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A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music
by Michael P. Smith, Alan B. Govenarnew/old stock
Review
From Jazz Journal (May 1991)
Joyful Noise is primarily a photographic study of New Orleans
ghetto culture. Over two decades, Smith has infiltrated the
Afro-American community’s churches, clubs, funerals and street parties,
and has become an intimate of the Mardi Gras Indians, the bandsmen and
the many fraternal groupings which about in the city.
It’s clear from folklorist Alan Govenar’s excellent
introduction that Smith, a white photographer, has carved out a unique
role for himself among black New Orleanians. He has returned again and
again to document their activities, always giving copies of his pictures
to his subjects. Through this superb book, he offers insights into the
cultural mores which have influenced Crescent City music.
Govenar provides a good account of the origins of social
organizations which date back, in most cases, to Emancipation and cites
names like the Scene Boosters Social & Pleasure Club, the Young
Men’s Olympian and Money Wasters Marching Club, all presently
active….They parade through black neighborhoods and Smith’s brilliant
pictures, superbly reproduced, capture the musicians, the club members
and the famed Second Liners.
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