The way Lumar LeBlanc sees it, Mardi Gras is one of New Orleans’ most important exports.
Over the years, people visiting the graceful old city have experienced the Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday” in French) celebrations, with their raucous brass band music, parades and wonderful foods like jambalaya and gumbo.
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Then they go home to places like Maine or New York or Minneapolis and wonder “why can’t we have fun like that HERE in February?”
So people around the country nowadays throw Mardi Gras parties and parades, hold gumbo contests, and hire New Orleans-style bands to play their towns.
That’s why LeBlanc, a founder of The Soul Rebels Brass Band, sees lots of different parts of the country this time of year. His band and its style of music are much in demand, because they’re all about Mardi Gras and its spirit of celebration.
“It’s just like people who go away for a ski vacation, to Aspen or someplace, then they come home and they want to bring some of that experience home with them,” said LeBlanc, 44, who plays snare drum in the band. “Tourists come to Mardi Gras, and they have so much fun that when they go home, they still want to have some of that experience.”
And here’s a secret about Mardi Gras in New Orleans from an insider: It’s really more about tourists than anything.
“It’s gotten so big because of the tourists — not the locals — and it’s the tourists that fortify it economically,” said LeBlanc.
LeBlanc and his Soul Rebels Brass Band will be bringing the music of New Orleans to the locals tonight — the locals of Portland, Maine, that is — at Port City Music Hall. Local soul/funk outfit Sly-Chi will open.
(Maine is especially appropriate for a Mardi Gras party, because the Cajuns of Louisiana can trace their ancestry to Acadian exiles of the 1700s from northern Maine and the Canadian provinces.)
Like Mardi Gras, brass band music is an export of New Orleans. New Orleans-style brass bands basically started as marching bands for the local community, playing weddings, funerals and parades. But in New Orleans, any event with music is a time to move and dance.
“The main things about brass band music is the improvisation and the connection with movement and dancing,” said LeBlanc. “Today, it’s become a commodity more than a musical entity.”
While brass band music is basically, at its core, jazz, it can be pretty funky and soulful as well. Like everything in New Orleans, there’s a blending involved.
LeBlanc came to brass band music via the symphonic and concert music he played as a young boy at Catholic school in New Orleans. He didn’t get involved with it until his school got a new music director, and that director played in a brass band.
LeBlanc founded The Soul Rebels Brass Band with Derrick Moss, who had played with him in Dejean’s Young Olympia Brass Band, a training ground for New Orleans musicians. The pair decided to start their own band, with a slightly different sound, because “we wanted to make our own sound without disrespecting the brass tradition,” LeBlanc said.
The Soul Rebels don’t do a lot of marching now; instead, they play in front of microphones in clubs. Their shows combine new takes on old brass band standards, with original tunes that include innovative vocals. Some of the tunes have a hip-hop component with some rapping involved.
It’s all part of keeping the music fun and keeping it moving, LeBlanc says.
Just like Mardi Gras.
“Brass band music has got to have a dancing rhythm you can’t deny,” LeBlanc said. “It makes you move.”
Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:
rrouthier@pressherald.com
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