Cyril Neville
Sorry, but my direct linking isn’t working. You can look this up on your own….
The Dallas Morning News had a good piece this morning about Cyril Neville and why he’s choosing to stay in Austin instead of going back to New Orleans. Basically, it has to do with his belief the New Orleans he used to know died before the hurricane and he’d been planning to move anyway. You might remember seeing his “Racial Cleansing in New Orleans” T-shirt in one of the post-hurricane concerts.
I won’t pretend to be qualfied to judge/justify/criticize his feelings one way or the other. My feeling is that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes only results in being a mile away with someone else’s shoes on. You have to live their life to really Get It. I’m overtired of armchair judgments in this forum anyway.
But this has me deeply wondering about the long-term changes we’ll find once we return in a week or so. Putting aside the cleanup and the reorganization and all the other immediate hurricane stuff, I think it’s going to be at least five years and likely another decade before so much of this becomes apparent. Is Cyril right? Was The Real New Orleans already gone? Can it come back? What’s the impetus one way or the other?
In one way, it’s a silly question. Everyone is going to find their own “real” New Orleans or any other city. And, to a degree, it’s going to be a moving target anyway. But we loved it as it was when we left. We’ll return to find things changed on a series of levels — and some of those changes are going to be the kinds of things we have no control over.
On the other hand, there is much we CAN control as things are remade. These are the things we’re looking forward to.
It’ll be an interesting ride.
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-no_neville_1009gl.ART.State.Edition1.4258daf.html
That’s pretty funny. Austin Texas a city about as fake as it could be.
Did anyone else notice in the article that they refer to Art Neville’s first hit as “Mardi Gras GUMBO?”
Austin is a fake city? I think not. Cyrill Neville is welcome here, as are all the displaced musicians from NOLA. Austin is the REAL Music Capitol of America now. We have the Austin City Limits Festival, and other musical venues too numerous to mention here on this blog.
Roux can kiss my big fat TEXAN ass.
I’ve never seen Austin as being fake (and I’m a native Texan — my dad’s family is from LaGrange/Schulenburg). I just think the city has a more diverse population than it did, oh, 25 years ago.
…but someone please hire a traffic engineer or two. I-35 is constantly worse than I-10 thru Metairie during rush hour.
You be right about that Craig! I-35 sucks big green ones. I’m fortunate though…my commute in the mornings takes me against traffic, and I never have to use I-35.
My theory is that the powers that be on the city council were too busy tripping in the 60s and 70s to build roads, and their mantra is “if we DON’T build it, they WON’T come…”
Cyril Neville is nothing anyway.New Orleans does not need his kind.He faked to be a Soul Brother and only cared about furthering his own carrer as a fake musician.So good riddins to have and good luck to the people of whereer he lands.KEEP HIM!!!!!!!
Read the Neville’s autobiography. Cyril comes across as about as racist as he possibly can…with an exception made for Dr. John.
No big loss…