified and watered down to hide the unpleasant realities of a city drowning not just in Katrina’s flood waters but in a historical flood of race and class inequalities. The consequences of this scene are echoed in Delmond’s exchange with his New York friends in the season two opener: if the music can be used to dilute issues of race and class—if it is in a sense a multicultural minstrel show that anyone can market to tourists—then how can Delmond still defend the music and find a positive sense of community in the tradition? Is the music for “real,” or is that reality false? More importantly, why do these questions matter?

Treme shows that the city’s musical foundations certainly cannot be reduced to one simple, romantic narrative about jazz or the tourist marketplace. Narratives of jazz history suggest that the music grew out of multiculturalism and racism and classism, and jazz can be both traditional protest music and market-ready tourist entertainment. If the second season’s first episodes are any indication, Treme will further complicate and expand its portrayals of New Orleans music with appearances from not only the usual jazz suspects but also lesser-known groups like the Subdudes and Bonerama, along with hip hop star Juvenile. The series suggests that the “real” narrative and experience of New Orleans and its musical communities is elusive; the music, like Treme itself, is a performance that can be manipulated for multiple authentic meanings. For the writers and producers of Treme, those meanings are implicitly political—to show that New Orleans is the “city worth saving” despite, or even because of, the city’s complicated and violent past. The narratives of the musician characters in Treme not only reveal a past of race- and class-induced violence but also a past of survival and community—significant narratives to remember in the wake of Katrina. David Simon (qtd. in Beiser 2011) has cited the show as “an argument for the city,” explaining that post-Katrina New Orleans is not just a city of failed infrastructures and corruption but a city that is the “cradle” of the “living tradition” of American music (as Delmond also suggests in the second season opener). While the series might sometimes romanticize the transcendent power of jazz, Simon clearly represents his arguments for the many narratives surrounding New Orleans music—and, therefore, the city itself. However, with Treme, ultimately the weight of keeping it “reals” still rests with viewers. With the second season completed and the third season in production, viewers can return to Treme with an analytical eye for how the series perpetuates, challenges, and redirects the multiple and overlapping narratives of New Orleans and jazz history. Like the jazz music offered to tourists in the French Quarter, Treme offers us representations of New Orleans that we must analyze and historicize for the social and political implications, rather than just simply consume.