Why New Orleans Funerals Have Jazz

Few funerals in the world are as recognizable as a New Orleans jazz funeral: a brass band, a crowd in the street, and music that starts slow and turns joyful. This article explains how it works and where it came from.

What is a jazz funeral?

A funeral procession with a brass band. According to 64 Parishes, a traditional jazz funeral honors a prominent community member, often a musician and nearly always a Black man, who is “buried with music.” The procession moves from the funeral service to the burial site, led by a band. The band first plays dirges, which the article describes as somber Christian hymns performed at a slow walking tempo.

What does “cut the body loose” mean?

The turn from grief to celebration. 64 Parishes explains that after the body is laid to rest, or “cut loose,” the band starts playing up-tempo music, the second liners begin dancing, and the funeral becomes a street celebration. Each jazz funeral, it says, begins with a respectful dirge and ends with a cathartic dance.

Where did it come from?

From several traditions. Wikipedia says the second line has its origins in West African circle or ring dances, brought to New Orleans by enslaved Africans. Religion News Service says it has roots in the African dancing at Congo Square, where enslaved people gathered on Sundays. CNN describes a custom born of West African and Caribbean cultures, now “entirely New Orleans.” The New Orleans Advocate notes that historian Matt Sakakeeny believes the funeral pattern probably took shape in the early 20th century.

What are social aid and pleasure clubs?

The groups that organized many of these funerals. Wikipedia explains that African Americans formed benevolent societies and social aid and pleasure clubs partly because white insurance companies often refused to cover free people of color and the formerly enslaved. CNN says that by the 1920s the clubs were covering funeral expenses, community events, and parades. The Advocate adds that some clubs had existed for decades before the Civil War, and that Louis Armstrong attended one of the early parades as a young trumpeter.

How is a second line parade different?

It is a parade without the funeral. Wikipedia says that second line parades lack the slow hymns and dirges played at funerals. It adds that one description calls a second line a “jazz funeral without a body.” The Historic New Orleans Collection’s account of one club says people either “have a body or have cut the body loose” when they dance in the street.

Who gets a jazz funeral today?

Often musicians and club members. Wikipedia says such funerals are most commonly held for musicians or those connected to the music industry, and for members of social aid and pleasure clubs or Carnival krewes. For other customs of community mourning, see Death Around the World.