It’s been four years since Katrina and The Flood. Yet, when you meet another New Orleanian, the triumvirate of questions pops up within minutes. Were you flooded? How much water did you get? Did you make out ok?
World War II ended four plus sixty years ago. Still the collective memory of bombings, European cities reduced to rubble, mutual shame and disgust. That any of it had to happen. Such hurt can’t help but linger.
This is the Goldene Krone, the only establishment in Darmstadt that escaped Allied bombs. The locals like to let visitors know such things.
With a horse’s head sticking out of a third floor window (small Godfather moment on seeing that), the Krone is a fabled jazz club now. Live jam sessions and foosball almost every evening. There were four of us – three Americans and a German – and a whole lot of Gemütlichkeit (that’s German for craic and not a drink, although there was that as well).
The kicker, of course, is that American jazz and blues musicians are now more popular in European cities that you’ve never heard of than in their own country. Germans know well the difference between their Boldens and Mortons, Bechets and Brubecks, Hopkinses and Whites, Soul Rebels and Hot 8s. Was I ever surprised when the pretzel boy of Frankfurt recited to me the history of the accents of New Orleans’s Irish Channel, and he’s never even been there. He wasn’t so taken aback on discovering I once lived in the very neighborhood of which he spoke so fondly.
So it goes.
We came into Toulouse-Blangnac airport on our honeymoon to discover that a jazz festival featuring Zachary Richard and Rebirth was starting the next day…and we could forget about getting a proper hotel room for the night.
It’s been this way for many decades now: the jazz and brass band musicians get major acclaim and good bookings in Europe – better than they can ever get in America.