In most places, people watch or march on parades. In New Orleans, you have another option. This is the second line.
The noun “second line” refers to people following the brass band during Mardi Gras, on a particular Sunday, or on their way back from the graveyard at a jazz funeral. Dirge and hymns are replaced as follows: Fun music to dance. The second line is neither official nor planned. It grows and rolls with handkerchiefs and umbrellas for all ages, turning the parade into a far-flung party.
As an adjective, “second line” can represent a characteristic beat, an afro-Caribbean rhythm flowing through New Orleans music, from which it extends to other jazz, R & B and funk in the world.
“Second line” is also a verb.To The second line is to dance.. There is no fixed procedure. Everyone does it a little differently. However, most practitioners agree on one thing. It means that it is not taught in class.
“You fall into it” is how choreographer and educator Michelle N. Gibson, who grew up in New Orleans, said in a recent interview. “No one teaches the second line.”
Except that Gibson teaches it or she undertakes it.She teaches some of history at her one-woman show “Takin It To The Roots” Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival in Berkshire, July 29-30.. For the past few years she has also offered second line classes. Workshop called New Orleans Original Back Shop In it, she presents a dubbed version of her “second line aesthetics.”
47-year-old Gibson became his hometown cultural ambassador. Melanie George, Associate Curator of Jacobs Pillow, said:
At Gibson’s workshop, she begins by helping students find the second line beats on their body, legs, hips, shoulders, and head bounces. The stanchions shift to skip as the dance must cover the ground. She calls herself “cheeky and cheeky” and calls herself “Mz. G” a coach who gives permission for encouragement. Her most frequent and regular instruction: “Play with it.”
“‘Playing with it’ means playing with your own inner rhythm,” she explained in an interview. “That’s your true you. Honey, everyone’s second line is different because everyone got their own different testimony.”
Her testimony is that of the preacher’s daughter. Her father, BA Gibson, was an elder and pastor of the Episcopal Church of African Methodist Episcopal Church.When she was a child, he was a minister St. Peter AME ChurchOne of the oldest black congregations in uptown New Orleans.
Gibson’s father did not allow her to join the second line. “My dad didn’t mean to allow me to jump or sway on those streets,” she said. (When I was a teenager, she could be a wise second line.) “But when I grow up in church and see people catch the spirit, the Holy Spirit dances. That’s my second line. did.”
Not far from the church, she found another education. New Orleans Creative Arts Center, She specialized in dance. (Other alumni include Jon Batiste, Harry Connick Jr., and the Marsalis brothers.) After graduating from high school, she spent her summer training at Alvin Ailey School in New York, but hips. The group arrested Development when booking a tour in Hope, and her mother disapproved her and brought her home.
Next came, in her words, “struggle, hustle and bustle.” The marriage soon ended in divorce. While caring for her little daughter, she earned a BFA in dance from the University of Tulane and co-starred with various types of local dance companies, including Brazil, West Africa and Hyundai. “I had codified training, but I also joined the community and learned there,” she said.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, Gibson was discharged in 2005 shortly after giving birth to his son. She evacuated with her children. Then she learned that her New Orleans apartment couldn’t live. She moved to Dallas, where she still lives, and is currently teaching at Southern Methodist University.
After a while, she earned a master’s degree in dance and performance studies through the Hollins University-American Dance Festival Graduate Program at Duke University. Surrounded by successful mid-career dancers, she wondered what she had to contribute. She grew up as a dancer in New Orleans. She wanted to dig deeper into the culture, especially after being banished from her hometown.
The result is the first incarnation of “Takin’It to the Roots,” which she describes as a “spicy gumbo” by a brass band, an African drummer, and a dancer from the company of Chuck Davis, the founder of Dance Africa. “I’ve confirmed that I’ve taken it all in,” she said, showing her roots in Senegambia, Congo, and Haiti (and thus her own roots).
That interest in history is carried over to her one-woman version of the show she developed at the South Dallas Cultural Center and the Ashe Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans. And it goes through in her view of the second line.
“Looking at the second line, we can see the history of the black people who arrived at the port of Orleans when we were allowed to celebrate,” she said. She talked about Congo Square, the location of New Orleans where enslaved people were allowed to drum and dance in the early 19th century. This is the place where African traditions were woven and maintained. She talked about the charities, social aid and entertainment clubs that sponsored jazz funerals and second line parades. And she talked about trauma, Katrina, those who had to leave, and those who remained in the still confused city.
“That’s what you see with footwork and body thrust,” she said. “You are watching their story.”
Gibson tells her that what she teaches is “based on my training and the way I want to share it,” her own second-line aesthetic, not the second-line that New Orleans natives are experiencing. Is carefully specified. “You can’t expect that,” she said. “You have to live it.” She sees herself as an intermediary between the New Orleans community and academia, and inserts herself into conversations about New Orleans culture, “Origin and it. Claims “respect for the people who actually belong to it.”
At Jacob’s Pillow show, Gibson transforms “Takin It To The Roots,” originally designed for theaters, into a matrix format. Her audience follows her to sites around the campus that represent Congo Square and the Black Church. However, the second line at the end of the performance is standard. “I always take people from the theater to the street,” she said. “There is no show to attend with Mz. G We are not going to go out in the end.”
Of course, there is also NOJO7, a brass band with her drawn from the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. Its artistic director, drummer Adonis Rose, states that he considers Gibson to be the most distinctive of her teachers. How to do the second line. “Her class is tied to his own mission of” exporting our culture to people who can’t be experienced otherwise, “he added.
However, Rose also emphasized the “spiritual experience” of following Gibson when she led the brass band procession as a grand marshal. This is another role she takes very seriously. Before accepting the invitation to do that, she asked for permission from the first female grand marshal she had ever seen, Wanda Rouzan.. “It’s a calling, it’s anointing,” Gibson said. “I grew up understanding that there is the highest one, and that’s why I strut like struts.”
“This is no longer a dance for me,” she continued, following the preacher’s rhythm. “My practice is more motivated by unity, harmony, rolling and moving forward together in the same rhythm. That’s what the world needs. I want to heal the world. . “
