Mardi Gras Musical Festivities Continue to Transcend Geography and Genre

With the possible exception of Paris, of all the cities in the world where music is created, New Orleans is the only one that is a pure concept unto itself, one that is bigger than the place itself or any of the innovators who came from there. You can’t create a New York vibe without being in New York or actual New Yorkers present, and the same goes for Chicago or Kansas City or Los Angeles. But New Orleans music is a notion that transcends both genre — jazz, R&B, blues, pop, cajun and zydeco, gospel, folk— and geography.This year, the two major Mardi Gras celebrations here in Fun City were Gary U.S. Bonds at Iridium on Saturday, and the team of Julie Benko and Jason Yeager and their band at Birdland Jazz Club on Monday. Mr. Bonds is, famously one of the greatest of all living sons of the Crescent City, a rock and roll pioneer. He is also one of the few contemporary entertainers who can sustain a vigorously uptempo party mood for a full 90 minutes, an especially impressive accomplishment considering that he’ll turn 87 in June.Contrastingly, Julie Benko and Jason Yeager come from, respectively, Washington DC and Boston, neither of which is exactly red-beans-and-rice territory. Yet they got the point: making their entrance by parading Mardi Gras-style up and down the aisles at Birdland, with Mr. Yeager leading the way playing a melodica, a tactic he probably gleaned from Jon Batiste who himself was inspired by Nat King Cole.Their New Orleans songbook, which is fully captured on their new album, “Euphonic Gumbo,” begins with several tracks that are listed on the back cover as medleys. If anything, the album, which features other superb instrumentalists like reedman Linus Wyrsch and Evan Arntzen (also heard last week with Cat Russell), trumpeter Andy Warren, violinist Gabe Terracciano, and trombonist Ron Wilkins, is far too short at 34 minutes. However, when performed live, it is a sequence of songs that lead one into the other uninterrupted — a revel without a pause. (The album starts with an opening announcement by Cast Party’s Jim Caruso, establishing himself as the current day Birdland’s counterpart to Pee Wee Marquette.)That opening ten minutes or so marches past such NOLA musical landmarks as “Bourbon Street Parade,” as well as Professor Longhair’s “Go to the Mardi Gras” and Earl King’s “Let the Good Times Roll,” which Catherine Russell also sang in her Birdland show last week. These mashups are less vehicles for a star singer than catalysts for audience participation, which is especially true of the combination of the Dixie Cups hit “Iko Iko” and Danny Barker’s “Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing,” which spotlights guest tap-dancer and vocalist John Manzari.Julie Benko and Jason Yeager in New Orleans Via Kevin AlveyWhere “Euphonic Gumbo” gets even more interesting is in its ethnic detours. “The Lakes of Pontchartrain” is a multi-national melting pot of gumbo all by itself, a traditional Louisiana lullaby that became better known as an Irish folk air. “J’ai Passé Devant Ta Porte” and “Ma Belle Evangeline” derive from the Cajun-French community and spotlight the versatile Russian-American accordionist and pianist Sasha Papernik. The latter combines recited excerpts from Longfellow’s 1847 epic poem of that name with Randy Newman’s love theme from the underappreciated 2009 Disney feature “The Princess and the Frog.”Ms. Benko, who is currently playing Emma Goldman in the Broadway musical “Ragtime” and is most famous for being the best Fanny Brice in the 2022 revival of “Funny Girl,” honored the considerable Jewish population of the Crescent City with “Tumbalalaika.” As heard on her 2023 EP “Christmas with You,” this is a part-Yiddish minor-key waltz which provided the template for both “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” The balalaika isn’t exactly a banjo and a frahlich isn’t exactly a rave up, but those Russian Jews knew how to party too; after one minute of this you’ll want to dance with a bottle on your head.“St. James Infirmary Blues” was, for most of the current century, the most-played tune amongst nouveau hot jazz bands. Ms. Benko and Mr. Yeager reconceived it as an extended concert piece, in the matter of the elaborate, even grandiose arrangements of “Frankie and Johnny” by Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. The arrangement, which features additional vocals and tapping by Mr. Manzari, tempo and time signature changes, and an Ellington-influenced history of jazz that shifts from dixieland to bebop.Ms. Benko and company concluded with an intimate, poignant reading of the city’s most famous love ballad in the form of a question. “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” is a 1947 composition by two Hollywood songwriters with no appreciable connection to that city — Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter who both hailed from the East Coast.But the ending was perfect, especially for those of us for whom the answer to that question is ‘Yes.” Sadly I know all too well what it means to miss New Orleans.

Mardi Gras Musical Festivities Continue to Transcend Geography and Genre

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