I combined episodes four to six of the second series of Tremé with a quick look reminder of the New Orleans Cat house based film Pretty Baby which happened to be showing during the period of three weeks. Apart from confirming my continuing question of what was Louis Malle up to in what appears to be a celebration of not just the western style whore house but of paedophilia it also reminder of why there are mixed views within the USA about the city and its heritage and therefore the kind of city which should emerge out of the disaster of the cyclone and the collapse of the sea and more general flooding defence system.
In "Santa Claus, Do You Ever Get the Blues Antoine is hired as a music instructor at an elementary school. It should be remembered that he funked his first visit when confronted by a horde of unruly kids leaving school on their way home. With Christmas coming and his common law wife pressing him to produce a regular income he succumbs under protest emphasising to the head of music at school his convictions for misdemeanours and his lack of experience as a teacher. He is confronted with a situation where because of the financial situation the school is without the majority of instruments or uniforms for any kind of band or orchestra including the marching band which is at the heart of New Orleans culture. The situation is so bad that they are only able to teach music theory and hand and body rhythms which understandably the children finding boring. In a scene in the last episode the demolition crew are at a school where they argue the structure and first floor contents, especially the books, could be used again but they are told that the contract specifies total demolition because of first floor water contamination.
The other aspect of Antoine’s involvement is his continuing attempt to form his own band "Antoine Batiste and his Soul Apostles". In the next episode Slip Away he auditions street musician Sonny who is OK but not brilliant and it is touch and go if he will be retained. One problem is that he needs to continue to work the street to live until the band starts performing and earning money and he is late and misses an important rehearsal. There are indications of continuing drug use. He is warned that it would be wise for him to be more diligent because he is not a great musician, something which led his former girl friend Annie to be talent spotted leaving him on the street. He has found himself a new bed partner but there is still the impression that he pines for the relationship with Annie.
The band is joined by an established showman guitarist June Yamagishi when they debut at the bar of his former wife La Donna still recovering from her rape and general assault but because of his other commitments he is unavailable for the their second gig on Christmas Eve where the female singer as a backing group of three lovelies dressed in sexy Santa outfits. Sonny gets his chance to perform for money. It is in the sixth episode Feels like Raid that Sonny is late again and gets fired while at the school Antoine is trying to inspire the children by getting them to listrn to a recording of Louis Armstrong and his hot Five or Seven. I could not work out if it is a member of Antoines band or a fellow musician that is unintentionally shot in a gang or individual criminal incident and this provides an opportunity for most of the cast to participate in a community showing of respect and solidarity at the funeral.
As explained previously funeral services can include a traditional jazz band playing blues and dirges and they stand outside raising the musical instruments or giving a hand salute as the coffin is placed in the hearse on its way to the cemetery/crematoria. It is after the burial/cremation service that the Second Line Unit is formed when everyone joins in the dancing celebrating the past life and renewal of life as a marching Jazz band plays happy jazz and the Second Line official dancers jive about waving parasols and coloured handkerchiefs. Among those participating is David and Annie, as usual, and also Toni with her new chum the senior police Officer Colson who looks out of place and embarrassed. Ahead is Toni’s disturbed and rebellious daughter appearing to be enjoying her self for once.
I also have to make the comment that I do not like the music played by Antoine’s band which appears a hybrid modern, not original or experimental, not bluesy and forties and fifties swing. It is a gripe that I have about several of bands who play in the series. There appears to be a deliberate attempt to try and balance the traditional jazz played by hack musicians for the tourist economy in Bourbon Street with an eclectic mix of all forms of music to perhaps widen the image. This to my mind is a mistake, everyone knows Nashville as the capital of country music with the Grand Ole Opry House and New Orleans is home of Traditional Jazz Music but not Jazz Music in general with Big Band and Modern Jazz created in New York
This bring me nicely to Albert the cultural traditional New Orleans Indian Chief who spends much of his time creating fantastic hand sewn beaded costumes although as he explains to someone wanting to make a TV documentary fellow Indians do good work for the community although it is not clear to me how they make a living unless they are city or state financially sponsored. The connection is his Modern Jazz playing son based now in New York at constant odds with his father who had hoped his son would play Trad Jazz in New Orleans and also take up his role as an Indian. He must be a pretty good Modern Jazz player because he appears to be able to fly back and forth to New Orleans without difficulty. First he flies to New Orleans to spend time with his dad over Christmas and takes him out for some posh nosh where father walks out, in part because of his depressed angry state but because his son does not understand that he wants to have his own home back and things as they were and because his steak is half cooked. The son comes over soon after to apologise and bring the steak with him, they smoke pot and laugh together.
Delmond continues to wrestle between his music and his roots. He sacked his manager because the man was not using the Internet to promote the music and because he was playing to half filled rooms where people were more interested in their food, drink and company than listening. He has since rehired the manager and informs of his plan for a new record, to incorporate the roots of New Orleans jazz into his modern jazz. His home is full of Trad jazz vinyl’s to the annoyance of his partner and in the sixth episode he gets his group to play traditional music with a modern edge although from my viewpoint it is a thin edge at that and more like Humphrey Littleton forty years ago or the Chris Barber sound today than contemporary concert and lounge jazz, so I judged when he introduced his first creation during his current gig at the Internationally famous Blue Note Club in New York and which now has copy cat establishments in several International cities as well as the ongoing recording Label.
At the start of the fourth episode the TV documentary maker wants to watch Albert at work on his suit but he says she has to wait until the suit is finished. This is in part because be has become depressed, although he strongly denies this, at his situation with the lack of progress on getting money to repair his home, explaining that there are 90000 of them in a similar situation where only a handful has been granted awards a year after the disaster.
In the first series he occupied the bar of a friend but had to move out when the man returned to reopen and to use the residential quarters for his own use. Albert commenced by camping out on the site of his ruined home but by the fourth episode he has established running water after paying his dues to the authorities and also a toilet, However a city inspector says he cannot use the facility until it has been signed off by a professional plumber. Too proud to ask his son for the cash he packs in and moves to stay with friends in Houston where his son visits and gives him a ticket to come and stay until returning for Mardi Gras. He takes his father to a New York store which sells nothing but beads although they are out of stock of the particular item he needs to complete the work he is engaged in. He shows his father the work which represents his father, whose mood is to find fault with everything and most of all everything his son does reluctantly admits the young man has done well.
It also happens that Delmond meets up again with Jeanette who has become increasingly dissatisfied with her work for the top notch nosh restaurant and she throws a glass of Sazerac (a New Orleans sprit based Cocktail) over the foody critic who wrote the article rubbishing New Orleans food. She is soon back elsewhere in the city with a French master chef who has a more laid back style and she is able to get time off when she learns that her former Sous chef finds himself in custody because although he is not an illegal immigrant in the strict sense he does not have his papers when his status is challenged. The French master chef declares that while for all other people he would not a grant a concession for ones Sous Chef nothing should be too much trouble. The odd aspect in this situation as that it is best Jeanette ran only a small operation in New Orleans which would not normally need and therefore pay for such an individual, usually required when the establishment is large and their is a full team of individuals specialising in the various components of cooking at the same time.
Back in New York Jeanette had dinner with Delmond after hearing him play at the club and responding to his playing of the new Trad jazz based number with a Second Line dance. The two met originally at the airport and when they meet again he invits her to attend the New Year concert he was playing.
There are no immediate life changing moment for Davis, the young white rebel who continues to be into everything of the black culture. When he attempt to move into rap he is reminded of his natural white background culture and viewpoint. This does not prevent him persuading his elderly and moneyed eccentric aunt to part with $5000 to fund studio time to make a new record with different style including his rapping. His limitations are brought home when he attends the gig of the rapper Lil Calliope and he invites the young man to advise and participate in the record recording.
Annie gets another invite to perform with an established singer and the woman’s record company producer is introduced saying he is on the look out for new talent although Anne does not anticipate hearing further. A bearded old timer advises that she will get no where until she writes her own music and songs which she talks over with Davis and creates something which is already familiar and is discouraged The two continue to appear to have little in common other than sharing a double bed and otherwise lead separate lives although they appear at the funeral and at an anti violence rally.
This brings me to the work of Toni, the problems she has with her daughter and her budding relationship with the district police commander. The daughter continues to be openly defiant blaming her mother for the death of her father, staying out late without giving any indication to her mother where she is and when she will return. When a master at the school, someone with whom she had had little contact also commits suicide Sofia claims to be unaffected by this death although when approached by a teacher and then by a friend this seems to get her to face what happened to her father. On one of her disappearances she takes the ferry from where her father disappeared and the suggestion is that she had not grasped that his death was deliberate and why her mother was so angry with him and did not want to have a Second Line Funeral as he had Willed. She is still resentful and hostile of her mother although this may be as much teenage assertion of growing into adulthood and independence as blaming her mother for her father‘s death. Toni wakes with a dream of her husband having returned having been on holiday and sitting at the table enjoying a meal as if nothing has happened which underlines the sense that he walked from the problems they were all facing.
Toni is still trying to resolve what happened to the young man who had visited and stayed in New Orleans and was found shot dead and which I believe has something to do we the shoot kill reclaim control of the city policy which was enacted although how far this fictional licence is based on fact I am not sure. She continues to receive conflicting information about what happened in relation to looted supermarket and where the body was located and to the existence of reports and scene of crime evidence. Under work pressure she hands the case to a colleague. However later she is advised that two cartridges founds in relation to a different situation suggest the same gun as used in relation to the body found in or outside the supermarket. A police officer she interviews claims that there had been a sniper shooting from a high rise building which had changed the attitude of the police. The suspicion being created is that he was shot by a policeman and then the death was covered up to suggest he was looter rather than someone not involved or just trying to find food to survive.
Her friend the local commander is concerned when he visits the first death on his patch and where the investigating officers believe it was a home killing with the husband pretending that he and his son were also victims but escaped. When the officer discovers there was a break in robbery reported only short while before the death incident near by he is alarmed to find out that that then two incidents were not examined to see if there is a relationship.
La Donna has become a prisoner in her bar after the rape and general assault although plays little role in the running of the establishment. She does not visit her husband and children and it is Antoine who takes over their Christmas presents to where they live with her dentist husband in Baton Rouge. Detectives visit La Donna with photos of men arrested in recent similar case in the area, They showed her several sets of photos and she picks the men who attacked her and these are those now in custody.
I have still to get to grip with the role of Nelson Hidalgo who Wikipedia describes as “a politically connected developer and venture capitalist from Dallas, who becomes involved in the renewal efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans.” This is accurate as far as it goes although there are indications that he is something of a con man. He keeps contact with the leading local financier/politician who counsels Nelson to concentrate on the demolition work and then suggests that he buys up the properties in a presently empty area of the city with the suggestion of inside information that the site has been earmarked for major development. Prior to Christmas he gives a gift of an expensive rosary with a silver or platinum cross which is much appreciated but he explains that while he was brought up a catholic of a several generation catholic family accepting their lives in the same community he is not longer practicing and has other interests planned for the evening. He is persuaded to attend the midnight mass and to afterwards accept the hospitality of the contact. He also appears to be courting the Mayor for planning permission support and as a token of good faith at the suggestion of the Mayor makes a donation of a couple of thousand dollars to ensure there are ongoing Second Line musicians and dancers. He so far represents those who want to move forward and build up from the city’s roots and he continues to engage in the good food and entertainment on offer, including the girls but not so far the drugs.
In "Santa Claus, Do You Ever Get the Blues Antoine is hired as a music instructor at an elementary school. It should be remembered that he funked his first visit when confronted by a horde of unruly kids leaving school on their way home. With Christmas coming and his common law wife pressing him to produce a regular income he succumbs under protest emphasising to the head of music at school his convictions for misdemeanours and his lack of experience as a teacher. He is confronted with a situation where because of the financial situation the school is without the majority of instruments or uniforms for any kind of band or orchestra including the marching band which is at the heart of New Orleans culture. The situation is so bad that they are only able to teach music theory and hand and body rhythms which understandably the children finding boring. In a scene in the last episode the demolition crew are at a school where they argue the structure and first floor contents, especially the books, could be used again but they are told that the contract specifies total demolition because of first floor water contamination.
The other aspect of Antoine’s involvement is his continuing attempt to form his own band "Antoine Batiste and his Soul Apostles". In the next episode Slip Away he auditions street musician Sonny who is OK but not brilliant and it is touch and go if he will be retained. One problem is that he needs to continue to work the street to live until the band starts performing and earning money and he is late and misses an important rehearsal. There are indications of continuing drug use. He is warned that it would be wise for him to be more diligent because he is not a great musician, something which led his former girl friend Annie to be talent spotted leaving him on the street. He has found himself a new bed partner but there is still the impression that he pines for the relationship with Annie.
The band is joined by an established showman guitarist June Yamagishi when they debut at the bar of his former wife La Donna still recovering from her rape and general assault but because of his other commitments he is unavailable for the their second gig on Christmas Eve where the female singer as a backing group of three lovelies dressed in sexy Santa outfits. Sonny gets his chance to perform for money. It is in the sixth episode Feels like Raid that Sonny is late again and gets fired while at the school Antoine is trying to inspire the children by getting them to listrn to a recording of Louis Armstrong and his hot Five or Seven. I could not work out if it is a member of Antoines band or a fellow musician that is unintentionally shot in a gang or individual criminal incident and this provides an opportunity for most of the cast to participate in a community showing of respect and solidarity at the funeral.
As explained previously funeral services can include a traditional jazz band playing blues and dirges and they stand outside raising the musical instruments or giving a hand salute as the coffin is placed in the hearse on its way to the cemetery/crematoria. It is after the burial/cremation service that the Second Line Unit is formed when everyone joins in the dancing celebrating the past life and renewal of life as a marching Jazz band plays happy jazz and the Second Line official dancers jive about waving parasols and coloured handkerchiefs. Among those participating is David and Annie, as usual, and also Toni with her new chum the senior police Officer Colson who looks out of place and embarrassed. Ahead is Toni’s disturbed and rebellious daughter appearing to be enjoying her self for once.
I also have to make the comment that I do not like the music played by Antoine’s band which appears a hybrid modern, not original or experimental, not bluesy and forties and fifties swing. It is a gripe that I have about several of bands who play in the series. There appears to be a deliberate attempt to try and balance the traditional jazz played by hack musicians for the tourist economy in Bourbon Street with an eclectic mix of all forms of music to perhaps widen the image. This to my mind is a mistake, everyone knows Nashville as the capital of country music with the Grand Ole Opry House and New Orleans is home of Traditional Jazz Music but not Jazz Music in general with Big Band and Modern Jazz created in New York
This bring me nicely to Albert the cultural traditional New Orleans Indian Chief who spends much of his time creating fantastic hand sewn beaded costumes although as he explains to someone wanting to make a TV documentary fellow Indians do good work for the community although it is not clear to me how they make a living unless they are city or state financially sponsored. The connection is his Modern Jazz playing son based now in New York at constant odds with his father who had hoped his son would play Trad Jazz in New Orleans and also take up his role as an Indian. He must be a pretty good Modern Jazz player because he appears to be able to fly back and forth to New Orleans without difficulty. First he flies to New Orleans to spend time with his dad over Christmas and takes him out for some posh nosh where father walks out, in part because of his depressed angry state but because his son does not understand that he wants to have his own home back and things as they were and because his steak is half cooked. The son comes over soon after to apologise and bring the steak with him, they smoke pot and laugh together.
Delmond continues to wrestle between his music and his roots. He sacked his manager because the man was not using the Internet to promote the music and because he was playing to half filled rooms where people were more interested in their food, drink and company than listening. He has since rehired the manager and informs of his plan for a new record, to incorporate the roots of New Orleans jazz into his modern jazz. His home is full of Trad jazz vinyl’s to the annoyance of his partner and in the sixth episode he gets his group to play traditional music with a modern edge although from my viewpoint it is a thin edge at that and more like Humphrey Littleton forty years ago or the Chris Barber sound today than contemporary concert and lounge jazz, so I judged when he introduced his first creation during his current gig at the Internationally famous Blue Note Club in New York and which now has copy cat establishments in several International cities as well as the ongoing recording Label.
At the start of the fourth episode the TV documentary maker wants to watch Albert at work on his suit but he says she has to wait until the suit is finished. This is in part because be has become depressed, although he strongly denies this, at his situation with the lack of progress on getting money to repair his home, explaining that there are 90000 of them in a similar situation where only a handful has been granted awards a year after the disaster.
In the first series he occupied the bar of a friend but had to move out when the man returned to reopen and to use the residential quarters for his own use. Albert commenced by camping out on the site of his ruined home but by the fourth episode he has established running water after paying his dues to the authorities and also a toilet, However a city inspector says he cannot use the facility until it has been signed off by a professional plumber. Too proud to ask his son for the cash he packs in and moves to stay with friends in Houston where his son visits and gives him a ticket to come and stay until returning for Mardi Gras. He takes his father to a New York store which sells nothing but beads although they are out of stock of the particular item he needs to complete the work he is engaged in. He shows his father the work which represents his father, whose mood is to find fault with everything and most of all everything his son does reluctantly admits the young man has done well.
It also happens that Delmond meets up again with Jeanette who has become increasingly dissatisfied with her work for the top notch nosh restaurant and she throws a glass of Sazerac (a New Orleans sprit based Cocktail) over the foody critic who wrote the article rubbishing New Orleans food. She is soon back elsewhere in the city with a French master chef who has a more laid back style and she is able to get time off when she learns that her former Sous chef finds himself in custody because although he is not an illegal immigrant in the strict sense he does not have his papers when his status is challenged. The French master chef declares that while for all other people he would not a grant a concession for ones Sous Chef nothing should be too much trouble. The odd aspect in this situation as that it is best Jeanette ran only a small operation in New Orleans which would not normally need and therefore pay for such an individual, usually required when the establishment is large and their is a full team of individuals specialising in the various components of cooking at the same time.
Back in New York Jeanette had dinner with Delmond after hearing him play at the club and responding to his playing of the new Trad jazz based number with a Second Line dance. The two met originally at the airport and when they meet again he invits her to attend the New Year concert he was playing.
There are no immediate life changing moment for Davis, the young white rebel who continues to be into everything of the black culture. When he attempt to move into rap he is reminded of his natural white background culture and viewpoint. This does not prevent him persuading his elderly and moneyed eccentric aunt to part with $5000 to fund studio time to make a new record with different style including his rapping. His limitations are brought home when he attends the gig of the rapper Lil Calliope and he invites the young man to advise and participate in the record recording.
Annie gets another invite to perform with an established singer and the woman’s record company producer is introduced saying he is on the look out for new talent although Anne does not anticipate hearing further. A bearded old timer advises that she will get no where until she writes her own music and songs which she talks over with Davis and creates something which is already familiar and is discouraged The two continue to appear to have little in common other than sharing a double bed and otherwise lead separate lives although they appear at the funeral and at an anti violence rally.
This brings me to the work of Toni, the problems she has with her daughter and her budding relationship with the district police commander. The daughter continues to be openly defiant blaming her mother for the death of her father, staying out late without giving any indication to her mother where she is and when she will return. When a master at the school, someone with whom she had had little contact also commits suicide Sofia claims to be unaffected by this death although when approached by a teacher and then by a friend this seems to get her to face what happened to her father. On one of her disappearances she takes the ferry from where her father disappeared and the suggestion is that she had not grasped that his death was deliberate and why her mother was so angry with him and did not want to have a Second Line Funeral as he had Willed. She is still resentful and hostile of her mother although this may be as much teenage assertion of growing into adulthood and independence as blaming her mother for her father‘s death. Toni wakes with a dream of her husband having returned having been on holiday and sitting at the table enjoying a meal as if nothing has happened which underlines the sense that he walked from the problems they were all facing.
Toni is still trying to resolve what happened to the young man who had visited and stayed in New Orleans and was found shot dead and which I believe has something to do we the shoot kill reclaim control of the city policy which was enacted although how far this fictional licence is based on fact I am not sure. She continues to receive conflicting information about what happened in relation to looted supermarket and where the body was located and to the existence of reports and scene of crime evidence. Under work pressure she hands the case to a colleague. However later she is advised that two cartridges founds in relation to a different situation suggest the same gun as used in relation to the body found in or outside the supermarket. A police officer she interviews claims that there had been a sniper shooting from a high rise building which had changed the attitude of the police. The suspicion being created is that he was shot by a policeman and then the death was covered up to suggest he was looter rather than someone not involved or just trying to find food to survive.
Her friend the local commander is concerned when he visits the first death on his patch and where the investigating officers believe it was a home killing with the husband pretending that he and his son were also victims but escaped. When the officer discovers there was a break in robbery reported only short while before the death incident near by he is alarmed to find out that that then two incidents were not examined to see if there is a relationship.
La Donna has become a prisoner in her bar after the rape and general assault although plays little role in the running of the establishment. She does not visit her husband and children and it is Antoine who takes over their Christmas presents to where they live with her dentist husband in Baton Rouge. Detectives visit La Donna with photos of men arrested in recent similar case in the area, They showed her several sets of photos and she picks the men who attacked her and these are those now in custody.
I have still to get to grip with the role of Nelson Hidalgo who Wikipedia describes as “a politically connected developer and venture capitalist from Dallas, who becomes involved in the renewal efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans.” This is accurate as far as it goes although there are indications that he is something of a con man. He keeps contact with the leading local financier/politician who counsels Nelson to concentrate on the demolition work and then suggests that he buys up the properties in a presently empty area of the city with the suggestion of inside information that the site has been earmarked for major development. Prior to Christmas he gives a gift of an expensive rosary with a silver or platinum cross which is much appreciated but he explains that while he was brought up a catholic of a several generation catholic family accepting their lives in the same community he is not longer practicing and has other interests planned for the evening. He is persuaded to attend the midnight mass and to afterwards accept the hospitality of the contact. He also appears to be courting the Mayor for planning permission support and as a token of good faith at the suggestion of the Mayor makes a donation of a couple of thousand dollars to ensure there are ongoing Second Line musicians and dancers. He so far represents those who want to move forward and build up from the city’s roots and he continues to engage in the good food and entertainment on offer, including the girls but not so far the drugs.
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