Jackson Hole Underground

(Photos © Jim Stanford — click to enlarge)

It’s a good bet that at some point during Jazz Fest, you’ll find yourself listening to the most incredible music in the most unlikely of places. So it’s smart not to plan too much and instead go with the flow, freeing yourself up for moments of serendipity.

Last Friday, one of the biggest days of the festival, forced me to choose between Michael Franti and Stevie Wonder, who were playing simultaneously on different stages. Having seen Franti and promoted his movie in Jackson in March, I opted for Stevie, who I had never seen. (He busted out all his funk hits, but more on that later.)

During the afternoon, beneath the Wyoming flag, we got word that Franti and Spearhead were going to play a free concert that night in the Ninth Ward, the neighborhood most devastated by the flood. Rumors of guest jams and secret shows pop up all the time, but this one sounded like Franti’s style. He confirmed it during his performance at the Fairgrounds.

Even before Katrina, the Ninth Ward was an area where few Jazz Festers would venture. I had been out there earlier in the week, surveying the rebuilding, and knew where the show was to take place. Still, locals urged us not to go. The Ninth Ward is a battleground at night, they said, much more dangerous than by day. We figured that if Franti could walk the streets of Baghdad with his guitar, he could do so on the streets of New Orleans, and we would be safe with him.

Because of rainstorms, the concert was moved indoors to the MLK School, just down the road from the home of Fats Domino, who had to be evacuated by boat after Katrina. The show was a benefit for Common Ground, the first relief group to set up in the Lower Ninth Ward after the flood. The Rebirth Brass Band with Cyril Neville and Revolution Social Aid and Pleasure Club also were on the bill.

We didn’t know if Franti would show, or whether he would strum a few acoustic songs and go home. He had played before tens of thousands and gotten rained on that afternoon at the Fairgrounds, and he was slated to play a sold-out show at Tipitina’s the next night.

Gathered in the large room that doubled as cafeteria and auditorium for the school were fewer than 200 people: Common Ground volunteers, Franti fans, activists, local residents and assorted hippies. I still had mud on my feet from the Fairgrounds.

Franti arrived as scheduled, a container of organic salad greens, the remnants of dinner, in his hand. He brought the whole band, and they came to rock.

He spoke of what it meant to him to be playing in the Ninth Ward, in a school the government ordered closed. Residents rebuilt it and opened it as a charter school, he explained, and it is these small successes — as well as the occasional big success — that motivate him to keep doing the things he does.

He opened with his anti-war hymn “Time to Go Home.” Opposition to the Iraq War runs deep in New Orleans, where the thought of spending $411 million a day while residents scrounge to rebuild and levees need repair has people in “Arrest Bush” T-shirts ready to take up arms.

During his show at Teton Village in March, Franti seemed to button down his politics, perhaps because he was playing in Wyoming for a notoriously conservative Ski Corp.

But on this night, he let loose, emphatically calling for an end to the war and criticizing the government for its handling of Katrina in New Orleans. The ferocity of his gaze could have bored a hole through Dick Cheney’s skull.

I thought of walking through this neighborhood two years ago and coming across a woman whose mother had drowned on Desire Street after the storm. The old woman had evacuated for several false alarms, so when Katrina came she did not leave. Her body was stored in a nonrefrigerated truck and was so badly decomposed that the daughter had identified her by the gold tooth in her jaw.

All the suffering and anger the Ninth Ward had endured seemed to fuel Franti’s playing. One particularly pointed song, “The Future,” painted a picture of spying, prying and a culture in decay. “The future’s coming on like a bomb,” Franti sang, “The whole world’s rocking and the beat goes on.”

While he came in breathing fire, he also preached a message of unity and tolerance, and staying positive in the face of adversity. A mural of Dr. Martin Luther King behind him, he bounced barefoot on the stage, conducting what one YouTube commenter deemed “the ultimate junior high sock hop.” The crowd bounced along in unison, jubilantly.

The setting was so powerful and yet so strange, and the audience a scraggly hodgepodge, that Franti struck the perfect note with his bubbling anthem “Stay Human.” The refrain, “All the freaky people make the beauty of the world,” had everybody shaking.

Toward the end of the show, as he did in Jackson Hole, he played a new song, “Say Hey,” with the refrain, “Seems like everywhere I go, the more I see the less I know / But I know one thing: I love you.” The feeling was mutual.

There were National Guard troops, stationed in the Ninth Ward to provide security, at the show. Franti sent a bunch of girls over to dance with the soldiers, who had been watching from the side of the room. Afterward he made sure to give each one a hug, and he hugged all of the local residents as well.

The man is my hero. I don’t know how much money he raised that night, probably a modest sum, but the fact he was willing to come down there and play for so few people showed how much he cares. He dared everyone to do something extraordinary, to imagine a dollar figure they could afford to give, and then to double it.

Well beyond the financial impact, people left feeling inspired to make a difference in that community or their own.
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To learn more about the grassroots relief work Common Ground has been doing in the Ninth Ward, or better yet, to do something extraordinary and volunteer or make a donation, click here.

The organization has about 40 long-term volunteers, and those numbers swell to 75 or 80 with temporary help and up to 200 or 300 during college spring break.

In addition to repairing homes and assisting in other aspects of reconstruction, Common Ground has been cleaning toxins from the soil by planting mushrooms, sunflowers and mustard greens. The group also has been helping to restore coastal wetlands that used to serve as a natural barrier against hurricanes.

Common Ground has opened six free medical clinics in New Orleans since the storm.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under music, funk, rock, jazz fest, new orleans, reggae, festivals, michael franti. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.