It’s impossible
to talk about New Orleans these days without bringing up
two topics from opposite ends of the joy spectrum: the Saints’ miracle
season, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The Saints ain’t the Ain’ts no more, that’s
for sure.
And it should make us ashamed as a nation that over a year
after Hurricane Katrina hit, huge sections of an irreplaceable
American city lie in toxic ruins, while the government—our
government, the one we elect and pay for—bickers with
displaced residents over hotel bills.
For lifelong residents of the Big Easy like Stanton Moore,
drummer for funk band Galactic, the devastation of the city
is always with him—even when he’s hundreds of miles
away.
“There are certain areas that seem pretty good, but there
are whole neighborhoods that are never going to come back,” he
says from Fort Lauderdale. “The infrastructure is in
a lot of need, and we’re not getting the funding that
we’re supposed to be getting from the federal government.
They’re dragging their heels on that. It’s kind
of a mess.”
Moore is out on the road backing his solo record, III, which,
coincidentally, happens to be his third solo effort. Laden
with the richly textured beats that the city and Moore himself
are known for, the record is at times galloping, at others
sinewy, and sometimes downright greasy. It is an unintentional
musical testament to why New Orleans is so special and why
it needs to be saved.
“New Orleans was the only city in America that allowed
African slaves to play their indigenous music,” Moore
says. “So you’ve got African rhythms being kept
alive, and being allowed to cross-pollinate with everything
else in New Orleans. That’s what created that interesting,
unique approach New Orleans music has.”
The beats of Mardi Gras are embedded in Moore’s music,
the hip-shaking kind that drive men to drink and women to expose
body parts in exchange for useless beads and bad hangovers.
But in his solo work Moore also has room to tease out more
nuanced aspects of his musicality, more nuanced say, than playing
for a few thousand Galactic fans eager to raise the roof.
“This allows me to explore some other sides of my playing,
some more of the interactive, improvisational sides of my playing,” Moore
says. “It allows me to be a little more expressive. Galactic
is pretty much a very heavy funk thing, so this allows me to
do almost like a ballad type of a thing. You can’t really
do that with a roomful of people who want to dance. It allows
me to play some different types of grooves. People go to see
Galactic and they expect a party.”
When he’s not on the road, Moore plays with about seven
million different side projects, and he’s recorded with
the likes of Maceo Parker, Irma Thomas and Corrosion of Conformity.
Wait … what? What is a jazz/funk drummer doing playing
with a punk/metal band?
“I grew up in New Orleans and so did Pepper Keenan, the
main songwriter for Corrosion of Conformity,” Moore says. “So
we’ve known each other for a long time, and he knew what
I was capable of. And they were looking for another drummer
for this last record. So he tried out a bunch of people and
he wasn’t happy with what he was hearing, so he called
me and we did the record.”
Moore also gives back to the city that made him the musician
he is today, even giving drum lessons whenever he has time.
“I’m on the road a lot, so I can’t give lessons
on a regular basis,” Moore says. “But I do a lot
of clinics, and I wrote a book—I’m working on a
second one—but the first one was all about my approach
to New Orleans drumming. There’s a lot of people who
want to know about the New Orleans thing, especially the rhythms
and drumming side of it.”
Here’s hoping that with people like Moore keeping the
music of New Orleans alive, it will wake the rest of America
up to the fact that the beautiful place that spawned it may
be in its death throes if we don’t do something about
it. |
