No, I don't know what it means to miss New Orleans. Never been there.
Of course, that doesn't stop me from having an opinion on whether Cafe Du Monde really has the best beignets in town, if the Rex or Krewe of Endymion parades are the ones you can't miss, or if the Stones' take on "Time is on My Side" can really hold a candle to Irma Thomas' version.
Yes, I saw "Treme" -- which recently ended its first season on HBO -- the best television show about music and musicians ever made, and perhaps the best attempt to capture the soul of a city.
The story takes place not long after Hurricane Katrina, when it wasn't altogether clear that there would be a city again.
A once-successful trombone player struggles to string together enough gigs to support his family, while his ex-wife battles to re-open her flood-damaged bar. A Mardi Gras Indian chief goes on the warpath trying to keep this working-class African-American tradition alive, while the police, corrupt politicians and the lure of a stable life elsewhere conspire to tear it apart. His son, a successful New York jazz trumpet player, tries to define himself apart from the powerful influence of his father and New Orleans. A DJ/musician tries to get work, and his fanatical love for New Orleans' culture is more of a hindrance than help.
Their stories and a half-dozen others' sprawl in all directions, woven together only by music, with guest cameos flitting in and out.
Quite a few of the musicians featured in "Treme" have been passing through Pittsburgh this summer. Trombone Shorty played last week at the Rex on the South Side. Galactic, a young jazz-funk-rock band, is performing at the Flood City Music Festival Aug. 7 in Johnstown with legendary soul singer Cyril Neville and Corey Henry of the Rebirth Brass Band.
They don't have to be pressed to talk about "Treme."
"It's the best representation anyone's ever done, in film or television, that I've seen," says Rich Vogel of Galactic. "It's cool how many people have been included. So many of our musician friends have been on the show, and done more acting than anyone knew was in them.
"We have an expression, 'Touched By Treme' -- 'Have you been touched by 'Treme' yet, brother?' "
Troy Andrews, otherwise known as Trombone Shorty, was born and raised in Treme. He has a small speaking part in the show.
"What is it about 'Treme'⢠" asks Andrews. "I don't know. It's definitely a different Treme after the storm. It was like a real musicians' village without trying to be a musicians' village -- just a great neighborhood. Congo Square is there, where jazz and everything was created.
"Some of the things that you saw (on 'Treme') actually happen. Me, growing up in the city, can easily call up the Neville Brothers or the Marsalis family, and ask them to teach me something, or show me one thing. Or I can go sit in with them. It's a group effort, and we're all just trying to play our part in keeping this music alive. We all play different styles, but at the end of the day, it's just one big family."
As a music fan, I already knew a little bit about New Orleans' role in the birth of jazz, and so much of American popular music -- a seedy port city where the old divisions between black, white and Creole broke down. I knew it had a vibrant soul and funk scene in the '60s and '70s, and an outsized presence in hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Juvenile, Cash Money Records).
"Treme," though, makes it seem like a single unbroken stream of musical inspiration, flowing from Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong all the way to the present.
Pittsburgh once had its own "Treme."
Music coursed through the city's veins as surely as molten steel once did. Pittsburgh's jazz scene once rivaled any in the world: Mary Lou Williams, Stanley Turrentine, Art Blakey, Billy Strayhorn, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal and many more. Nightclubs once lined Wylie Avenue in the Hill District, and the world's best musicians, from here and elsewhere, played long into the night.
The storms that rolled through the Hill -- including the collapse of the steel industry and disastrously counterproductive attempts at "urban renewal" -- left little of its former greatness standing.
But if New Orleans, and the neighborhood of Treme, have proved anything, it's that rebuilding is always possible.
"Katrina changed a lot of things, of course," says Vogel. "For a while, this city was really knocked down. There was a lot of doubt about what it would be in the future, and whether it would come back. Really, now, five years later, a lot has transpired. But the city is the city again. All the things that I tend to think of as quintessentially New Orleans still exist, and live here. We feel like we almost lost it. But we didn't. Today's a better day."
