Recently I've found a vital reprieve from the ocean of academic pressure flowing from junior theme, the ACTs, and most of all the formidable PSAE (how am I supposed to know how many people are in the picture, do I look like a wedding photographer to you?). My lifeboat came in the form of HBO's Treme. The drama, which airs on Sundays, is starting its second season. Treme follows the lives of New Orleanians trying to reconstruct their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The show has a particular interest in jazz, which is to be expected given its almost synonymous association with New Orleans. During a symposium at Tulane University one of the shows creators, David Simon, identified New Orleans' jazz infused culture as, "one of the things that has led New Orleans back, to the extent it has come back". I found this quote especially interesting considering the setting of our latest book, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The novel is set in the 1920s otherwise known as the Jazz Age. And as Fitzgerald makes evident it was a time of unprecedented prosperity and promise. While I won't go so far as to prescribe jazz as the remedy for all societal hardships, I think the two examples give an interesting account of how culture is tied to economic growth. In the case of the Roaring 20s jazz helped defined a nation swiftly becoming a economic, and cultural, superpower, while the late 2000s jazz helped revive the South's great city. It seems that jazz embodies that clique of the Crescent City, Laissez les bon temps rouler.
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