Inside The Festive Jazz Funerals Of New Orleans

Publish date: 2024-05-03

Jazz funerals exist to this day and have taken to incorporating other elements of Black American culture, like funk, hip-hop, and rap. Currently, jazz funerals are held not just for jazz musicians or prominent New Orleans personages but also for young people or other members of the local community who died suddenly or tragically. Interestingly, Alive Network says that the 1973 James Bond movie "Live and Let Die" played a significant role in letting the wider world know about jazz funerals. That's also when the term "jazz funeral" took root. Nowadays, jazz funerals can be found around the U.S. and the entire globe. In 2015, for instance, Memphis hosted a jazz funeral for blues legend B.B. King.

The biggest and most prominent jazz funeral likely happened on August 29, 2006, in the wake of 2005's Hurricane Katrina. In case readers need reminding, Katrina and its flooding devastated low-lying New Orleans and killed a total of 1,833 people across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Funeralwise says that thousands attended the jazz funeral conducted in honor of Katrina's dead in downtown New Orleans, where residents had stood stranded the year prior.

While not everyone gets a jazz funeral, those interested can hire musicians for the task via agencies like Alive Network, including travel to cities besides New Orleans. And yet, on Vox musician Stafford Agee says, "I never liked considering a funeral being a gig. I'm performing for somebody's homegoing ceremony." 

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