FoodMusicJustice.com

From our friends at Offbeat Magazine…

“This weekend, New Orleans hosts the Boswell Sisters Centennial Celebration, a festival focused on the lives and music of the New Orleans sisters whose brought jazz harmonies to popular song, and influenced talents including Ella Fitzgerald, the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and many more.

Vocal groups including New Orleans’ Pfister Sisters will perform songs from the Boswell songbook, and there will be a bus tour of Boswell sites and a showing of Boswell film clips.

The Pfister Sisters will perform a free show Saturday at 2 p.m. at the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park, and that night Portland’s Stolen Sweets play Snug Harbor. For a complete list of free and ticketed events, go to Bozzies.com/centennial.”

I admit it. I’m an over-the-top Joss Stone fan.

Rumor has it, she’ll be in New Orleans from January to March shooting a movie.

I’m happy to say that I was at both of her first two shows in the US at Joe’s Pub in NYC before she “hit.” Friends couldn’t understand why I was so over the moon about a 16 year old soul singer from Devon, UK. Now they get it. She’s got an ear and a set of pipes that are second to no one.

From all appearances, she’s also a very down-to-earth and good-hearted person. And, if past is prologue, her stay in New Orleans is going to make her an even deeper musician.

Someone should write a book just about all the musicians who went through massive personal and musical transformations as a result of spending a little time immersed in the heart of America’s music universe.

Ray Charles and Ornette Coleman are just two names that pop to mind. And don’t forget young Elvis Presley and John Lennon glued to their Fats Domino records.

If America every paid New Orleans back for what it did for American music, its streets would be paved with gold.

Army Corps of Engineers corruption revealed by University of California professor.

The New York Times won’t touch this story. Neither will the Washington Post.

Here it is in a nutshell. The Army Corps of Engineers not only paid off a major engineering society to whitewash it’s own self-serving study, they actively interfered with and in some cases even threatened independent civil engineers who discovered less than flattering things about the Corps performance.

Bottom line: The destruction of New Orleans was the greatest engineering failure since Chernobyl and the details are being covered up.

Levees.org is he group that’s bringing this story to light. The New Orleans Times Picayune picked it up.

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/11/critic_corps_tried_to_thwart_i.html

The Hot 8 Brass Band got a write up by Larry Blumfeld in the Village Voice this week.

Larry’s documenting the New Orleans music scene post-levee failures. I look forward to every new piece he writes.

From his latest:

“The danger and dislocation you’ve heard about in the streets of New Orleans is real. Yet so is the devastating beauty you don’t hear about as much.”

He gets it.

The full article and details about Hot 8’s gigs in New York:

First-Rate Second-Liners

Jonathan Demme Right to Return on PBS.

When I was in New Orleans in January, I ran into one of Jonathan Demme’s cameramen shooting a church service in the Lower Ninth Ward.

A video promo with Demme talking about the resulting program - a five day series called Right to Return starting this Monday on PBS - is here:

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200705/20070525_demme.html

The FoodMusicJustice video shot in January is here:

It’s one of the most important sites in the history of American and world music and just a few steps from the legendary French Quarter:

Congo Square, New Orleans.

It’s the one place in North America where Africans were given one day a week to gather and play music during the days of slavery.

And it’s closed.

Congo Square is in inside Armstrong Park as is the Municipal Auditorium and Mahalia Jackson Performing Arts Center.

Over two years after the federal levee failures, Armstrong Park named for one of the most important figures in American cultural history remains closed. What’s the hang up?

FEMA.

FEMA has still not paid the city to repair the damage to the park’s electrical system caused by the collapse of the federal levee system.

This Saturday (0ct0ber 17), part of the park will be opened for the North RampArt Festival. Here are details from Offbeat Magazine:

“Saturday, Armstrong Park will be the site for the North RampArt Festival, sponsored by the Lt. Governor’s Office of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism; North Rampart Main Street; the Arts Council of New Orleans; the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation; the National Parks Service Preserve America program; Alto Audio,WYES, WWNO, WWOZ; and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The celebration of music, arts, food and culture runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and includes local artisans, their creations, and music by:

Treme Brass Band, the Pinettes Brass Band, the John Boutte Gospel Jubilee, and Delta bluesman Brian Sivils’ Trio.

Food will be provided by Tomatillo’s, Meauxbar Bistro, Rampart Café 704, N’Awlins Flava, P&J Oysters, and Covenant Café.

FoodMusicJustice has been helping two New Orleans-based organizations with technical and promotional help:

Levees.org and CHAT (th Citizens Road Home Action Team.)

Levees.org is making sure that the world knows that it was the failure of federally built and maintained levees that caused the destruction of New Orleans.

CHAT has been working to make the the “Road Home” program, which is supposed to assist the people of Louisiana rebuild their homes, works.

So far, the government’s Road Home program has been a disaster…massive red tape and insane delays on the local level and serious underfunding on the federal level.

CHAT has been applying pressure on both points.

A citizen’s survey helped which we designed and hosted for CHAT helped demonstrate that the program is not doing its job. We also produced the web campaign that put pressure on Congress to properly fund the rebuilding program.

Last Thursday, Congress voted to release an additional $3 billion.

To keep up with CHAT, click here: Citizens Road Home Action Team

Our friends at Levee.org have done it again.

They’ve put the focus back on the levees and the Army Corps of Engineers and their corruption - here it belongs.

One minute tells the whole story…