Voodoo Today Here Now 5

Four years ago this week I was sitting at a cottage in Narragansett, Rhode Island, where I was emceeing at the Rhythm and Roots Festival, and I was on the phone trying to figure out how to get a video crew into Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana after Katrina had ripped apart the Gulf coast. I was on assignment for a local insurance company which wanted to document their handling of claims during the crisis.

I managed to get an advanced team into Mississippi a few days after Katrina. A week later I was in New Orleans the day it was first opened to insurance adjusters, contractors and some business owners.

We landed in Alabama, and drove to Louisiana. The towering commercial signs advertising fast food and gasoline were all absent their messages, and treetops along the highway were shorn. We gassed up in Mandeville, unsure that we'd find fuel in New Orleans, and filled the back seat with water, candy bars, jerky and peanut butter.

That first trip over the Lake Pontchartrain causeway was eerie, and the damage to the city was apparent immediately. I had contracted with a crew from the city to take me around. The camera operator had already spent days with network producers scouring New Orleans when it was still flooded. With his NBC credentials, he got me into Lakeview and the Ninth Ward to see the extent of the hurricane damage.

That night, we stayed in a chain hotel on St. Peters with TV crews, security personnel, National Guard members and Fats Domino. We grilled hot dogs on the sidewalk, because the hotel restaurant was not open for business, and traded the frankfurters for National Guard MRE's (ready-to-eat meals).

I love New Orleans, but was only able to walk after the sun rose, and before it set. The city was closed otherwise, and since I worked all day, these morning and evening walks allowed me to see a major American city empty, and on the skids.

A major memory, beyond the damage, were the refrigerators, duct-taped shut, lining the sidewalks and stinking to high heavens. Many marked with a mysterious graffiti message "Voodoo Today Here Now 5." I don't know if anyone has ever figured that one out.

While New Orleans has made significant strides back, it's still not, and may never be, the city it was. A lot of the anniversary reports dwell on the work still remaining to be done.

But native New Orleanians have not given up on the city, and after four years, that's the best one can say about this one-of-a-kind, exotic non-american, American city.

The Doctor will see you

Mac Rebennack, more commonly known as Dr. John, has not spent his career singing topically political songs.

But his new album will be a protest album. City That Care Forgot which is named for his beloved hometown, New Orleans, will be filled with songs which talk about how the great city on the bend in the Mississippi is now a shadow of its former self.

Dr. John is profiled in the New York Times today.

What has happend down here is the wind has changed

According to the New York Times, Randy Newman writes folk music. He'd probably be a bit surprised but his Louisiana 1927 has become a folk anthem for all New Orleans, and for the people who love it. He'll be singing it Thursday at the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

It's "mo bettah" George, and it ain't

George Bush slunk into New Orleans Tuesday, got a bellyful of Creole food, and the next day appeared at a school full of elementary school students who certainly weren't going to challenge his lies. He and Laura then fled to Mississippi where his Republican cohorts gleefully thanked him for all the federal dollars diverted their way.

As usual Bush displayed his cowardice by not appearing in a real and open public forum, and he cemented his role as "boy in a bubble," when, as the Times Picayune noted he told those assembled:

"A lot of people down here probably wondered whether or not those of us in the federal government not from Louisiana would pay attention to Louisiana or Mississippi," Bush said during his visit to a gleamingly restored charter school in the devastated Lower 9th Ward.

"In other words, it's one thing to come and give a speech in Jackson Square; it's another thing to keep paying attention to whether or not progress is being made. And I hope people understand we do, we're still paying attention. We understand."

But Bush wasn't seeing the same post-Katrina picture many others do. Again, the president sought Wednesday to refute the belief that progress isn't being made by expressing empathy for those who have trouble seeing it.

"My attitude is this: New Orleans, better days are ahead," Bush said. "It's sometimes hard for people to see progress when you live in a community all the time. Laura and I get to come -- we don't live here; we come on occasion. And it's easy to think about what it was like when we first came here after the hurricane, and what it's like today. And this town is coming back. This town is better today than it was yesterday, and it's going to be better tomorrow than it was today."

I was in New Orleans less than two weeks after Katrina, when I stood on a Jackson Square, empty but for National Guardsmen, and when the streets were lined with refrigerators, sealed against their rotting stinking interiors. I saw St. Bernard parish, and the Ninth Ward, before every house had been thoroughly searched for unlucky victims, and I was astonished at the devastation and loss. I met a resilent Fats Domino in the partially-opened hotel where we were warned not to open our eyes in the shower.

I've returned a few times since, and there is progress, but not enough. Bureaucracy, corruption, racism, hatred and crime still stalk the city like the spectre of death. No one has yet to ride the street car along St. Charles again because repair work has been slow because of the devastation to power lines and poles. I heard the promises George Bush made, and I've watched as those promises have been broken.

While New Orleans, and its officials are not blameless, George Bush is criminally culpable, and he has the gall to smirk and shimy and talk about better days to come.

Concerts of the week

Here in the Northeast, the festival season gets underway in earnest this week, and next week there's a virtual explosion of music.

The Strawberry Park Bluegrass Festival
May 31 - June 3
Preston, CT

In its 30th year, this popular festival continues to prove the timeless attraction of this old time music. This year, the schedule is chockablock with exciting young string bands like the Greencards, Cadillac Sky, the Infamous Stringdusters and Chris Thile's Nickel Creek offshoot, How to Grow a Band. In addition there are great acts like the Dry Branch Fire Squad, Rhonda Vincent (that's her in the photo above) and the Gibson Brothers. A good place to fill your ears with grass.

Mike Arnone's Crawfish Fest
June 2-3
Sussex Fairgrounds, Augusta NJ

Truth be known, Mike Arnone shared his jambalaya secrets with me. This man can cook, and he has good taste in music too. This is the first weekend in three (next week it's Blast from the Bayou at Strawberry Park, the week following week it's the Great Connecticut Cajun/Zydeco Music and Arts Festival in Moodus) of great Louisiana music within driving distance. This year Mike brings Dr. John, Geno Delafose, the Pine Leaf Boys, Sonny Landreth, Cowboy Mouth and more to his adopted home in the Northeast.