As I Lay Sleeping

As I lay in my bed trying to fall asleep tonight I suddenly felt wide awake. I laid, with my eyes closed, lights off, hoping it would pass. But it did not. I was drawn to modern music of long ago. I logged on to the Net and followed it to the music of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Tuba Fats Chosen Few Brass Band. I turned up the volume and closed the laptop. As I lay there, I saw in my head the history of New Orleans, From days of Bienville to tommorrow, it's all right there in the bass drum and the tuba. The song of the Frenchman looking for a home in the new world, fighting for his survival. The Song of the slave and the rhythms they carried with them from West Africa, The song of the brokenheated, whose love has gone astray. The song of immigrants who found a place to call home, even if it were way "back of town". And the song of those who are the "have's" and there classical stylings carried from the old world, and all it's charm.

All those things passed before my eyes, and were followed by visions of a city who has been ruined by fire and flood, and fire and flood, and fire and flood, whose residents, who's citizens, we children of New Orleans, through the worst of it all, stood tall, with aching backs and blistered hands, danced both day and night, though feet were sore and muscles ached, whose spirit would not be made tired by long days toil in heat and humidity. They found joy in the music, their music, music born of all nations and forged by time and situation into the rhythm of life in that careless town. A town that has never ceased to love, though has often been forgotten.

No! there is no music that you hear in your car or on your Ipod tonight were it not for the convergence of class, race, and cultures that collided these last 450 years in New Orleans. Trace it back. Trace it all back. The river flows south and carries waters from all over this land to new Orleans. It gives us fertile fields and soil to grow sugar cane as tall as 2 men. But what flows from New Orleans is the heart, and the soul, and the rhythm of a nation.

I sat with my eyes closed, in the dark, listening to the Brass Bands of today play the songs of days gone by. And I saw with my own closed eyes, the entire history of a city and it's people. And I heard the future in the songs of yesterday.