UCLA

The black brass band parade known as the second line has been a staple of New Orleans culture for nearly 150 years. Through more than a century of social, political and demographic upheaval, the second line has persisted as an institution in the city’s black community, with its swinging march beats and emphasis on collective improvisation eventually giving rise to jazz, funk, and a multitude of other popular genres both locally and around the world. More than any other local custom, the second line served as a crucible in which the participatory, syncretic character of black music in New Orleans took shape.

While the beat of the second line reverberates far beyond the city limits today, the neighborhoods that provide the parade’s sustenance face grave challenges to their existence. Ten years after Hurricane Katrina tore up the economic and cultural fabric of New Orleans, these largely poor communities are plagued on one side by underfunded schools and internecine violence, and on the other by the rising tide of post-disaster gentrification and the redlining-in-disguise of neoliberal urban policy. At the same time, second lines are attracting broader crowds and greater media attention than ever before, with film crews, journalists, smartphone videographers and scholars like me descending on the parade in droves every Sunday. Drawing from three and a half years of field and archival research and over thirty interviews with musicians, dancers, and educators, I explore the past and present of the second line, its rhythms and its participants, and how the key players in New Orleans second line culture utilize the parade to navigate the challenges of the present, to reconstruct community histories and reclaim neighborhood space, and ultimately to forge an expressive narrative of resistance and pride against the threat of cultural erasure.