The February 16 Museumgoer story in the New Orleans Advocate | The Times-Picayune visits three different new(ish) exhibits at the New Orleans Jazz Museum: “It All Started in Jane Alley: Louis Armstrong in New Orleans,” “Shake Your Hips: Louisiana Blues,” and “Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood.” An accompanying Museumgoer podcast visits the first two with music curator David Kunian.
Read the newspaper story here. Listen to the podcast here. See photos accompanying the podcast below.
The print intro:
As local high school marching bands fill the streets with rolling thunder over the next couple of weeks, consider the battered cornet on view at the New Orleans Jazz Museum exhibition “It All Started in Jane Alley: Louis Armstrong in New Orleans.”
A young troublemaker, arrested for celebratory gunplay on New Year’s 1912 and sentenced to a residency at the Colored Waif’s Home, encounters one horn and two music educators. The world changes.
“This is not his first cornet; this is the cornet he really learned how to play on,” said David Kunian, the museum’s music curator. “He was taught by professor Peter Davis, who was kind of the instructor, the band leader there, and the head of the home, Capt. Joseph Jones.
“This is the beginning of really all of what you know Louis Armstrong was, and all that jazz became. That is, in my humble opinion, the most important thing that we have.”
Special thanks to David, and to you for reading and maybe listening.
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