Dabbling in Voodoo

Some folks at Project Homecoming thought it’d be a pretty good idea to get a non-profit booth at the Voodoo Music Experience, this big music festival in town this past weekend.  Five or so of us volunteered to work pretty much the whole weekend, Friday morning through Sunday evening.  The booth was fairly cheap and gave us a chance to spread the word on what we were up to.  We also took donations and signed up volunteers to work on the cluster house, that is, a house that local churches and the community works on on Saturdays.  The weekend was a real blessing.  We were in a row with all the other non-profits and got to hang out with all these folks doing rebuild or community organizing or even the radical direct action protest people.  Some people recognized our shirts and came up to us to tell us that they had seen us in their neighborhood and didn’t know who we were.  So many locals thanked us for coming down and for rebuilding and out-of-towners in town for the festival were hopefully inspired to uproot as some of us did.  We made some money, thanks to Project Homecoming’s resident hustler, Scott.  We got some volunteers signed up.  And, we all got weekend passes to a premier music festival.

I got to see lots of acts I’d always wanted to see, like Toots & the Maytals, Common and Wilco, as well as some big local acts like Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Singers, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.  Plus, I saw some [for better or worse] cultural icons Rage Against the Machine and the Smashing Pumpkins.  A general trend I found was that acts were really wanting to impress the musically discerning New Orleanian audience.  While watching Preservation Hall, I had my first New Orleanian moment.  They were playing their brass and it was overwhelmingly beautiful.  I was dancing tentatively, self-consciously, alone, when I felt compelled by the “Laissez les bon temps roulez” spirit of the city.  I was not letting the bon temps roulez, so I just let myself go and danced the way I wanted to, regardless of what it looked like (of course, those of you who have seen me dance know that my reservations are completely unfounded).  I clapped, I jumped, I stomped; it was liberating for my WASPy Presbyterian self to get Pentecostal for a hot second and feel the spirit of New Orleans jazz.

It was in that moment, and over this weekend, that I realized this city has grabbed me and it’s not letting go.  This city is like the dry bones in the valley in Ezekiel 37.  Verse 3 asks, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  The answer: “O sovereign Lord, you alone know.”  Sure, only God knows, but I saw these bones living this weekend.