Mayor Nagin once called our city a Chocolate City, and while we are more cosmopolitan than just cocoa, our rich heritage is a product of the Africans who came here during the slave trade. Part of their cultural heritage was to live as a tribe and that meant to take care of each other from birth to death. When a member of the community died, the tribe took on the responsibility of burying and grieving.
In New Orleans, where the main line is the actual parade, and the second line is usually the one following, the true Second Line here came to be associated with jazz funerals. At the turn of the century, after the Civil War when slaves were now becoming free and able to buy their own instruments, brass bands began to form here in New Orleans.
These brass bands that formed were then asked to perform at the funeral services. The band would follow the procession from the church to the cemetery and play slow dirges. Then when leaving the cemetery, the Grand Marshal leading the band would signal a “HEY!” to change from mourning to celebrating and the band would segue into “I’ll Fly Away” and into other popular high-spirited tunes such as “Didn’t He Ramble,” and “Lil Liza Jane”.
This was a metaphorical release of the soul to heaven, and once the musicians moved into celebratory mode, friends and family and others would form a second line behind and dance with wild abandon waving handkerchiefs and umbrellas. It is an art form born in the history of New Orleans.
Here’s a second line for Ed Bradley:
If I were planning to be buried, that’s the way I’d want to go out! Classy!