Village rises for New Orleans musicians.

[Maddy McCall]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Standing outside his new mint-green house, Fredy Omar hears the rumble of construction trucks, the buzz of drills and the thud of hammers. It's all an overture for something far sweeter - the sound of music.

Maybe it'll come from Omar, himself, rehearsing a soaring Latin love song on the piano in his living room.

Or Michael Harris, his neighbor across the street, plucking his bass, humming a hopeful tune he wrote about unity.

Or Dan Oestreicher, who lives just around the corner, improvising on his saxophone from his porch.

This is not a band, but a community in the making, a community mostly of musicians - a jambalaya of singers, drummers, and trumpet, piano, guitar, harmonica and even washboard players who'll be living along the same streets, practicing and maybe even performing together a few blocks away.

It's the new Musicians' Village, the inspiration of two New Orleans-born luminaries - singer-pianist Harry Connick Jr. and saxophonist Branford Marsalis - who decided in the post-Katrina ferment that something was needed to help musicians stay and play in the city.

Two years after the hurricane, their vision is quickly turning into a rainbow-colored reality. The village - a tidy cluster of about 80 brightly painted homes - is just a small glimmer of hope in a scarred city, but it already has given Omar and others a roof over their heads and a chance to make music once again.

"If I can have another round of New Orleans, give it to me," Omar says, his arms outstretched as if to embrace all of North Roman Street. "I feel at home here."


More here: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NEW_ORLEANS_MUSIC_VILLAGE?SITE=MSJAD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT




The Katrina Effect: Measured in Gigs


ON a recent sultry afternoon here, Tipitina’s — arguably the most famous musical haunt in a city famous for its music — is eerily quiet. This ramshackle, two-story yellow joint at the corner of Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas won’t start jumping until after dark, when Ivan Neville and his band, Dumpstaphunk, take center stage.

But upstairs, past balconies smelling of stale beer and cigarettes, past walls plastered with yellowed concert posters, musicians are working. Some edit concert fliers, tweak Web sites or research overseas jazz festivals; others get legal advice or mix audio and video; others simply chatter about who has found gigs and who is still struggling.

Since late 2005, just a few months after Hurricane Katrina tore through this city, more than 1,000 New Orleans musicians have become members of Tipitina’s three cooperative music offices. “I go in sometimes and all I’m doing is checking my e-mails,” says Margie Perez, an effervescent blues singer.

For Ms. Perez and others trying to rebuild fragile livelihoods as artists, grass-roots efforts like the co-ops have been a boon, helping them to replace lost or damaged instruments and sound equipment, arranging and subsidizing gigs and providing transportation, health care and housing. The Tipitina’s Foundation, the club’s charitable arm, has distributed about $1.5 million in aid; in all, Tipitina’s and other nonprofit groups have marshaled tens of millions of dollars in relief from around the world to help bolster the music business here.

But it remains to be seen how long a loose-knit band of charities can stand in for coordinated economic development in one of New Orleans’s most important business sectors. Although New Orleans is one of the country’s most culturally distinct cities, a large-scale recording industry never took root here, even before Katrina. Yet the informal music sector, the kind visitors find in clubs and bars, and large-scale musical events like Jazz Fest, is a mainstay of the city’s tourism business.

In fact, local authorities say, music and cuisine are the twin pillars of the tourism industry here; the leisure and hospitality businesses account for almost 63,000 jobs in the city and for about 35 percent of the sales taxes. Both of those figures are larger than those of any other business sector, including the energy industry.

Still, nearly two years after Katrina, there are fewer restaurants and bars offering live music, and the ones that do are paying less, musicians say. As the reality of the slow recovery has set in, fewer locals feel that they can afford cover charges or even tips, so clubs that used to have live music four or five nights a week have cut back to two or three.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/business/yourmoney/05tipi.html?hp