David Simon and HBO's Treme—a chronicle of the musicians and other residents of New Orleans struggling to rebuild their homes and lives after Hurricane Katrina—could never hope to meet the bar set by their previous Baltimore-based series, The Wire. But it has done something that its predecessor couldn't: For all its somberness and hardship, it reintroduced America to a city within its own boundaries whose life and culture deserve to be celebrated. Jazz, both traditional and contemporary; gospel; rhythm & blues; funk; hip-hop; and frothing amalgamations of the above have gained a forum and a newly enthusiastic audience via a television program with a fervid fan base. As evidence, the closing show of the DC Jazz Festival, a showcase at the Kennedy Center called "A Night in Treme," is sold out.

But this is one of those shows where you stand in long cancellation lines if you have to. Emceed by Treme star Wendell Pierce, it features contemporary representatives of New Orleans' musical traditions, many of whom have appeared on the show: the Rebirth Brass Band, trumpeter/singer James Andrews, clarinetist Dr. Michael White, trombonist "Big Sam" Williams, and alto saxophonist and musical director Donald Harrison. You don't see lineups like this outside The Big Easy itself, and unless you've got a trip forthcoming, this is can't-miss stuff. Find a way to be there.

"A Night in Treme" begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, 2700 F Street NW. $20-$65. Sold out.

Human tragedy is not at the forefront of The Big Uneasy, Harry Shearer's examination of what happened in New Orleans in August 2005. Shearer, the actor, voiceover artist, musician—he has plenty of other jobs too—says at the outset of his film that it is not a hurricane story. The flooding of New Orleans was a decades-in-the-making structural catastrophe made inevitable by years of shoddy engineering and make-work government contracts; it just happened to be set off by a storm named Katrina.

The Big Uneasy does not chuck aside the rawest suffering the rest of the country watched on television. But it does dismiss as media navel-gazing the conception of Hurricane Katrina as a natural disaster that flooded run-down neighborhoods and only impacted poor black people who were forgotten as soon as something more interesting came on the TV. An early bit of animation shows the wreckage came from a network of collapsing levees that within hours inundated over 80 percent of New Orleans. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the culprit here; the agency needs no prodding from Shearer to be seen as a hulking bureaucracy more content to grab Congressional earmarks and spend decades building canals that by their completion are no longer useful. An external review by three engineers—one of whom, Maria Garzino, is a Corps contractor—finds the right solutions (regrow coastal wetlands, design more organic waterways, look to the Netherlands, a low-lying country that never floods), but the official reaction is swift and harsh.

The Big Uneasy is not always as grim as its message; John Goodman, like Shearer an adopted New Orleanian, jauntily hosts brief segments on the grit and endurance of those who weathered the flood. Colorful shots of Mardi Gras and the art that fills the city warm an otherwise dire assessment. One might be tickled by Shearer's inherent wryness or Irma Thomas' crooning, but in the end you'll seethe, and you'll want to Google the location of the nearest levee.

Screens tonight at 6 p.m. at GALA Hispanic Theatre, 3333 14th St. NW. $10. (202) 717-0700.

Harry Shearer is a mockumentarian, not a documentarian. But the constant depiction of Hurricane Katrina of a natural disaster finally set him off last year after half a decade of trying to promote the idea that the 2005 flooding of New Orleans had deeper roots than a weather event. Spinal Tap fans know Shearer best as the hirsute bassist Derek Smalls and the other roles he's played in the Christopher Guest corpus; far more know his many voices on The Simpsons—Ned Flanders, C. Montgomery Burns, Seymour Skinner, and about a thousand others. But Shearer isn't joking around with The Big Uneasy. In the film Shearer gives new attention to an investigation of how the levees really broke, and the assessment is stark. Decades of make-work government contracts and entrenched bureaucracy in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flooded New Orleans, Shearer's film argues. And the vital lessons of Katrina may have gone unlearned. The Big Uneasy, which premiered last August, screens tomorrow at the DC International Film Festival. We spoke by phone yesterday.

You make the case that what happened in New Orleans wasn’t a natural disaster but a failure of engineering. What compelled you to put this argument in a film?

As a New Orleans resident I’d been hearing these reports coming from these investigations and I’d been doing interviews with the people in the movie on my radio show and blogging about it on The Huffington Post. When President Obama came to New Orleans in October 2009 and called the flooding a natural disaster my head hit the ceiling. One does feel this is a smart guy. The failure of the federal government to prevent the flooding was one of the events that made him president so one would hope that’s on his radar. He stands in the middle of the city and says brazenly what we know not to be true. I decided radio and blogging aren’t enough, so why not make a documentary? I asked for a show of hands, and being the only one in the room mine was the only hand that went up.

Sounds like things haven’t changed that much.

As far as New Orleans is concerned things haven’t really changed and hope is in the eye of the beholder. The story is over four decades under various administrations. It could almost make you non-political.

You lay the fault with the Army Corps of Engineers, and you suggest they’re making the same mistakes again. Is it, for lack of a better phrase, bureaucratic complacency?

It’s bureaucratic complacency inside the Army Corps of Engineers. Let’s call it what it really is. There was a phrase used by an American diplomat about the corruption in Afghanistan: culture of impunity. That’s what we have here. No one got punished for failing in a way that killed over 2,000 people. They got promoted. They got more money for a new project that has the same problems. That’s more than complacency. It’s not just in New Orleans. The same story is being played out all over the country where levees are breaking. New Orleans is the canary in the coalmine. So if you’re in Sacramento or Dallas, look out, it’s coming your way.

You’re not originally from New Orleans. Why did you move there?

I started going to New Orleans as a visitor in 1988 and immediately fell in love with the place. My wife and I bought a place there in the late ’90s and have been going there more and more ever since. I consider it my primary home now. You can focus on the really amazing food and music and architecture, you can take all that away and it’s still an amazing place to be because of the people. There’s a culture there. And that’s what’s sort of always seductive about the place. They have a different understanding of what life’s about. A friend of mine said “It’s a city that doesn’t live by the dollar or the clock.” But let’s be honest, there’s no place that’s great to live if you’re horribly poor and obviously there’s lots of poverty there.

A lot of your argument is also with how the flooding was covered.

The media narrative was this was a natural disaster in city below sea level that affected mostly poor black people. The reality is this was a man-made disaster that flooded 80 percent of a metropolitan area and 100 percent of a suburban county. It’s 50 percent above sea level. It affected poor black people, poor white people, rich white people, rich black people, everybody. It was a citywide, culturally diverse, economically diverse catastrophe. And it got marginalized by the national media into this much more limited idea of what this event was. I think that affected the level of political will to change things.

So how are things today?

I think New Orleans has been extremely lucky in the last few years in that there hasn’t been a weather event that has challenged the system that is currently in place. Me personally? I hope our luck holds up. I don’t have the level of confidence I would like to have in the protection we have been given. There’s not sufficient outside oversight of the Corps of Engineers. They’re much better at saying, “we’ve learned our lesson,” than actually learning their lesson. We talk about the canal known as "Mr. Go" (the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal) that did incredible environmental damage. You can’t stop these people with a stick. Michael Grunwald (who investigated this topic for The Washington Post) talked about this iron triangle between the Corps, special interests, and congresspeople. It’s cozy and sometimes a few thousand people get killed. What happened in 2005 should have been a wake up call. We hit the snooze button instead.

How, then, do you get their attention?

I would love to get the attention of the current occupants of the White House. We’re going to be releasing a letter from the whistleblower in the film addressed to the president. It’s a personal that letter with information about the only response from the White House during her four-year experience trying to address this. It was not pretty.

What is the ideal response?

There are people who would like to reform the Corps of Engineers. I wish them all the luck in the world. I’m a filmmaker; I went to the people who know what they’re talking about. They paint a picture of an agency that is best described as rogue. If I could write the script for the president, I’d say issues of climate and water are going to be front and center. We have 21st century problems and 19th century solutions. We’ve got to go to the people who have centuries of experience in protecting people in low-lying areas—like the Dutch—and get rid of the American sense that we have nothing to learn from anyone else, because in this area we sure do.

The idea that we have nothing to learn from anyone else, that’s not exactly the most popular sentiment these days.

I know, but how many cities have to be destroyed before we start dealing with these problems? I don’t see cities in Holland going through what New Orleans had to go through. I remember seeing photos of flood control in Holland, in Britain where they built the Thames Barrier, then in New Orleans where the levees looked like they were built by a 3-year-old.

How much can be undone?

You’ll never fill in Mr. Go. They moved more earth than to build the Panama Canal. You can never heal the gash that has been made in the environment. You can close it off so it’s no longer a funnel. But some of this damage is for keeps.

So who is taking responsibility for New Orleans?

Both senators are very good advocates for what they think the state needs. Mary Landreiu and David Vitter, whatever one thinks of their other positions, have been very good in advocating for Louisiana. There are a lot of competing claims on federal attention and federal money.

I wanted to touch quickly on a completely different topic. You host a public-radio show (Le Show on KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif.). Do you have a take on the current attempts by Congress to defund public broadcasting?

It’s an attempt to defund NPR and PBS. Here’s what I can say. If you look back, NPR was every bit as bad during the run-up to the Iraq War as The New York Times and Washington Post were, but the Times and Post apologized, NPR didn’t. NPR was as bad with the New Orleans story. I think there’s something really wrong there, and I’m not sure I want my tax money going there until they figure out what the deal is. I think NPR has an inflated sense of its value. I live in London part of the time so I get to see the BBC. And anyone who thinks NPR is as good as the BBC is kidding themselves.

The Big Uneasy screens Saturday, 6 p.m. at GALA Hispanic Theatre, 3333 14th St. NW. $10. (202) 717-0700.

Shearer will be speaking at a DC Independent Film Festival "Master Class" Saturday, 1 p.m., also at the GALA Hispanic Theatre. $20-25.

Kristen Stewart in "Welcome to the Rileys."

The British filmmaker Jake Scott (yep, son of Ridley) might not be a household name, but you probably came across his videos on MTV during the '90s—he's shot promos for Radiohead, U2, The Cranberries, and others. Welcome to the Rileys, a skewed family drama starring James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, and Kristen Stewart, is Scott’s second feature film. It's showing right now at the new West End Cinema. Arts Desk recently asked Scott some questions about depicting post-Katrina New Orleans, about asking his actors to take a leap, and about his reaction to critics' across-the-board reactions.

Washington City Paper: Welcome to the Rileys seems to be a departure from your previous work, which mostly are in the realm of music videos. What attracted you to it?:

Jake Scott: It wasn’t like a conscious thing, really—of being attracted to something as an answer to something else. It was more that I read the script, and I really was interested in the main character, Doug. His struggle was really compelling to me, I guess because I’m a dad. And I think, you know, I’ve changed a lot since my first film. My life’s changed a lot. I’ve had children. I was drawn more and more to, and working on material that was much more character-driven, anyway. And so probably, unconsciously, without knowing it, I was looking for something like that. Honestly, I made it as a dad. I came to it as a father wanting to say something about parenting, and about fatherhood, and about my feelings, really.

WCP: What was the purpose behind setting the film in New Orleans?

JS: The original script, the first draft of the script had been written to be set in New Orleans. It was mainly because the writer, Ken Hixon, had an experience down there that spurred the thought to write the script in the first place. He met a girl that was a bit like that, he was with his friends down there and they were out drinking. They went into this club, and this girl was there. He never spoke to this girl, he just saw her from a distance, and realized that she was a lot younger than girls that are legally allowed to work in those clubs. You know, on the outskirts of French Quarter, which is sort of on the fringes of New Orleans, it’s quite a permissive place. There’s a lot of underage girls working in those places. And then, Katrina happened, and the story was sort of relocated to Savannah, Ga. I started working with Ken, and found out this film was originally intended to be set in New Orleans. And I said, we should go back there, it’s a much better location for this film. In its way, it’s very damaged. It’s a very damaged city, and it’s a surviving place. It embodies the idea of survival.

WCP: So the actual story takes place in pre-Katrina, then?

JS: No. The original script was written before Katrina. We didn’t make any attempt to hide the fact that Katrina had happened. The house that Kristin Stewart’s character lived in has all the markings of the EMT crews on the façade of the building, which were the actual markings left there after Katrina. People would mark how many bodies, or how many dead animals they had so rescue crews would know what they’d be dealing with.

WCP: New Orleans is a distinctively American city, with a very loaded history. What kind of perspective do you think you bought to it as a British filmmaker?

JS: It’s a city I wasn’t that familiar with before I started filming there. I was familiar with the music of New Orleans. New Orleans, and other port cities like New York or San Francisco can seem very familiar to Europeans. I looked at some previous films that had been made there. I felt that New Orleans, as you see it in cinema, is kind of a concoction of clichés. There’s another side to the city, which is the place that it really is, which I tried to show as authentically as possible .

WCP: All three of the main actors in the film—James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, and Kristen Stewart—all play very different characters from what they are traditionally cast as. What role did you play as a director in shaping their characters?

JS: First of all, remember that they’re very good actors. And in many ways, eager to do something new. Kristen, at the time, had only done the first Twilight film and no one had seen it yet when she came down to New Orleans to work on this new film. She was still relatively new to playing Bella Swan. But you know, Kristen’s a young, very hardworking actress who’s trying to experiment and try new things. And James was eager to get past his 10 years of Tony Soprano and shed that skin by playing someone completely unlike anyone he had played before. Same goes for Melissa. In terms of the experience, we were all venturing into an unknown territory. That really helps, because you get fresh ideas, bolder performances.

WCP: No two critics seem to agree on their opinion of this film, especially when it comes to the quality of the performances. Why do you think that’s so?

JS: I don’t know, I’ve actually avoided reading anything. It’s interesting to hear that. I definitely perceived that there were very strong reactions to one actor over another in the film. I know from friends and family. I had a very good friend who couldn’t bear Melissa Leo in the film. And I had other friends who thought she was the best thing in it. I think, same goes for the other two. I know there’s been some critical discussion about Jame’s accent, which I think is a little bit...It’s interesting, because I know we were very careful about the accent, we actually did a lot of work on it. The accent’s actually perfect in terms of Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky. That’s where it seemed to place him. And I think what’s happened is that you’ve got someone whose voice is very familiar, as Tony Soprano.

But you’re right, very, very distinctly different reactions to the actors, I’ve found. And of course, I’m always going to find a positive analysis of that. I feel it’s because all three actors are playing real people. Melissa Leo’s got the hardest task in that she’s playing a character that’s very frightened, very damaged, but also, neurotic, who’s really controlling. She becomes a difficult character, she’s not necessarily a sympathetic character for the audience. But Melissa Leo’s strength as an actor is that she’s able to play somebody unsympathetically. And that was my intention as a director, and I think the actor’s intention, which is not to play these characters who tell a story where you’re being guided emotionally through it. I was interesting in being kind of objective about it: Looking at these three lives, and the intersection of these three lives without passing judgement. And there are things in the film that you question, there are motives in the film that you question. I did read one criticism of the story, that the fact that James character moves in with this girl; the film almost doesn’t get away with it, you almost don’t believe it. That critic said that nearly sank the film. Just through the power of the performances.

WCP: What’s next for you?

JS: Yeah, I’m looking at a lot of potential projects. I have a script in development that has a winter setting—it’s set in Scotland during the winter. It’s called Transit. It’s a thriller, a vengeance thriller. And a number of other things that I’m looking at. I’m always looking. At the moment, I’m trying to let the dust settle off of Welcome to the Rileys.

Washington City Paper: Are you all based in New Orleans? (Did any of you go to Houston or Atlanta after Katrina and not return)

Bennie Pete: Yeah we are still based in New Orleans. A few people went to Atl and Houston but we are all in the city now.

WCP: Who is in the band and what instrument do they play?

BP: First on trumpet(3 players) Terrell Batiste,Julian Gosin and Raymond Williams; on trumbone(2 players) Corey Peyton and Gregory Veals; on tenor sax John Gilbert; on tuba Bennie Pete; on snare drum Sammy Cyrus;  and on bass drum Terence Andrews.

WCP: Do you have a new CD or mixtape out?

BP: The new CD is finished and getting mastered. Now it should come out for the anniversary of Katrina, maybe the end of August.  But there are some live recordings of us out.

WCP: Where have you toured lately?

BP: Mainly the east coast from Florida on up to New York but we are on the way to the west in a week or so.

WCP: Is it hard with the economy to get many New Orleans gigs (and gigs elsewhere)?

BP: It's not hard to get the gigs but it's hard to get paid your value or close to it at home. But it's better respect and appreciation for us in the music on the road that brings along more money.

WCP: Are you able to do secondline parades in New Orleans without the authorities trying to stop you?

BP: It's so so with the 2nd line. The police don't want it because it's too many people in one area, and the crime rate is out of control so they made the street taxes triple and if you don't have a permit they will stop you.

WCP: Are you in the upcoming HBO Treme TV show?

BP: No we are not in the Treme movie. They are not paying the musicians enough money to do it and they are just like a lot of people who came to the city after the storm. They say we don't have much money but we can get you a lot of exposure and we can help tell the world your story and then smile and tap you on your back and send you home broke to your family.

WCP: How about Dem Saints?

BP: Go Saints, the best team won and it brung joy to everybody in the city from grandparents to their grandchildren.

Hot 8 Brass Band Saturday March 27 for two concerts—11 a.m. kids/family lecture/demonstration show ($5-$10) and 7:30 full gig ($10) at the Prince George’s Publick Playhouse for the Performing Arts, 5445 Landover Road, Cheverly, MD 20784  (301) 277-1710

Whenever I tell folks I like New Orleans brass bands, I gotta convince them that the groups are funky like old-school DC go-go combos, not sedate like old-fashioned Dixieland troupes.  That is the case with Mama Digdown's Brass Band, who are appearing at the Surf Club Thursday night (conflict of interest note—I told them about area clubs when they were booking the tour).  Except Digdown is from Wisconsin not the 9th Ward.

Fascinated with the second line parade percussion and the booming horns of the Crescent City, Digdown has spent over a decade traveling down there as often as possible to soak up the approach and then add a little something of their own to it.  Covering standards like “I’ll Fly Away,” and adding in some originals, this horn (sousaphone, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, and sax) and percussion (bass and snare drums) unit has toured Europe and played in New Orleans.

These guys are serious about their craft.  A few years back, I discovered an I Love Music chatboard thread called "New Orleans Brass Bands S/D" that featured extensive posting from Mama Digdown’s bass drum player, Jordan Cohen.  Only occasionally talking about his own group, Cohen has highlighted  vets like Dirty Dozen as well as the Rebirth Brass Band, New Birth Brass Band, Hot 8 Brass Band, Lil' Rascals Brass Band, Treme Brass Band, Soul Rebels Brass Band, and more. With Dirty Dozen and Rebirth having made recent local appearances, tonight’s gig offers locals another current opportunity to shake their thangs to this still vital street marching jazzy sound.

Thursday June 18, 2009-Mama Digdown's Brass Band with local zydeco and New Orleans r’n’b band Little Red & the Renegades from 8 to 12 midnight at the Surf Club, 4711 Kenilworth Avenue, Hyattsville MD.  301-927-6310

As previously announced, the theme for this year is "The Musical Heritage of New Orleans," and the headliner as such is trumpeter Terence Blanchard — who will be performing his 2007 piece A Tale of God's Will: Requiem for Katrina in its entirety on June 12, in a free concert at the National Mall.

Another highlight is a closing concert tribute to New Orleans pianist Ellis Marsalis, which will feature his sons Branford, Jason, and Delfeayo, along with Harry Connick Jr., a 15-piece big band, and some surprises.

The list of featured artists after the jump.

Paquito D'Rivera (DEJF Artistic Director)
Terence Blanchard & Orchestra
Harry Connick, Jr
Davell Crawford
Duke Ellington Orchestra
Little Freddie King
Branford Marsalis
Delfeayo Marsalis
Ellis Marsalis
Jason Marsalis
Nicholas Payton
Rebirth Brass Band
Irma Thomas
Buckwheat Zydeco

Precise schedule TBD, and will be posted at the festival's website when finalized.

Also note that this year the festival has been moved from fall to summer, scheduled for June 5-15. The city has arranged for DEJF to have a permanent spot on its events schedule in the second week of June. In addition, the "Jazz on the National Mall" event, previously the final day of the festival, will now expand to three days, June 12-14.

The question of how to dispose of my mortal remains has weighed on me of late. Raised Baptist and Episcopalian by turns—with a meager annuity of Judaism courtesy of certain paternal relatives—I've since strayed from the path of righteousness into the turpid thickets of cohabitation and Crescent City blues. Which means, of course, that for this agno-mystic, ruminations on divine judgment and soul-transposition present thickets of their own—as does the cadaverous question that opens this paragraph.

Old-fashioned interment calls for expensive cedar and the chance of an open casket situation—neither of which I can abide. Cremation, on the other hand, has clear advantages: quick, clean, and a fine consummation of the "ashes to ashes" rap they've been laying on us all these years. (A Viking cremation would be especially nice.) In any scenario, I expect to be gutted of all worthwhile and potentially worthwhile organs—as I have testified on the back of my driver's license, in various legal documents, and to many of the kind folk who wait in line with me at Safeway.

A curious "third path" is that of the New Orléans-style "jazz funeral," which legitimizes through sheer panache the otherwise unappealing coffin-based approach. I have long been an advocate for this practice, and my enthusiasm for it was affirmed last night at the Black Cat, where the Portland-based MarchFourth Marching Band opened for Antibalas. MarchFourth is a feast for the eyes as much as for the ears—a seething mass of top-hats, trombones, men and women on stilts, and drum harnesses jerry-rigged from old bicycle parts. Sporting a weatherbeaten, kaleidoscopic caricature of marching band uniforms, the troupe plays jazz, funk, and African inflections with grit while swaying in unison, dropping wisecracks, conducting mass singalongs, and generally mugging (in the undead-and-loving-it vein) for the benefit of a transported audience. Bluesy voodoo ambient grotesqueries—a fitting dirge for the unrepentant.

As I watched these guys do their thing, I was reminded of the lyrics to "The St. James Infirmary Blues" (which receives admirable renditions from Louie Armstrong and from these fellas). "If horn licks like that can't sanctify vice," I thought, "they can at least send it out on a high note."

Check out the video below for some interesting shots of the group in Hamburg. Meanwhile, I'm off to points north for a weekend of godless debauchery and fine music.

Photograph courtesy of MarchFourth