-Our heavenly father, we thank you for the beauty of the earth to share with one another.

We are commemorating what our ancestors did and we thank you for the wonders, the seeds planted in Congo Square.

We ask your blessing because we do this in their ancestral memory.

[ Upbeat music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Chanting ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -This city wears two faces.

Just like the Mardi Gras masks, tragedy and comedy.

[ Group singing "Hey Pocky Way" ] African spiritualists say that a heart attack is just another term for a broken heart.

Personally, I believe the city is stronger than all of us.

[ Band plays "I'll Fly Away" ] ♪♪ -The jazz funeral helps us to transition from death to a new existence, a new spiritual existence.

[ Band continues "I'll Fly Away" ] ♪♪ -No place else in the United States is gonna let Black people take over the streets for four hours long.

You know, it's just not gonna happen.

[ Band continues "I'll Fly Away" ] ♪♪ -Here, you can shout, you can create, you can be transformed, four or five, six hours on end into another world that really sets you free.

[ Clarinet playing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Lively music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -I've always believed you don't choose New Orleans, New Orleans chooses you.

It lives in a person and once they meet New Orleans, they know.

There's no middle ground.

[ Lively music ] ♪♪ As a little girl growing up in Texas, the names "New Orleans" and "Louisiana" sounded so mysterious and exotic to me.

I asked my parents if we could go there on vacation.

The answer was always a "No!"

Then in my early 20s and able to do as I damn well pleased, I took a little look-see trip to resolve my curiosity.

I felt like I was being pulled into a dream.

So very surreal and familiar, like a memory from another time long ago.

Finally, I decided to cut my losses in hard-hearted Hollywood and move to New Orleans.

♪♪ My goal was to become a food writer, and I'd enrolled in culinary school.

Magnificent mealtime moments, make me regret not getting my behind here years earlier.

But instead of writing about good food in the city I love, I write about the city I love and eat good food.

♪♪ This is an old city of generations of people that never left.

And so there is a long memory arc.

Everybody calls you "baby" and "sweetheart."

Neighbors come over unannounced and ask you to "run 'em by the store."

I love bike riding along Bayou St.

John, and standing on the levee at night, staring out at the river.

New Orleans lured me from my dark, brooding funk and tossed me into the fire of dancing Black folks and brass instruments.

I began to feel alive again.

[ Ethereal clarinet music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I estimate in my career over 40 years -- I did a count -- and I think I've played in over 200 jazz funerals.

Many of them were for musicians, the older generation musicians that I knew.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ It was rather late before I really heard authentic traditional New Orleans jazz and was conscious of it.

I was starting to like it, but I didn't think I could play it.

I met Doc Paulin.

He called me to play a church parade.

He said, "You will dress right, because I only have people in uniform in this organization."

And he had this accent, you know, "In this organization."

He even went as far as to say, "A clean white shirt and clean shoes."

And if you didn't have the right stuff, he would send you home.

I've been blessed, being directly descended from the core of authentic New Orleans jazz.

Papa John Joseph on my mother's side, he became a mentor for a lot of musicians, while working at Preservation Hall.

♪♪ ♪♪ When I really heard traditional music, it was like a part of my being, a part of my spirit.

The music sort of breeds an extended family.

[ Murmuring ] -What happened this morning in New Orleans was the funeral procession for Edwin Harrison.

Edwin came up in a cultural family and was a Black Men of Labor member.

-Try to tune up, B-flat.

-So today, you got a chance to see what a New Orleans jazz funeral procession looks like.

-We create a uniform that's respectful, and that looks good.

Black tie, a black cap, black pants, and nice, shining black shoes.

[ Trumpet and tuba rehearsing ] Yeah, that's it, you got it.

Trying to get my young man here ready.

-You called me up early in the morning.

You're looking good.

I worry about you.

-Yeah, thank you!

Come on here, Doctor, so I can pay you and get this money out of my hand.

The first song we're gonna play is gonna be "Just A Little While To Stay Here."

Play that all the way to the church.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -That band better be strong, I mean strong.

When you're going to a funeral, that's the last thing you can do for that person.

Without the music, you have nothing.

♪♪ That band starts two, three blocks away.

And as it gets closer to that church, you saw that go all the way down.

-Way down, way down, way down!

[ Band playing quietly ] ♪ Glory, glory, Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Since I laid my burden down... ♪ -And now the band is back there to bring that body back out.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ No more sickness, no more sorrow.

They're free and they've laid their burden down.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Following the grand marshal, we would walk several blocks, then cutting the body loose, sets you free.

The musicians again divide into two groups and allow the hearse to pass to the cemetery, playing the last of the slow dirges.

-Now, we'd come back to the street, it's time for the celebration of the life of that individual, knowing that he is going... hopefully to heaven!

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ -And once we get through the one-two-three formal aspects of it, it's wide open.

It's a free open second line.

They may play something like "Didn't He Ramble."

"He rambled all over town, he rambled till the butcher cut him down."

And everybody is going to do their individual dance.

-The early jazz men called these jobs, "funerals with music."

-People came to New Orleans from distant places.

Different colors, different tongues.

They buried their dead in ceremonies that gave us stories about the city and how the city changed.

[ Children chattering, ceremonious music ] ♪♪ [ Crowd chanting "Go ahead, go ahead!"

] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Children chanting "We want more!"

] [ Upbeat music ] Years ago, social aid and pleasure clubs took the dancing at jazz funerals and they began a tradition -- Second lines, the parades put on by these neighborhood groups.

-I was always the type of person that followed the parades, uptown New Orleans.

Every Sunday, there was a church parade, or the Odd Fellows or the Elks Club.

I used to lock that beat in my head for hours!

I was a member of Danny Barker's Fairview Baptist Church Band.

Then Mr.

Herman Sherman... ...he says, "Look, I need some trumpet players.

And a friend of yours suggested that I give you a call."

Well, I was elated about it.

The Young Tuxedo Brass Band?

Of course!

♪♪ He says, "I'll take you down to the Musicians Union, get you sworn in, and I'll pay whatever needs to be paid for you."

♪♪ -One of my greatest joys is to have the responsibility of chronicling this and being, you know, sort of a historian and a keeper for this incredible tradition that my people have maintained all of these years.

-That's Barbarin family!

-Good evening, how y'all doing?

-Hey, how're you doing?

-New Orleans people have a compulsive drive to do everything the opposite of everywhere else.

Maybe dancing when someone dies, is the most brilliant thing you can do.

[ Ethereal trumpet music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I wanted to let y'all know that we didn't have a set program because Linda never thought about a set program.

-Alright, say that!

-She always told me, "Just turn the musicians and singers aloose and have a good time with her."

-Alright!

-Anybody who feels free that they wanna sing and praise the Lord, the musicians are here.

Linda wants you to enjoy yourselves.

So the wake is now open.

-Could it be that the antidote to the poison in our struggle is to celebrate?

♪ Well, I feel better ♪ ♪ So much better ♪ ♪ Since I laid my burden down ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Since I laid my burden down ♪ [ Band plays "When the Saints Go Marching In" ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Oh, when the saints ♪ -♪ Go marching in ♪ -♪ Oh, when the saints go marching in ♪ ♪ Oh, Lord I wanna be, wanna be... ♪ ♪ When the saints go marching in ♪ ♪♪ -We celebrate and laugh at death.

We're sad because you're not here anymore, but we're happy because you're going to a better reward, free from all of these earthly troubles and worries.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Black folks from the States talk about arriving in Africa for the first time and being so happy.

For me, New Orleans is that place.

The motherland whose ground I kiss.

-That music and those experiences is what allowed New Orleans to be the most African city in America.

And it all is a carryover from Congo Square.

[ Drumming ] ♪♪ ♪♪ The more you delve into New Orleans history, the more you will understand and appreciate the African contribution.

-The city began under the French in 1718 on a site the Native Americans called "Bulbancha" -- place of many tongues.

-They brought nearly 6,000 enslaved Africans to work.

Skilled artisans, blacksmiths, warriors, and farmers.

-These people kept alive the rituals of ancestral memory.

-What makes us different from every place else is, the slave owners would tell their slaves, "On Sunday, you're free to speak your native language outside the city in mass numbers."

The slaves would come from all up and down the river, congregate, meet, sing, dance, cry.

People having relief from the ugly hard treatment that white people put on Black people.

They didn't have psychiatrists.

So these folks had to figure out how to be happy in an insane environment.

[ Drumming ] -Planters could not generate enough crop to feed the people.

And so the field began as a Sunday market for Africans to trade what they needed to feed their families.

[ Drumming ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Drumming ] ♪♪ -Many of the slaves believed that when they died, they would go back to Africa.

It was a belief that sustained them, gave them hope.

-In some circles, they say, "You celebrate when they die, and you cry when they're born."

-In New Orleans, we have the closest spiritual connection to some African religious traditions and practices.

And I think, fortunately, an art form attached to it.

Traditional New Orleans jazz, parallels very much African singing styles.

-♪ Hallelujah ♪ [ Clarinet playing ] Certain instruments represent certain types of voices.

The clarinet in the jazz funeral is a higher voice which sort of represents the female voice, a wailing, crying, sobbing widow.

♪♪ [ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Paul Barbarin's funeral.

This procession was so long, there were six brass bands.

And the first brass band got to the cemetery before the casket left the church.

♪♪ The "funerals of music" is for the living, you respect the living.

The dead is gone, he can't hear!

"Amazing Grace" and "Old Rugged Cross," "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."

The music comes from old spiritual and gospel tunes.

-When I was a little girl and there was trouble, my grandmother told me music chases the devil away.

Music transforms what's wrong into what's right.

-We got to the cemetery one time and it was closed.

-Ha!

The cemetery closed on 'em at five o'clock, and they had to bring the body back, and we played the funeral the next day again!

[ Laughs ] [ Upbeat music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Nobody knows where the jazz funeral is going to go except the grand marshal.

And it's his job to do the zigzag lines.

They could fool the spirits so that the bad luck wouldn't follow those who participated.

♪♪ -The grand marshal in the front, if he says, "Stop and dance," you stop and dance.

If he says, "Criss-cross," you criss-cross.

If he says, "Come around up the middle and to the back," that's what you do.

-With that Napoleonic uniform, he almost looked kind of comic.

Very, very straight, and he had a certain kind of frown on his face, sorta like this.

♪♪ -The umbrella came from African rituals as a sign of respect, honoring the chiefs and the important people in the particular tribes.

-All grand marshals carry gavels.

And this comes about from the Elks, the Masons, because they were the marshal of the day.

-Blacks really had to depend upon their organizations as burial support.

-Black people were laid out in their houses.

-They'd put you on what they'd call a cooling board the first night.

And then the next day put you in a coffin, and the next day bury you.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ -They'd pay a certain amount per month towards their burial.

If you paid a nickel more or something like that, you could have a band at your funeral.

This was like an insurance policy.

Black people could not belong to insurance companies.

-My grandmother belonged to several benevolent associations, and I used to have to go and pay her dues.

You had the Merry-Go-Round club, you had the Young True Friends.

Looking in the faces of some of those older individuals, some of them would just give me a nice nod of the head, a wink of the eye.

♪♪ When a member died, whether he was a common laborer, someone who worked on the river front, whether he was a school teacher, you would think that it was a burial for a five-star general.

♪♪ -Jazz funerals and brass band tradition, you have not only African tradition being followed, you also have the European.

In the 19th century particularly, you're looking at the benevolent societies or "bienfaisant" societies as they were called in French-speaking or Creole-speaking areas.

So it's really a combination, which makes it American.

[ Ethereal piano music ] ♪♪ -The groups that came here from Germany, from France, and certainly the Spanish, and particularly Italian populations, music and funerals went together in all of these cultures.

St.

Louis Number 2 is revered because it tells a story.

Part of what you got for your dues in a benevolent association is a big send off, to tell the community, "This person mattered."

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ We're going on to a better place, but gotta have music, gotta have a parade, gotta look good when you die.

It also is a form of protection.

They are circling the wagons because they are entering a hostile environment.

♪♪ -The beauty and problem with living in New Orleans is that at any given moment, life and death can change places with each other.

Try as you may to control what you let enter your life, you never know what's waiting around the corner that may level you to the ground.

-In one month alone, August of 1853, 4,800 people died of yellow fever, 4% of the population.

-The city now had 17 cemeteries, and they were overflowing.

-At the cemetery gates, the winds brought intimation of the rank atmosphere of rotting corpses -- exposed to the heat of the sun, swollen with corruption, bursting their coffin lids.

What a feast of horrors.

Corpses piled in pyramids.

Death fell hardest among the immigrants, crowded into miserable tenements.

-Pierre Casanave, a colored Creole undertaker on Bourbon Street hired brass bands to escort the horse-drawn procession.

-Black crepe shrouded the caskets for adults.

White, the color for children.

-The yellow fever epidemics completely overwhelmed the medical infrastructure.

Any vacant space was sought out, including dance halls.

The people who came to dance continued to dance, even when they were makeshift hospitals.

This is the only defense the people in New Orleans have, whether we're talking about hurricanes or epidemics, is to fight back with music and try to live in the moment, enjoying life.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -My appreciation of the benevolent societies, the white people began to understand that there was money in the Black community, and they began to come in and sell insurance policies.

So the benevolent society saw fit to turn into a social aid and pleasure club.

[ Ceremonious music ] -They began to host these annual parades, and so each of the clubs has their day, about 60 of those clubs.

Most still do a lot of community service.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Danny Barker was crucial to help organize kids to play this music and learn this music so that what these old guys knew wouldn't totally get away.

-In my time, our people encouraged us to play music.

When you become involved with the arts, you take on a little sophistication.

I come from the Barbarin family, 38 interrelated musicians in this family.

-Danny Barker, a New Orleans giant, left for New York in 1930 with his wife, Blu Lu.

He wrote songs Lu recorded.

They were flush during the years he toured with Cab Calloway.

The Barkers came home in 1965.

It was a grand last chapter.

Danny wrote a memoir and other books and became a mentor to young musicians.

-Greg Stafford called me and said, "Fred, Mr.

Barker just passed."

We had to bury Danny.

Now, we know this man needs to be buried with a brass band funeral because his contribution is gargantuous, right?

Well, Mr.

Barker told Mrs.

Barker not to bury him with a brass band funeral 'cause he was disgruntled about the behavior.

There was throwing beer on the casket, jumping on houses, the music was raunchy.

-Early '80s, there was a lot of drugs on the streets.

-We played a lot of funerals, a lot.

And during the '89, that's when the crack scene was real heavy, crack came on the scene, boom.

People was dropping like flies.

Terrible.

[ Crowd chanting ] ♪♪ -People have turf wars against one another.

-Shooting guns.

-I can recall seeing Louis Cottrell running for cover.

-[ All ] Gangster, gangster!

-It's not members of the culture perpetrating that violence; it's that opportunity for someone to show up and settle a score with someone else.

But you have to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes, right?

The history of oppression, just the basic right to education didn't exist here.

Some of these kids, they don't even have jobs.

Or they may have a piece of a job and an illegal hustle.

-For a younger audience to come out to follow the parades changed it as well.

It's good for the music to evolve, but I think that they should be able to play the old dirges, some of the marches.

They owe that to themselves and the musicians who have passed on.

-Danny Barker used to always say, "The older musicians had a lot to offer," and that there were a lot of young men and women who would benefit from these old guys.

He was pursuing how to save the music.

-I said, "Ms.

Lu, if you give me control of the music, I guarantee you that Mr.

Barker will have a respectful, traditional funeral."

-We got 15 men to marshal the funeral.

♪♪ This is a sway music.

You take your time with this and you sashay through this.

-We need to hold on to our culture.

-We get into the cemetery, and cats start coming to me.

Said, "Man, we need to do this again."

And I said, "Yeah, but not with a body."

We need to show that Black men work, we pay taxes, we pay tuitions, we pay mortgages, and we can still love our culture.

Black Men of Labor.

Here, Gralen.

What you got there?

Listen, bro, just sign -- everybody sign what you're taking.

Pants, shirts, vests, and handkerchiefs.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ -Black Men Of Labor formed in 1994 to honor Danny Barker's legacy.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -In any authentic second line, it's impossible to see everything that goes on.

So your eye is like a camera and you're constantly panning the scene.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You'll see hardened faces, some people with soft faces.

You'll see people that look like they're prosperous or prominent, some dressed in suits.

You'll see other people with rollers in their hair!

[ Band plays "I'll Fly Away" ] ♪♪ -Some of the best dancers in the second line scene are on the sidewalk.

They have their own footwork show going on, battle dancing.

I liken it to being in the ocean, and you're riding this wave.

-♪ When I die, Hallelujah by and by ♪ ♪ I'll fly away ♪ -Ice cold, ice cold!

-♪ Oh, I'll fly away, oh Lord, yes, I'll fly away ♪ ♪ ...in the morning... ♪ ♪ When I die, Hallelujah by and by ♪ ♪ I'll fly away ♪ -This spirit goes all the way back to the core of Africa.

For someone coming up in the United States, dealing with American racism, trying to find your place in this life and society and the world, that's the real value of the second line parade.

Why people follow four, five, six hours on end, because you can be transformed into another world that really sets you free.

-♪ Amazing grace ♪ -♪ ...Oh, Lord... ♪ -♪ How sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved... ♪ -Danny Barker and older musicians, who became not only mentors, but also close personal friends and musical colleagues -- when they all passed, they left a part of themselves, a part of their music, a part of the spirit.

I started to realize that I shouldn't really lament their passing so much because they were giving me something that I would in turn eventually, somehow have to pass on.

[ Thunder rumbles, rain pours ] And then when Katrina hit, passing on these traditions suddenly felt impossible.

♪♪ -I had only been living here a few months when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

When the federal levee system broke, 80% of the city went under water.

That's an area seven times the size of Manhattan Island.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -No red lights, no people.

Jesus, it's like the city is dead.

♪♪ I don't know if I should pray before or after I go in.

♪♪ My books, and much of my research.

Jazz biographies, everybody from Buddy Bolden to Josephine Baker to Bessie Smith to George Lewis.

Historic picture of Papa John Joseph -- disappeared.

The first published essay I ever wrote was on him.

Wherever you went in the room, those eyes would follow you.

He had that look of conviction and no matter what happened, that would give me strength.

Over 4,000 CDs in there.

Maybe a third of the CDs I had were rare and hard to find.

Films too.

Let's see, under here somewhere was a box of sheet music.

I don't think I can bear it.

Muhammad Ali knocking out Joe Frazier.

Let's see, what was in the VCR?

Probably my video of Beyoncé.

Ah, I hate losing that!

Let's see... ...an old Baptist hymnal.

I used to learn songs out of this to play.

That was my African-American collection.

Reconstruction... And they're all gone.

30 years of life.

-There was really that question on the table, "Are we even going to fund rebuilding New Orleans?"

And you know, I was terrified that the call would be made that we wouldn't.

Then one of the things that definitely would have been lost is this tradition.

-That's the enduring lesson of the jazz funeral.

Return again in another life and it will be better and jubilant.

I have to keep remembering that, to go on.

-Then I began to feel the first stirrings of doubt.

Does it really make sense to start a new life in a graveyard city where people will probably suffer for a long time to come?

-A couple of hundred thousand people were still out of the city.

Some people were predicting that that was the end of New Orleans, let it go.

One of the older musicians that I used to play with quite a lot, John Robichaux, I found out that he and his son and his wife drowned in his house.

Many times I had brought him home from jobs to that very same house.

And I just had a very vivid picture of it in my mind.

And it was just... It was horrible to think about that kind of thing.

I mean, I certainly saw a lot of people that aged very quickly, a lot of people gained weight, a lot of people became alcoholics.

I knew, unfortunately, several people that committed suicide and it was a time when sometimes I felt like I couldn't handle it.

I didn't know where I was going to live.

I was battling with insurance companies.

I was exhausted and I was extremely depressed.

Eventually, I started to have nightmares, suddenly being covered in water and fighting for survival or even drowning.

-Driving down Broad Street, still without electricity, it looked very much like the back roads of South America, not the loud laughter we used to hear up and down Rampart and St.

Claude.

Spontaneous crying jags are the new New Orleans pastime.

Everyone understands, knowing they're just one Xanax away from wailing right alongside you.

But once New Orleans is in your blood, no other city will do.

We are strange birds wired to weather all sorts of elements to get back home.

-I came to A Studio in the Woods in 2007.

They had a restoration residency to help artists.

This area was, in fact, a plantation.

Going against the river, there's an area that most likely was a Maroon community.

The Maroons were runaway, escaped slaves.

Many Maroons lived in the swamps, usually cypress swamps, defying the established rules and coming up with a new type of existence.

♪♪ [ Singing "Mabele" ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -That Sunday was important.

They could exchange stories.

They could determine who made it, who didn't make it, who was alive, who was not alive... All of the things that happen in life.

A spirit that you couldn't kill.

Because when you lose your spirit, you're flat-lined, you're done.

[ Singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -There's no greater way of connecting with the Creator than nature, because that's the ultimate example of life and of hope.

So I would wake up with nothing particular in mind.

I would just play.

And strangely enough, it seemed like the birds in the distance would start echoing.

So we would have call-and-response type conversations!

[ Clarinet playing, birds chirping ] ♪♪ Then I started to try to look at the future optimistically.

I listened to New Orleans jazz, I also listened to African drumming.

I listened to Caribbean music, folk music.

I would think about New Orleans history, the mood of the city, the Mississippi River right across the road.

♪♪ Sometimes I didn't stop to eat.

I would start getting musical ideas, not a flow but a flood.

"We'll be together Sunday morning."

In a month's time I had two dozen songs.

"Come together."

So I was thinking about the past and the future.

As a younger musician, I played in church parades -- pastors' anniversaries, holidays, founding of a new church.

There was this song, "Sunday Morning."

And the idea was we could overcome our grief, our sadness, that we could rebuild the city together.

♪♪ ♪♪ Those church parades were incredible.

They would have brass bands that played jazz.

But at the request of the reverends, we would only play hymns.

And all of the hymns were uptempo hymns, joyous hymns.

And they were played with the same jazz style as we played everything else; we never played slow hymns like at a jazz funeral.

So it was really funny to see people trying to restrain themselves and strut very gracefully, instead of just break out into a second line!

♪ Come together ♪ ♪ Sunday morning ♪ ♪ The light pulls darkness from the sky ♪ ♪ Sunday morning ♪ ♪ When I see you ♪ ♪ We shall march together by and by ♪ -I write for the Gambit, which is our weekly arts and entertainment magazine.

I post weekly updates about second line parades, brass bands, the culture bearers, and people in our community that do such incredible work to keep these traditions alive.

-Deb brought a different lens to it.

So people really appreciate her appreciation.

I found out she was half Jewish and she was looking for a synagogue.

Invariably, halfway into the service, the doors would swing open and Deb would come in!

Really strong social values, laced with this raucous sense of humor and irony.

-One of the things that makes New Orleans so remarkable, is her ability to make fun of her pain.

We may be beat down, with one good leg, eye black, nerves bad, living in government trailers, but there's one thing we got, baby, and that's music.

♪♪ -A few years after Katrina, the city was still a wreck in many places.

I had a greater understanding of the fragility of our traditions, that they could be lost like much of the city was.

It really made me think about what my ancestors went through and how they survived something that was a daily grind, a daily part of their lives with such cruelty and hardships and such uncertainty.

♪♪ ♪♪ In the 1890s, as a young man, Papa John Joseph picked cotton upriver from New Orleans.

There were Josephs enslaved at Whitney, but I'm not sure of a direct link to my mother's line.

♪♪ -Many African-blooded people lost their family links to slavery.

After New Orleans became an American city with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, land owners wanted even more slave labor.

-After you've been ill-treated for so long, some of us take a position that I can't take no more.

That then develops a level of resistance.

Depending on where I am in my breaking point, it could be "today is a good day to die."

[ Aggressive drumming ] In the Haitian Revolution, they felt that we're going to get our freedom, or we're going to die trying to get our freedom.

-9,000 people from revolutionary Haiti changed the city in ways that we still see today.

New Orleans became a city of migrants.

♪♪ European and African music flourished in dance halls and ballrooms.

French Creoles from Haiti opened an opera house, the first in the U.S.

[ Woman singing opera ] But the revolution in Haiti, where enslaved Blacks beat the French, sent shock waves into Louisiana.

500 captive workers on upriver plantations forged the largest slave revolt in U.S.

history.

But marching to the city, they lost to American troops.

-Captured rebels were executed at Congo Square and elsewhere.

Dozens of heads mounted on spikes lined the river, as a warning.

Imagine what Africans who revered the dead felt upon seeing those heads.

♪♪ ♪♪ -With African masking forbidden by the big house, the people created Sunday outfits from material at hand.

The fusion of French and African tongues forged a new language, Louisiana Creole.

♪♪ Dancers of the Sub-Sahara followed the sun's rotation, moving in circles, swirling human rings that drew them into a spirit world of the living, the dead, and the unborn.

-When you close ranks on a ring dance, that is the crossroads of a spiritual life and the earthly life.

And that is inside the person.

♪♪ ♪♪ -As Africans danced in rings at Congo Square, European bands marched in lines just across Rampart Street, playing funeral parades for wealthy citizens.

♪♪ The bands also symbolized white authority.

-By the 1850s, New Orleans had become America's largest slave market.

-In 1861, the Civil War began.

The port of New Orleans fell early to the Union.

Soon free colored soldiers joined the fight against the Confederacy.

-Captain Andre Cailloux, the first celebrated Black hero of the Civil War, died in battle near Baton Rouge.

Captain Cailloux's funeral included 37 Black benevolent societies, members of the Union Army, and marching bands -- the largest burial procession for an African-blooded person New Orleans had ever seen.

Reconstruction became the war after the war.

Lynching was a weapon of white supremacy in regaining control.

[ Ethereal trumpet music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -In 1891, the city erected a monument to white supremacy which, quote, "gave us our state."

♪♪ ♪♪ There is a history that has eaten away at the resources and really the rights of Black people.

Everything is set up against you, and you are supposed to be the protector, you are supposed to be the hero, the provider, the wall of strength.

How can you be that if you are feeling hunted all the time?

[ Drumming and chanting ] ♪♪ -I'm from that Uptown!

-The only way to be able to turn the tables is if you put something positive in its place.

-The resistance born in Congo Square reverberates today.

Long ago, Black men began using Mardi Gras as a day of symbolic rebellion, creating the suits and masks of Native American warriors.

-For these masking Indians, parading was an act of freedom.

-That's right, everything has significance.

This is an African Queen.

[ Drumming ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The scabbard and the sword represents the power of the king.

I've had beadworkers come and see the layering of the beads and how extraordinarily complex it is.

The dexterity by which the beads are applied, the microcosmic work -- every figure has a spiritual essence to it.

Art, sculpture, music, and dance are the ultimate form of communication.

This is language.

I mean, there's so much content in here.

It's a published book.

♪♪ ♪♪ During monumental occasions, but especially funerals, there's an abandonment of physical self and a reconnect with the ancestral spirit.

You are no longer yourself.

You are the spirit of the ancestor calling that person back to the spirit world.

♪♪ -♪ Indians ♪ ♪ Indians ♪ ♪ My Indian Red ♪ ♪ Oh, My Indian Red ♪ ♪ You know I love to hear you call ♪ ♪ My Indian Red ♪ ♪ Big Chief!

♪ ♪ Big Chief of the nation ♪ ♪ The whole wide creation ♪ ♪ We won't bow down ♪ ♪ Not on that ground, on that dirty ground ♪ ♪ Because I love to hear you call My Indian Red ♪ [ Singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Big Chief.

Big Chief!

Rest on my brother, rest on.

-He'd say do what you wanna!

-Rest on.

-That's what he'd say.

Big Chief time.

[ Singing ] ♪ Shallow water, oh Mama ♪ -Some people say that "Shallow Water" pays homage to Native American women who signaled to Maroons that the time was right to cross the stream and escape.

[ Singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Big Chief!

♪♪ ♪♪ -Big Chief Harrison was inspired by the suits of a masking Indian tribe dating back to the 1880s.

That is when some 40,000 Blacks began migrating from the country into the city.

-♪ When the saints ♪ ♪ Go marching in ♪ ♪ When the saints go marching in ♪ ♪♪ -James Brown Humphrey was an ironic revolutionary, a mild-mannered music professor who began traveling by train in 1887 to outlying plantations.

Former governor Henry Clay Warmoth hired Humphrey.

-He wanted to live the life of a Southern planter, so he had to keep his workers happy.

And his idea was, they can entertain themselves with brass band music.

Great idea, except for one thing -- they left the plantation, moved to New Orleans, became musicians.

♪♪ -Slavery was finished.

Plantations turned to sharecropping and indentured servants for cheap labor.

Over several decades, 80,000 Italians, mostly from Sicily, came to Louisiana.

Like the Haitians nearly a century before, and the early French and Spanish colonists, they too changed New Orleans.

-The Sicilian population here was situated primarily in the lower French Quarter.

And then also in the Tremé neighborhood with African-American and Creole populations.

This is where Louis Prima grew up.

♪♪ New Orleans musicians had big ears.

If they were in earshot of each other and they liked what they heard, they would emulate that.

♪♪ ♪♪ -As they did in many parts of the South, migrants carried rituals of ecstatic worship and jubilee dancing.

The ring and the line, the African and European traditions, came together in these burial parades.

-Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong, they talked about as young children, experiencing second lines related to funerals.

♪♪ -The old military spine began to swing with surging rhythms from the churches.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ Many of the musicians who played on sawdust-spattered floors at night sat in the pews by day, playing hymns, and carrying those songs into parades for the dead.

But jazz developed in the era of the rise of Jim Crow laws, racial violence, and limits on Black freedom.

-White bands were attracting Black second lines, and they talked about beating off the Black second lines with sticks.

What does that tell you?

They were afraid of them.

They feared free Black people in the street.

-This is very current and fresh and real and alive for people who lived here.

So when you live under siege, all you know is that you have to do what it takes to activate change.

-On the day I went to law school, the only lawyers I'd ever seen in my life, I'd been -- they were all white and I'd been shining their shoes.

I chaired the citizens committee.

In 1963, we marched 15,000 people on City Hall.

-♪ All in the jail house ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪ ♪ All in the jail house ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪ ♪ Let it shine, let it shine... ♪ -Both of my parents were from New Roads, Louisiana.

There were people in that community, old people, who had been slaves.

-I'm glad we were able to get this funeral together.

I mean, this is one of the more important dignitaries, I could say -- -Yeah.

-...of New Orleans culture.

-He was a great influence on me in terms of reading about Black people's struggle.

He gave me that book "Carnival Of Fury."

-Oh, yeah.

-William Ivy Hair, about the Robert Charles incident.

-Yeah.

-I got out of law school in 1959, and the only job offer I had was to be a clerk in the post office.

So I just hung up a shingle.

I tried civil rights cases in many parts of the state, and my attitude was we had to just look for higher ground.

[ Singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Band playing "We Shall Overcome" ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Taking to the streets held a powerful meaning for Lolis Elie throughout his life.

And that's the send-off we gave him.

♪♪ -Three weeks after Mr.

Elie died, the city, under Mayor Mitch Landrieu, took down the 1891 monument to white supremacy.

The Robert E. Lee statue and two other Confederate monuments came down as well.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I love this city, even though it's backwards.

The antidote to our emotional meltdowns over New Orleans being broken is to be back in broken New Orleans.

♪♪ -Yeah!

In New Orleans, I had been to one second line in the past, and it had been such a transcendent experience.

So, in May of 2013, I was going to spend 36 hours in New Orleans, and I would have about an hour at the second line before I had to head to the airport.

Sure enough, you hear that sound like the horns of Jericho coming out of the house, and the house sounds like it's gonna burst apart with all the musical energy.

-Mother's Day 2013, I was there with my camera.

I was dating a musician in the band, and we had been moving about 30 minutes.

-And so I was waiting there at the intersection of North Villere Street and Frenchmen.

-All of a sudden we heard this shooting.

-You know, after the shooting stopped, there was two to three seconds of silence.

And then suddenly the silence was broken.

[ Murmurs ] -Please stop moving her!

Stop moving, don't move her!

-I had a lot of blood on my hands.

Then people began to come over and say, "Are you okay?"

And, "You were shot."

And one of those was the head of the second line club, Ed Buckner.

And he was saying, "I'm so sorry this happened to you."

-There was a second shooter, and one of his bullets hit me.

And so there were 19 of us that were shot.

-I was surprised to hear that so many people had gotten shot.

But there had been so many other incidents of people having feuds with one another.

"Oh, I'll catch him at the second line next week," without any consideration that you might possibly harm somebody else.

-The doctor came in and said, "She has been shot in what I would call the 'soul' of the body."

You know, right in the middle of her body, which affected all her -- so many organs.

-I got home to San Francisco, I was reading the news, and here is this person, Deborah Cotton.

And she wasn't expected to live.

-I lost a couple of organs, and they had to really reconstruct me internally.

I felt like, and I looked like a 90-year-old woman.

I lost -- I went down to like 100 pounds.

I'd lost a lot of my hair.

I turned this really awful brown-green color from all of the meds that I was on.

And I just was weak and sick all day, every day for about a year.

But I did turn a corner with a lot of help from friends and family.

Although I realize the young men that committed that heinous crime will not honor their part of the social contract in being in community with us, it does not give me any sense of satisfaction or resolution to be a part of sending them to jail.

I hold them responsible, but I hold us responsible too.

If we don't begin to see the connections between our resources and folks living in crippling, unconscionable poverty, we're not holding up our end of the social contract, either.

-A major Jewish teaching is that it is our responsibility to heal the world.

Tikkun olam, the pieces becoming whole, the light back together.

It played out in her relationship to the young men that shot her.

-I want you to hold on to what I am saying today.

I believe in you, your humanity, your ability to change.

I believe that you have value and worth, something positive to give.

This jail time will be like a timeout to hopefully recover your humanity, your dreams.

-That statement, it just gives me chills.

That someone could summon that degree of generosity and forgiveness.

I grew up in the church.

I believe forgiveness is important, but I didn't kid myself into thinking that I would have been able to forgive that easily.

That was why I knew I had to meet her.

I said, "This is the actions of a saint."

-You know, after the shooting, family members and friends said, "Okay, now are you gonna move back home?

Now are you finally gonna give up New Orleans?"

There's just never a thought about leaving this city.

It's like finding a soulmate.

I am where I'm supposed to be.

[ Ceremonious music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -She wanted that experience every Sunday.

And it was very hard for her to accept that she was living in a different normal.

-She was in a lot of pain, and I wondered what it was like for her to deal with that, and then to also have enough character to forgive the person that shot her.

-It was an intense experience for her to step back on the streets again.

Her body had had too many blows.

She hoped for some procedure that would help heal.

And the doctor finally said to her, "I don't think it's gonna work."

That cycle of pain, pain pills, her organs just started shutting down.

And so she actually was in a coma.

Andrea, Annie and I read her poetry and talked to her.

And then she died.

[ Ethereal clarinet music ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Deb's death was a shock to me.

There were a lot of things I wanted to share with her about my experiences in the second line years before.

And I wanted to understand how she fell in love with this tradition.

♪♪ I believe for her, that was probably a way of finding freedom.

Freedom of expression and a sense of rebelliousness dominating the streets.

That same spirit of resistance of the Maroons and of the Indians.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing ] [ Singing ] -Deborah "Unana" "Big Red" Cotton came with her whole heart.

Perhaps this was never more evident than when she not only forgave and visited in jail the young man who shot her, but also became a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform.

-Our relationship with Debbie Unana Deb Big Red has changed -- changed from a physical one to a spiritual one.

She once likened her relationship with New Orleans to being with a lover that you just can't get enough of.

And for Deb, I'm so grateful that she didn't just choose New Orleans, but that New Orleans also chose her.

♪♪ -Deb had a saying, "If I don't do anything else before I leave here, I need to have made my presence felt and do what I can to repair the world."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The jazz funeral expresses a certain kind of freedom.

It's an amazing thing to me how the music of Congo Square and that rebellious spirit survived in the people of New Orleans and became part of the second line tradition, Mardi Gras Indians, and jazz.

It commands another way of being, another type of thought.

♪♪ ♪♪ -New Orleans is the queen of the apocalypse, having survived fires, floods, pirates, wars, yellow fever, slavery, civil rights struggles, political graft, and hurricanes over the last 300 years.

She breaks your heart till you're crying on the kitchen floor.

She haunts you, melts you, and is just a damn joy to live in.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Let us celebrate the joyful good times that we had ♪ ♪ When you came into our lives and really made us glad ♪ ♪ We will always remember how you danced that second line ♪ ♪ And we all join together every time ♪ ♪ Still see the light in your smile ♪ ♪ You stayed awhile, and showed great style ♪ ♪ We were not sad because you went away ♪ ♪ 'Cause we'll be back together some sweet day ♪ ♪ Now I know that you're in heaven ♪ ♪ And with that we're fine ♪ ♪ Your spirit is still with us ♪ ♪ In our hearts and in our mind ♪ ♪ We know that you're up in that ♪ ♪ Eternal second line ♪ ♪ And we'll all be with you one day ♪ ♪ Now our time on this earth may be short ♪ ♪ But it's a start of eternal life ♪ ♪ God gave us this time on earth, yeah ♪ ♪ To enjoy the life that we have ♪