FUNK

group of musicians to play, and envisioning a larger big band playing these staples.

“The first challenge is, to my knowledge, there are no big band recordings of Mardi Gras songs,” Marsalis says. “You might have [1960s New Orleans based funk band] The Meters and their songs and you have Willie Tee and he did something with the Mardi Gras Indians. So the challenge is to work out how we’re going to tackle the big band. With Uptown Jazz Orchestra we play more like a small group anyway, it’s more like a small R&B band. So from that standpoint, it was

“The other thing with a large ensemble is you can create more dense harmony, the way you can address the sound is very different. The question is how do you keep the New Orleans rhythms and the groove going. So that was the main thing. Andrew Baham and I did the arrangements and he did a masterful job of keeping the New Orleans rhythm, the rhythm of how we play.” While wearing many hats as producer, engineer and performer, Marsalis says the key to being a successful arranger isn’t easily explained.

“One thing is to have good technique and to have studied,” he says. “But the more important thing is to listen to a lot of music and know what sounds good and what doesn’t sound good. It might sound like a simple answer, but that’s really what it is.

“I’ve used Igor Stravinsky as an example. You listen to Stravinsky and he’s writing very complex music. But there’s something about it that it’s not too much. Now there are other composers who have written more complex music than Stravinsky, but it doesn’t have that central element that makes it lasting in the same way. So I would say the greatest thing to be a great arranger is usually falling on the side of not too much. It’s to be able to know what the song actually needs and to arrange like that.”

Uptown on Mardi Gras , Marsalis loves the groovy ‘Midnight at the Zulu Ball”’ and ‘Carnival Time’, which he cites as current personal favorites. However, one segment of the album that he’s especially proud of is ‘Mardi Gras Mambo’ and ‘Mardi Gras Mambo (For the Jass Cats),’ the latter an inventive reworking of the song by Marsalis and

“It’s just my sense of humor about things,” he says. “I was looking for a song and I was trying to say what’s something that people would not think to do. I wanted to do that. ‘Mardi Gras Mambo (For the Jass Cats)’ was the one where I said we could do something different. You have a song that’s a mambo and we play it without the mambo groove. It was just something that I heard and thought this would be something, man, that would be killing! I got Branford [brother and saxophonist Branford Marsalis] on the case and he took care of the business.”

Fortunately for Marsalis and most New Orleans musicians, the industry is starting to rebound somewhat from the devastating pandemic and lockdown. He says people are back playing in clubs and on the streets, but felt this new album would serve as a means to show musicians not from New Orleans how the music is played by those native to The Big Easy.

“Those of us who are New Orleans musicians have the responsibility and the obligation to not only play but to record our music—New Orleans music—the way that it’s supposed to sound,” Marsalis says. “It’s fine that folks are coming down and getting work, it’s fine. But we need to establish, ‘Okay, but this is actually what it is supposed to sound like.’ It was another thing to keep that New Orleans sound going.”

Marsalis will have a busy 2023 besides his show with the Naples Philharmonic Jazz Orchestra. Despite the fact musicians could not perform in front of audiences during the lockdown, he never lost his appreciation for playing, something that was instilled in him by some of the genre’s icons.

“I’ve had the chance to play with people like Elvin Jones, Art Blakey and Max Roach,” he says. “They let you know what a privilege it is to always play in whatever the situation. The fact you’re able to present your music, if it’s to 50 people or 500 or 5,000, it doesn’t matter in that respect. It taught me about human resilience firsthand, that we all had to come through this a certain kind of way. But in terms of performance, I’m always glad to play. The older musicians set the tone early on for me.”

Marsalis and his family showed resilience during the pandemic when the family patriarch, Ellis Marsalis Jr., died in April, 2020 at 85 from pneumonia brought on by complications from coronavirus. Delfeayo says his father would’ve loved Uptown on Mardi Gras Day

“He really would’ve liked it because he liked things that had a groove,” he says. “That was his thing. He was always talking about who’s grooving or the groove they had. So I think he really would’ve had a good time. In fact, I wish he was around. I’d had him come and play on some of it. I would’ve liked to have my dad play in a situation that’s not generally what he would do.” •

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