Cultural Economy. What does that even mean? Before this class, I had literally next to no idea. I wasn’t here at Loyola last year, and the name of the course, Writing: Technique/Technology, gave no indication as to what the class essentially entailed. I signed up with vague ideas involving the Internet and blogging, and perhaps a tutorial that would magically teach me how to use everything at my fingertips that I’d never understood before.
Well, sort of. But not really. I was introduced to WordPress, and for the first time ever grasped a basic understanding of what it means to post work on the Internet and how to go about doing that. I was born in the wrong century, and am pretty much hopeless when it comes to anything involving technology. I probably will go extinct along with the latest iPhone one day, but at least thanks to this class I will bring a knowledge of WordPress with me to the grave. It wasn’t exactly the magic tutorial I’ve been searching for all my short, technology-tarded life, but it certainly acclimated me to the tools required to post work on the Internet. Still working on getting my pictures to align neatly with the text, but all in all, I’ve certainly learned something.
But what is perhaps more important is that I have learned what cultural economy means. To be honest, I have really known what it has meant all along; I just had never heard the term “cultural economy” before so I couldn’t see it in relation to New Orleans. After realizing what it meant, however, it’s clear enough that New Orleans cannot survive without her unique culture that makes her so different and sought after, and thus so easy to combine in terms of economics. What you find here you probably couldn’t find anywhere else.
Born and bred in New Orleans, growing up I couldn’t help but see that nearly every facet of my city’s culture was inextricably entwined with the economy: Mardi Gras, the restaurant business, WHODAT nation, the chinky shops on Decatur that sell “I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street” shirts, etc. The tourists buy our bread. They were the ones who brought in the money. Yet I learned that cultural economy goes even further beyond that thanks to this class.
Professor Lofstead taught me things about my city that even I as a local was shamefully ignorant of, bits of information that I am glad to have acquired. And if I didn’t learn it directly from him, I learned it due to my own volition in researching the topics we had to write professional articles about. That’s something I really enjoyed about this class, how independent it was. That aspect couldn’t help but prepare me for “the real world.” Gleaning information from sources I had found myself was a good feeling; the articles I produced would be on the Internet for anyone to see, and shabby work was not acceptable. It was all up to the student just how far he/she wanted to research the topic and how in depth they wanted to get. Professor Lofstead guided us, but ultimately it was up to us to use the tools and information he provided us to produce meaningful, professional level work.
Besides the independent research aspect of this project, I thoroughly enjoyed attending the lectures that were held at the Louisiana Humanities Center in the CBD. These lectures coincided with the articles we had to produce for the project. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the last lecture that was held at La Maison, but I was able to make it to the other three. I learned a lot about New Orleans and her cultural economy.
The first series was a conversation between a current burlesque dancer, Trixie Minx, and a burlesque dancer from the 50s named Wild Cherry. I have always been interested in burlesque for its aesthetic appeal, but it was interesting to learn just how big New Orleans used to be in the burlesque scene, and how a recent burgeoning interest in burlesque is causing a resurgence in its popularity. The second series was a conversation between Ben Jaffe from Preservation Hall and Gabriel Velasco, a local composer and musician, involving the New Orleans Film Fest. Again, it was fascinating to delve into the cultural economy of the city from the perspective of two insiders. The last series was a conversation between Anne Gisleson from Press Street Collective and Vera Warren-Williams from The Community Book Center. This was probably the most captivating conversation to me since it highlighted issues of space and race, a decisive factor here in New Orleans. But what was the most compelling factor about all these conversations was how two such diverse people in aspects such as age, race, occupation, etc. could get on stage and speak about cultural economy issues that were applicable to both of them. It was also always nice to research my topic, write the paper, and then see how it related to the ensuing conversation.
This class was not like any class I have ever taken, and that’s what I liked about it. It felt more like a job than a class. I wanted to do the work; I didn’t feel that I had to, that I was being forced to do something in order to earn another meaningless grade. New Orleans’ cultural economy is something that applies to me directly as a citizen of this city. As such, it is my duty to be aware of what happens here and to be open to issues that others might chose to ignore. The city’s scene has changed drastically since Hurricane Katrina six and half years ago and it will only continue to do so. It was a privilege to write for this project and to research issues that highlighted the pendulum swings this city has undergone. This project should continue to be funded and offered as a course at Loyola. It resonates entirely with all that Loyola purports to stand for, and indeed, a whole lot more.
Another uncertain cultural space is Six Flags Amusement Park. Originally opened as Jazzland in 2000, Six Flags bought the park’s lease in 2002. There were plans for Nickelodeon to buy the park after Katrina’s devastation, but that fell through last year. The city of New Orleans officially owns it now, but no one knows what to do with it, and no one really talks about it. Lying abandoned just as Katrina left it, vandals are the only ones who have left their mark; it is an eerie and sad testimony to how neglected New Orleans East is.
Used to be, if you weren’t from New Orleans you probably hadn’t heard of the Tremé. Nestled nearby the famous French Quarter, Faubourg Tremé is a community rich in culture, a diverse district steeped in history that does not share the recognition which its neighbor holds. “…arguably the oldest black neighborhood in America, the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement in the South and the home of jazz,” it is a shame on the part of our country that the history of the Tremé has not been better preserved or even acknowledged; indeed, if it weren’t for the residents themselves and the citizens of New Orleans, the important role this neighborhood played in the narrative of our nation would have been forgotten entirely. Tourists who roamed the cobbled streets of the Quarter had no idea just how close they were to a community older than the inception of America. Rarely did anyone ever hear of the Tremé.
Tremé bears the name of a Frenchman, Claude Tremé, who once owned most of the property before it was turned into a neighborhood. Claude subdivided and sold most of this land by the end of the 18th century, and in 1810 the newly formed city of New Orleans bought what was left and continued to subdivide and sell the land. Most of the people who bought these properties were free and recently emancipated black men and women, though whites purchased land as well; Tremé has always been a mixed neighborhood. This was unheard of for the times. That such a racially mixed neighborhood existed more than fifty years before the Civil War is a feat in itself.
Burlesque was particularly successful in New Orleans. The very fabric of the city’s being resonated with all that burlesque stood for. For one, New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, and jazz grew alongside burlesque. The dancers would strip while a jazz band played, would bump and grind to the beat of the music, to the sultry strains of the sax. The two were inextricably linked; both came into existence around the turn of the 20th century, and who can say which of the two spurred the other’s burgeoning popularity. As a matter of fact, that very special dance of the performers, the aforementioned bump and grind, “….first appeared on the American burlesque stage during the twenties….like the shimmy, were borrowed from the American Negro.” With no place deeper south than New Orleans, and what with her slave-holding past, there was no lack of “American Negros” for the burlesque dancers to imitate.
for the trade two blocks from the French Quarter based on these models. “Within the district, prostitutes had a de facto license to operate…the only legally constituted red-light district ever established in the United States.” Though Storyville was officially shut down only twenty years after its inception, and only after the Secretary of the Navy threatened the city with armed intervention, the industry itself is eternal and continues to this day. A city that so thoroughly enjoyed prostitutes would have no problem with this new, classier form of entertainment. As for the musicians, playing for the strippers must have been no different than playing for the hookers. Some musicians even grew to be quite famous from these gigs; Jelly Roll Morton is just one example of a musician whose international success stems from such lascivious beginnings.
Besides being “the city that care forgot,” New Orleans was also a bustling port, located at the mouth of the Mississippi River and on the tip of the Gulf of Mexico. This meant that the city was a cultural mecca, constantly flooded with new people and goods from all over the world. Unlike other places, New Orleans celebrated and embraced difference, and surely all this exchange contributed to her people being highly receptive to new ideas and art forms. Indeed, the city’s French heritage contributed to New Orleans biggest celebration of all: Mardi Gras. This is another reason for why burlesque likely prospered; the city’s love of costume and pageantry would certainly have extended to the burlesque dancers, who spent a fortune on their beautiful, elaborate garments so that they could glitter on stage. According to two ex-burlesque dancers who were interviewed for a documentary concerning the art form, “New Orleans was the most fantastic place in the world. It was all burlesque, up and down the streets on both sides. Burlesque and jazz bands. Mardi Gras was a fun time, and they had shows going day and night…In those days, it was a town of glamour.”
Burlesque has had such a prosperous resurgence here because burlesque was itself a dying art, a lost art. The nostalgic aspect is what is so appealing about burlesque, of what is so appealing about New Orleans: “Nostalgia, in fact, may depend precisely on the irrecoverable nature of the past for its emotional impact and appeal. It is the very pastness of the past, its inaccessibility, that likely accounts for a large part of nostalgia’s power…” We of New Orleans have always been aware of that. There is a feeling in the air, it is the breath of the city of herself: of all the times that once were and no longer are, but for all that, remain eternal—a part of ourselves. As Lindsay Ross, CAC’s Director of Communications, says: “Whether it’s because of New Orleans’ traditional acceptance of “naughty” shows, our long-standing tolerance of go-cups, or a general nostalgia for that past nightlife…the interest in burlesque has grown so substantially, with numerous groups organized and performing in the city.”