Up From The Streets: New Orleans: The City of Music
Film Review by Sandy Burnett | December 22, 2020
Whatever kind of music we’re talking about, if you spend any time in NOLA, it’s clear that music is key to its identity. And that’s what Up From The Streets reminds us: with all the diversity of styles and generations represented, there’s one common thread that runs through it. For this unique city and its citizens, playing, singing, parading and dancing isn’t just some entertaining add-on; in New Orleans, music is life.
It hits you from the moment you touch down on the tarmac – the airport in New Orleans is named after none other than their great jazz legend Louis Armstrong. And from that moment on, your visit to the Crescent City is one big immersive experience into everything from parade music, funk, hip-hop, rural Zydeco music, loud guitar-driven Americana, the singing of the Southern Baptist church – and jazz. Uniquely, unlike other great cultural cities in the world, music isn’t something that you have to go inside to hear; in New Orleans, music is outdoors and all around.
It’s that aspect of New Orleans that producer and director Michael Murphy homes in on in his new film, Up From The Streets. Pulling it all together onscreen is the eminent New Orleans composer and trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who back in 2006 wrote the score for the New Orleans film that everyone needs to see: Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, about the horrifying tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. While Lee’s harrowing, unflinching look at the events of Katrina really takes its time and unfolds over more than four hours, Murphy takes a fast-paced approach, presenting three hundred years of its musical heritage in just 104 minutes.
Read entire review on London Jazz News
