Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written in 2016 but for some reason, never posted!
Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016
With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.
16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.
The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dancehalls from Frenchmen Street two out-of-the-way places all over town.
1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderfully tapas of traditional songs.
"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue
Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.
"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.
"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.
Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.
A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.
About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html
1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.
"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.
"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and pealsof trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed. Later, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.”
2
:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band
“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.
Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”
When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.
3 PM Bill Summers and the JazzSalsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro- Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.
4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!
If Odetta Sang is kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.
“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.
Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."
Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs solos and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VJzHT9nuk
5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade and one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. A given in New Orleans is you just never hear them complaining about the heat.
Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.
Can you imagine a brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion– The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end.
6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band

Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.
Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?
Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Lewis favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.
This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.
“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.
Wonders never cease around here.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
2018 Dominican World Series: Drama and Obsession
February 25, 2018
Quisqueya Stadium Juan Marichal
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Baseball in the Dominican Republic isn’t a national sport. It’s a national obsession. Combine sport, soap opera, zealous conviction, tribal membership, and you begin to understand how embedded the game is in the national psyche.
January marks the end of the regular baseball season and the beginning of the playoffs to determine which of island’s 6 teams will represent the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean World Series. The rivalries are intense. The fault lines in allegiances are known to fracture family gatherings.
Teams from Santo Domingo (Tigres del Licey/Tigers) and Santiago (the Águilas/Eagles), the second largest city in the Dominican Republic are duking it out in a best of seven series. The winning team will head to Mexico to joust with winning teams from Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. This is a heavyweight bout. Pride, loyalty, family honor, bragging rights, ride on the results.
Our host, Alex Martinez, used every connection he has to get great tickets to the fourth game in the best of seven series. The Santiago Eagles (Áigules) are up two games to one.
Walking up the ramp into the stadium feels like entering an alternate universe. Yes, I see lush green grass, the clay colored base paths and the pitchers mound and coaches boxes and dugouts and players in different uniforms so it’s a baseball game but, if I close my eyes, I would swear I was at a World Cup soccer match. The energy, cheering, and singing are awesome and unrelenting.
A run scores! Fans from the Tigers or the Eagles are on their feet. The stands become an open-air discotheque as 15,000 partisans stand up and joyously dance, hip-shaking Latin moves that look more at home on a sweat-filled dance club than a baseball park. I am smack in the middle of a sublime cultural experience.
Vendors selling hats, pennants and flags lined the streets on the way to the ballpark. Our host buys us hats and pennants, blue for the hometown team Tigers and, since his wife is from Santiago, yellow for the Santiago Eagles. We have become partisans. The stadium is jammed with them, a sea of blue with dots of yellow, like buoys floating on the Caribbean Sea’s surface, in perpetual motion.
Fervent energy in every row from top to bottom, joy on faces one moment then disappointment and heartbreak on the next. The game is a virtual roller caster ride with emotions rising and plummeting, people living and dying with each pitch and each hit.
Spectators rooting for opposing teams sometime sit side-by-side. The banter is non-stop after a hit, a walk, an error, a disputed call by the home plate umpire.The fans sitting in front of us are perfect examples. When a good play is made they leap up, wave their pennants and shoot "We're gonna win!" looks at their friends.
A sporting event creates instant kinships between strangers. Rooting for the same team, we are comrades in arms. Frank has brought his own sign that he unfurls at every moment of glory for the hometown team Licey Tigers.
“Please show me your sign,”says I.
“Boston, “I reply after he asks me where I’m from.
“Pedro Martinez!” Frank shouts after extending his hand to greet me.
“Just elected to the Hall of Fame,” says I.
“And Vladimir Guerrero, too!” says he.
Don’t think for a minute that everyone in the stadium does not know the names of every Dominican player in the big leagues.
A team makes a good play? Sections of the park look like scenes from Sir Walter Scott novel. Yellow or blue pennants are boisterously hoisted as if readying for battle.
You remember the word fanatic? Well, the word fan is in there somewhere and inside this ballpark we are in a world of fans and fanatics. The announcer introduces each player to come to bat in the same sonorous tones in which you would hear a prizefighter introduced a boxing match. Drama. Relentless. Drama. I love this!
This is the fourth game of the championship series. The Eagles from Santiago have won two games. The Tigers have won one in a seven game series.
The series rotates back-and-forth between the cities of Santiago and Santo Domingo. It is hard to estimate how much alcohol will be consumed, how many yellow and blue flags and baseball caps and other paraphernalia will be sold, how many friendly conversations and arguments will take place, how many newspaper stories will be written, and how many hearts will be broken.
Fathers and mothers bring their kids. Games like this germinate bonding experiences that could last a lifetime.
The Eagles hold onto a lead for the first part of the game and to the delirium of their fans, the Tigers tie the game in the ninth-inning. Extra innings. Fans are at the edge of their seats with every pitch, every play, every out. I can practically hear their hearts beating. At the end of the 10th inning the Tigers break through and score the winning run
Bedlam in the stands. Players from the Tigers swarm onto the field, a conga line of victors.
We say goodbye to Frank and our fellow baseball fans and head for the car. The Dugout and First Base (of course), two open-air bars on opposite corners are rockin’ with fans who watched on TV. The scene feels more like New Year’s Eve.
To define this as a baseball game would do no justice to what we just experienced: a cultural event of seismic proportions. History, heritage and honor on a baseball diamond.
PS
Edwin Encanation, Bartolo Colon, Dellin Betances, Melky Cabrera, Yoenis Cespedes, Cleveland manager Terry Francona are former Santiago Eagles players. There are dozens more who play in the American and National Leagues.
The Quisqueya Stadium Juan Marichal was re-named in 2014 after the Dominican pitcher, one of the first Dominican players to play in the big leagues in the US and the first elected to the Hall of Fame in 1983.
Oh, also cheerleaders who vault onto the field between innings. And karaoke at the seventh inning when a fan is invited to take the mic and, to the delight of thousands, belt out a popular song. I had to see this to believe it.
Photos and videos by Paul A.Tamburello,Jr.
July 17, 2018 in Commentaries, Travel | Permalink | Comments (4)