New Orleans, is it a wonderful world?
The city that gave us Jazz and Sazerac has its fair share of dirty secrets
The entire reason to take a trip to New Orleans on Memorial Day of 2017 was cocktails and the fact that I could drink on the streets. Be it people or movies, New Orleans representation in my experience was limited to Sazerac as a result of which, I never cared to research enough before landing into the Big Easy. Thereafter, everything I learnt about New Orleans in the French Quarters was a surprise. And Lord, wasn’t there enough of them.
Here goes the summarized history — NOLA (New Orleans, LA) was founded by French Canadiens in 1718 but they were soon done with it and gave it away to Spain in 1762. Then in 1800 Spain ceded it to Napoleon and it became a French colony again.
The famous Louisiana Purchase of 1803 finally brought New Orleans under the control of United States. The deal required an enormous sum of 15 million dollars of which 10 million were borrowed from Great Britain. Ironically, Napoleon used that money to declare war on Britain itself. To quote my tour guide “We never paid Britain back, but you see, had it not been for us, they would all be speaking German now. So, we kind of paid them back”.
The role New Orleans then played during Civil War needs no introduction.
If you look at NOLA from the perspective of an outsider who had only been to the major cities of East and West Coast, New Orleans looks very un-American. No beautiful bridges, no sky high observatories, nothing boasting its stature as a prominent historical port city. All you see is an almost overflowing Mississippi river and hotels and condos in what seems more like a former warehouse. The French quarters bears similarities with the Old Town of its Canadian cousin Montreal. But what differentiates the two is the Spanish architectural influence in New Orleans establishing its stature as the melting pot of the 18th century.
More than the architecture though, the multi-cultural influence is more pronounced in New Orleans famous Creole cuisine, which is a blend of Spanish, African, Portuguese, Italian, Native American and Caribbean influences. I only knew one way of eating my oysters until I found fried and Rockefeller (does not mean they are better though). Spanish and French style come together in Jambalaya and the iconic Beignet presents the American doughnut in a French hors d’oeuvre form. There is also an extensive use of the cantaloupe, sometimes served with mint as sorbet, sometimes savored with Calabrian chili. What should not be missed though is the brunch at Commander’s Palace. A New Orleans landmark since 1893, this place delivers an unmatched experience of the Creole cooking and hospitality. The Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé with the warm whiskey sauce, deserves the title of Queen of Creole desserts.
When food was undergoing an evolution, how could drinks be left behind. The French intellectuals brought absinthe to New Orleans but having earned its reputation for causing murder and madness, it was banned in the US in 1915. Today it is legal again but in a considerably diluted form. Nevertheless, locals combined it with the Sazerac Cognac and added to it, bitters made by the local apothecary, Antoine Amedie Peychaud.
Be it Antoine’s Sazerac served with the classic Peychaud’s bitters, Tujague’s 160 year old recipe of creamy Grasshopper, Sobou’s Chardonnays Way with a kick of wild thyme or that Hand-Grenade lying next to every passed out kid on the street, cocktails are an integral part of the historical and cultural experience in New Orleans.
The amalgamation of cultures also extends to music. Nashville may have officially bagged the title of Music City, but the ubiquity, versatility and the quality of live music in French Quarters remains unmatched. Be it any hour, you can listen to live music in French Quarters, performed by artists from across the country. The soul of the city though, is Jazz.
Out of their drumming and voodoo rituals, the African American community created a unique form of music encompassing the African polyrhythms, French quadrilles and Louisiana’s own Blues. Jazz (derived from the term jasm which means energy) was born right here, in the deep-deep south. And just like the nature of its creators, Jazz is humble, adaptable and spontaneous.
Jazz is characterized by improvisation. It is this ability to add your distinct style to a song, that Jazz took various forms across the world, assimilating their local music culture. The French Jazz added beguine, Kansas City Jazz added bebop, Gypsy Jazz played its rhythm guitar “la pompe” and Afro-Cuban Jazz found its roots in habanera. The on-spot solo plays, the call and response pattern, the blue note swings all come together and render a performance I often find myself lost in.
But the birthplace of Creole and Jazz has a dark side as well. Against the backdrop of a purple sky, in the unlit alleys of French Quarters, the ghost tour narrates numerous stories of cruelty and atrocities. It tells the story of a Zach, who dismembered and cooked his sweetheart Addie. It tells the story of a serial killer Axeman who would spare lives of those playing jazz at home, thus inspiring WWOZ Sunday broadcast of Axeman Jazz. It tells the story of Dr. James Dupas’ unethical pharmacology and his experiments on pregnant woman and children.
It tells the story of the charming Jacque St Germain, who would describe the events of 18th century France as if he participated in those himself. He was proved to be a vampire when a woman jumped out of his gallery claiming he tried to bite her neck. When the police broke into the house, Jacque was nowhere to be found but they found a collection of open but corked bottles with a terrible mixture of blood and wine.
The story of atrocities on slave-boats and plantations can still be explained by colonization. But how do you explain the actions of the creole socialite Madame LaLauri who would whip a slave child with cowhide until she fall from the roof and die, who would torture and murder slaves in her attic, and still not get convicted because these slaves were her “property”.
In the words of New Orleans Bee in 1838,
“Upon entering one of the apartments, the most appalling spectacle met their eyes. Seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated were seen suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other… These slaves were the property of the demon, in the shape of a woman… They had been confined by her for several months in the situation from which they had thus providentially been rescued and had been merely kept in existence to prolong their suffering and to make them taste all that the most refined cruelty could inflict.”
This is the story of Vieux Carré, La Nouvelle-Orléans. This is the story of the place that despite its viciousness gave us that legend who made us believe that after all, “It’s a wonderful world”.
