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Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast
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Various Artists
List Price: $18.98
Our Price: $8.11
You Save: $10.87 (57%)
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Product Details
- Artist: Various Artists
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- Binding: Audio CD
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- EAN: 0075597993424
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- Label: Nonesuch
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- Manufacturer: Nonesuch
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- Number of Discs: 1
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- Product Group: Music
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- Publisher: Nonesuch
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- Release Date: 2005-12-06
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- Studio: Nonesuch
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- Title: Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast
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- UPC: 075597993424
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Avg Customer Rating: 
Product Description: Hurricane Katrina may have devastated New Orleans and surrounding Gulf communities in 2005, but it was also a forceful reminder of the Crescent City's world renowned status as the epicenter of much American musical heritage. This benefit album (all net proceeds will be donated to the local relief efforts of Habitat for Humanity, with a portion specifically set aside to provide housing for local musicians left homeless by the disaster) picks up that latter thread, a sometimes bittersweet reminder of how deepy ingrained, yet all-too-fragile, that cultural legacy really is. Allen Toussaint's succulent reworking of his "Yes We Can Can" sets a rhythmic, optimistic tone that parallels his city's own historical resilience, while Dr. John turns in a bluesy, laid-back "World I Never Made" that's a sharp contrast to the flashes of anger he showed on Tab Benoit's earlier benefit collection, Voice of the Wetlands. Irma Thomas gives a swampy, timely edge to Bessie Smith's "Back Water Blues" while others pay tribute to the region's history of gospel (Davell Crawford, Eddie Bo), indigenous cajun folk (Buckwheat Zydeco, Beausolei, Carol Fran) and legacy as the Birthplace of Jazz (vibrantly disparate contributions from Dr. Michael White, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the venerable Preservation Hall Jazz Band). The Wild Magnolias' medley "Brother John Is Gone/Herc-Jolly-John" is a joyous, African-rooted gumbo of musical possibilities, while Donald Harrison's sax work with The Wardell Querzergue's Orchestra's on "What a Wonderful World" is a fine preamble for Toussaint's elegiac solo piano rendition of "Tipitina and Me." Randy Newman's closer, a melancholic new version of Good Old Boys' "Louisiana 1927," is a tribute to his own N.O. roots whose refrain--"Louisiana, they're trying to wash us away"--is also a forceful, tragic reminder that history does indeed repeat. --Jerry McCulley
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Customer Reviews
Nice way to send support to New Orleans area
After visiting New Orleans recently I have tried to help the area in any way I can. Buying this great cd with loads of great tunes is one small way I can help, and it is so worth it, the music is fabulous!!
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Goin' home to New Orleans
This was not of very good quality and the performers (?) did not do justice to the honoree.
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Still best post-Katrina album
two-and-a-half years after the "event" and this music is the best story of what we lost.
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Emotionally honest lament for loss, but beautiful signs of hope
Yes, there is a melancholy, tragic quality to this collection. The emotional honesty and pain of the artists, all of whom experienced great personal loss in Katrina, is almost unbearable in places. And yet there is a toughness, a fierce determination to rise again, that shows through. New Orleans, America's great city of celebration, is too deep and rich to simply party as an escape from the agony. This music, like this city, confronts the pain honestly, but in the end if certain it will survive. Especially beautiful is when this exercise takes on a spiritual cast, as the singers lay their burdens down at the feet of the Lord and trust in his goodness.
As one who lives in New Orleans and is working with Katrina victims on a daily basis, this all rings very true.
The sad but hopeful tone of Allen Toussaint "Yes We Can Can," Davell Crawford "Gather By the River" is just beyond description. Two of the lovliest songs I have ever heard. Beausoleil "L'ouragon" and Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" are also highlights. But frankly there isn't a week song on the disc. Certainly my favorite album of the year.
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Misrated
This is a fantastic CD and it really is a shame that the rating is brought down by someone who praises it in words but can't correct a mistaken one-star rating. Fantastic music, although the person who gave it two stars does have a point, it does lack the vibrant upbeat music New Orleans is famous for, even in mourning. All I can say is this was NOT the funeral. It was merely the bedside vigil at the start of a long recovery.
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