Jazz Funerals and Second Line Parades (1,042 words)

Matt Sakakeeny
Section: Music

Jazz Funerals and Second Line Parades

New Orleans is a city of parades, most famously the Mardi Gras processions that

roll down the wide boulevards of St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street during Carnival

season, but in all the seasons and in every neighborhood there are jazz funerals and

parades known as second lines that fill the backstreets with a joyful noise. On Sunday

afternoons from September through May, African American forms of music, dance, and

dress are put on display in parades that have become symbolic of New Orleans and its

association with festivity and pleasure. The upbeat tone of second line parades originates

in the distinctive local tradition of jazz funerals.

The Jazz Funeral

Though funerals would seem an unlikely source for such a festive tradition, the

jazz funeral celebrates life at the moment of death—a concept common among many

cultures until the twentieth century. In New Orleans and elsewhere, Europeans and

Anglo-Americans attended funerals with music that featured a brass band playing

“solemn music on the way to the grave and happy music on the return.” There is also a

history of rejoicing at death through music in West African burial traditions. In 1819,

architect Benjamin Latrobe witnessed a continuance of this tradition at a black funeral

in New Orleans. The funeral began with the mourners making “loud lamentations” and

ended with “noise and laughter.” With the end of slavery, black funerals with brass bands

became commonplace. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the funerals had
become forums for the performance of a new style of music—jazz—eventually

becoming known as jazz funerals. Simultaneously, the popularity of funerals with brass

band music waned among white New Orleanians.

In the traditional jazz funeral, a prominent member of the community—

often a musician and nearly always a black male—is “buried with music.” Benevolent

and burial societies traditionally arranged these funerals, often offering the services of a

brass band for an extra fee. The societies collected dues throughout the year to pay for

members’ health care and burial costs. The musicians, funeral directors, family, and

friends of the dead make up what is called the first or main line, while the crowd

marching behind is collectively known as the second line. As the procession moves from

the funeral service to the burial site, the first and second lines march to the beat of a brass

band. At the beginning, the band plays dirges, somber Christian hymns performed at a

slow walking tempo. After the body is laid to rest, or “cut loose,” the band starts playing

up-tempo music, the second liners begin dancing, and the funeral transforms into a street

celebration.

Second Lines

At some point in the late nineteenth century, the second line detached from the

jazz funeral and developed its own identity. Organized by social aid and pleasure clubs,

second lines wind through the neighborhoods of club members, making designated stops

at their houses and other significant neighborhood sites, usually barrooms. From

September through May, there is at least one parade every Sunday, often held on the

anniversary of a club’s founding. Each club hosts fundraisers throughout the year and
collects dues at regular meetings in order to pay for police permits, brass bands, and the

coordinated outfits that members wear at their parade.

Anthropologist Helen Regis defines a second line parade as a public festival in

which club members, musicians, and second liners come together to create “a single

flowing movement of people unified by the rhythm.” At the head of the parade, club

members wear suits and sashes that display the club’s name, often twirling matching

umbrellas above their heads. For approximately four hours, they strut their dance moves

in front of the band while the second liners fall in behind and along the side. Many

second liners show off popular dance steps such as the high step and the buck jump.

Others make their own sounds by singing, clapping, blowing whistles, hitting cowbells

and beer bottles, and shaking tambourines.

Contemporary Parades and Jazz Funerals

Second line parades create a sense of community among participants, and the

public nature of the spectacle makes parading a powerful representation of black New

Orleans. This has led to debates among parading organizations and musicians about how

parades and funerals should be presented in public.

In recent years, the jazz funeral tradition has opened up to include, most notably,

young men and women who have died tragically young. At these funerals, the number of

dirges performed is drastically reduced, altering the transition from dirges to up-tempo

music that is the hallmark of the traditional funeral. Musicians no longer wear the

traditional uniform of black band caps, white button-down shirts, and black dress pants,

and instead dress in everyday clothes. Some tradition-minded organizations, such as the
Black Men of Labor Social Aid & Pleasure Club, bemoan these changes and have sought

to perpetuate parading traditions in an orthodox manner. Black Men of Labor organizes

funerals for families who want to honor the dead with a traditional burial, and the club

sponsors an annual second line parade in which musicians are required to dress in

uniform and perform traditional music.

The power of parading as a sign of local culture has also brought increased

attention from spectators outside the community. Brass bands have made recordings of

parade music since the 1940s and toured the globe as representatives of local culture

since the 1960s. Photographs of community parades, particularly those of Michael P.

Smith, began circulating in exhibits and books in the 1970s. Around this time, bands and

second line dancers began to be hired for the entertainment of tourists and others. Today,

these staged parades can be seen marching through the grounds of the New Orleans Jazz

& Heritage Festival and the lobbies of the Convention Center.

The rhythm of community parades may have changed pace, but they have never

skipped a beat. For every staged parade, there is a social aid and pleasure club marching

through the backstreets to the whoops and hollers of neighborhood second liners. For

every brass band that has been relegated to the halls of history, such as the Olympia or

the Eureka, there is a Rebirth Brass Band or Hot 8 to fill the void in their own way. Each

jazz funeral begins with a respectful dirge and ends with a cathartic dance. Even in a New

Orleans that habitually packages itself as entertainment, the beat of the street remains

closely tied to the rhythms of everyday life.

Suggested Reading
Latrobe, Benjamin Henry. The Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Vol. III: 1799-
1820, From Philadelphia to New Orleans. New Haven, CT: Yale University,
1980.

Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club. Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward. New
Orleans: Neighborhood Story Project, 2006.

Regis, Helen. “Second Lines, Minstrelsy, and The Contested Landscapes of New Orleans
Afro-Creole Festivals.” Cultural Anthropology Vol. 14, no. 4 (1999): 472-504.

Smith, Michael P. A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music. Gretna, LA:
Pelican Publishing, 1990.

Audio/Video

Always for Pleasure. Directed by Les Blank. 1978. USA, 58 mins.

All on a Mardi Gras Day. Directed by Royce Osborn. 2003. USA, 60 mins.