Newswise — New Orleans artists are reluctant to credit Hurricane Katrina as a source of inspiration. But after the disaster — which marks its third anniversary Aug. 29 — many New Orleans musicians experienced their most productive months in decades and scaled new creative peaks, a University of Iowa professor asserts.
Newswise — The flood displaced many artists, jolting them out of comfort zones. It also drove up demand for New Orleans music as the country clung to connections with the city, said Don McLeese, a journalism professor in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences whose career as a music critic has spanned three decades.
McLeese’s assessment of the hurricane’s impact on New Orleans musicians was published in the May 2008 issue of the journal Popular Music and Society.
“People tended to take New Orleans for granted as a party town with a specific kind of music. When they realized such a treasure had been severely damaged, if not lost forever, they were forced to reconsider what New Orleans meant as a cultural resource for the country,” McLeese said. “New Orleans was on everybody’s mind, and there was this real hunger for its music. Musicians found themselves busier than they had been in years.”
Take for example Allen Toussaint, the once-prolific songwriter and producer whose signature tunes once defined the city’s rhythm and blues, but whose career had been on autopilot since the late 1970s. A flood-forced move to New York resulted in collaboration with Elvis Costello. He released the critically acclaimed “The River in Reverse,” a response to Hurricane Katrina, and embarked on the busiest year of his 68-year lifetime, including an extensive international tour.
Read more: Professor: Katrina Boosted New Orleans Musicians’ Productivity, Creativity
