“things have layers of lives.
we like that.
we like the feeling that there’s multiple layers
underneath what’s there right now.
although you’re living in the moment, people have been gathering there for a long time and doing different things there
and you’re part of a long continuity of activity.”
- david byrne
“This show is about culture, and it’s about what was at stake. Because apart from culture, on some empirical level, it does not matter if all New Orleans washes into the Gulf, and if everyone from New Orleans ended up living in Houston or Baton Rouge or Atlanta. Culture is what brought this city back. Not government. There was and has been no initiative by government at any level to contemplate in all seriousness the future of New Orleans. Yet New Orleans is coming back, and it’s sort of done it one second-line at a time, one crawfish étouffée at a time, one moment at a time.”
- David Simon, creator of Treme
*
“A curious if somewhat unspoken tension surrounds New Orleans culture; it concerns the faces that culture wears, the ways in which it’s bought and sold, the role it plays, and the meaning it holds depending on what neighborhood you’re in and to whom you speak.”
*
”“There’s a feeling among many that some of our older cultural institutions, like parades and jazz funerals, are in the way of progress and don’t fit in the new vision of New Orleans,” says Michael White, a clarinetist and Xavier University professor. “That they should only be used in a limited way to boost the image of New Orleans, as opposed to being real, viable aspects of our lives.”“
(from article “How Treme Can Get It Right,” by Larry Blumenfeld, in the Voice)
