The musicianers in those good bands, they could really 
play; they'd come out of a bucking contest just as sweet as 
they went in. But what made that possible, in one way at least, 
it was the people. The people knew what they wanted to hear 
and the musicianers gave it to them. The musicianers could 
be sure the people would know what they were hearing. If 
the music was being played right, the people would know it, 
and if it was being played wrong, they'd know that too. And 
because the musicianers knew they were being _listened to_ by 
people who cared for the music, that made it all different. 
They could want to play then; they could want to have those 
people cheering them.

In some ways it's like a play. The actors come out on the 
stage and there's an audience. That audience has a feeling for 
the play. They want to see it, they have an understanding for 
it. And those actors feel that; and they play their best; they 
_want_ to give what they can. But you take those same actors 
and bring them out somewhere with no audience, or with some 
audience that just don't care. You have them act their play 
in front of some crowd of people who don't know why they've 
come. And there's just no performance then; the play it just 
dies down inside itself.

I saw a movie once about Chopin, and it showed a scene 
from when he was a young fellow in Poland. There's a lord of 
this castle who hears there's a good piano player in the town 
and this lord, he's giving a big dinner party, so nothing will do 
but Chopin has to come up and play for them while this party 
is eating. Chopin got there and he played the best he knew, 
all kinds of numbers. But all the time he's playing, the party 
at the table they're just chatting along, laughing, small-
talking, admiring themselves, congratulating themselves for 
being who they are, paying no attention to the music. And 
all at once, Chopin just banged the keyboard and walked out 
of there. He had to get out of Poland to keep out of trouble 
then. The lord of the castle, he didn't like what Chopin had 
done. But that's how a musicianer has to be if he cares anything 
at all for his music. The music, it's something you can 
only give to those who love it.

Maybe that's one reason why so many musicianers get 
mean in some ways. A man, he signs a contract and he goes to 
play somewheres; he wants to make music, but he gets up to 
play and nobody cares what he plays. That's how it is in some 
places. Well, pretty soon he starts playing to _insult_ the 
audience. That's all he can do. But that's no music. The music, 
it's not meant for that; it's for giving. But there has to be 
someone ready to take it.

New Orleans, that was a place where the music was natural 
as the air. The people were ready for it like it was sun and rain.
A musicianer, when he played in New Orleans, was home; and 
the music, when he played it, would go right to where he sent 
it. The people there were waiting for it, they were wanting it.

The bucking contests were one way the people had of coming 
toward the music, but it never stopped there. The next day 
there was bound to be some picnic out at Milneberg Laker. 
There was a big park there with all kinds of walks, a saloon, 
wharves, open spaces. And there'd be these different camps 
where the people would be and the musicianers would go there 
to play. In those days there wasn't anything you could do 
without music -- holidays, funerals, pleasurements, it was all 
done to music, the music had all that to say.

At those camps there'd be a big square hall with a porch 
at one end and the sun would be beating on one side. We'd 
come to play there, but a musicianer, you know, he wouldn't 
care to be playing in the strong sun, so right off as soon as 
your band got together, you'd have a big bucking contest with 
whatever other band there was. And that was the real thing 
then: we'd play at them until finally we'd beat that other band 
right out into the sun. The way it was, they'd have to back out 
or stop playing because they weren't able to play against us.

Labour Day night in New Orleans, that was always a big 
celebration. The Labour Association had the biggest place at 
the fairgrounds and that would be their biggest night in the 
year. The fairground was there on the outskirts of town off 
Esplanade Avenue, and they'd have the place all lit up and 
decorated, and they'd have the best bands they could find in 
all New Orleans. The people would come from way up the 
river for that celebration. Thay'd come for dance or they'd 
come for listen, but there wouldn't be anybody staying 
away.

And every year Manuel Perez, he'd be there with the 
Onward Band. Like I told you, the Onward was a brass band 
that usually just played for parade music, music for marches. 
But people would start to listen to the band and pretty soon 
some of them would go out in the middle of the grounds and 
start dancing, and then some more would join them, and before 
long everybody would be dancing. And you could look out past 
those people dancing and you'd see another band -- the Eagle 
Band, maybe. That would be a natural band for dancing; the 
Eagle, it was an orchestra really. And just beyond the Eagle 
there'd be another space with people dancing. And you'd look 
somewheres else and you'd see the same thing. Everywhere 
you looked there was bands playing and people dancing to 
them.

But the interesting thing is that Manuel, _he_ was playing 
music for dancing. It's not easy to dance to a brass band, but 
Manuel had a way of playing different when he came to the 
fairgrounds. He'd take his brass and he'd really make it 
danceable. What he'd do is change the arrangement. He'd 
play it so it wasn't a matter of everybody taking his chorus; 
the important thing it would be the tempo and the way each 
player carried the tempo. He'd keep them together ahe'd 
keep them playing with a real swing to it. He'd have twenty, 
twenty-five brass men playing like one together, no one taking 
his chorus like they would in regular ragtime, but all the 
phrases together, just like you've got a really well-trained 
chorus of people to speak a part for the stage and they're all 
talking together and stopping together so you don't miss a 
word. And when you'd hear that it would give you a feeling 
that would be making you want to dance. It would just take 
your feet and make them go like it was something inside you.

And all that music, whether it was Manuel Perez or some 
other band or orchestra that was really good, it was a music 
those people could take home with them. Just remembering 
it they could start all over again dancing and singing. You 
could walk by a house and hear some of it and it would follow 
you all the way home. Or you'd leave some place like the 
fairground after you'd been listening and dancing; you'd 
leave and start to walk home, and you'd _still_ have a feeling in 
you to make you want to bust out dancing again.

That music, it was like where you lived. It was like waking 
up in the morning and eating, it was that regular in your life. 
Like when the band, it started back from the cemetery; 
something like _Oh, Didn't He Ramble_. They'd play that and it 
was like saying good-bye for the dead man; that band it would 
go back all through the town seeing the places where that man 
had liked to be before he died. The music it was rambling for 
him one last time. It was seeing the world for him again.

And that's the way I want to remember the music. That's the 
way I'd like to have it remembered: the way it came back from 
the man's burying and spoke for him to the world, and spoke 
the world to him once more.

I've been telling you this story, and maybe you're asking, 
'How's it going to end?' There's ways I could make a fiction 
to give you an ending. But that won't do. What I got to say 
has to be as natural as the music. There's no fiction to it. 
What I have to say, it's what the music has been saying to me 
and what I've been saying to it as far back as I can remember. 
The music makes a voice, and, no matter what happens, the 
man that cares to hear that voice, he _can_ hear it. I don't mean 
there's any end to the things that make it hard for the people 
to hear the real voice the music has got in it. All I mean is 
the music is still there for any who want it.

Really, all I been saying, it comes down to something as 
simple as that, something that's just waiting for its own 
happiness. A way of speaking.

I did a lot of things in my life that I wanted to do and I am 
quite sure that there is nothing that I would be ashamed of.
If I had to live my life over again, I would do the same that I 
have done again because some things that people probably say 
was bad, proably seem bad to them, but in a time when 
something happens and you know that you have done wrong, 
you sort of take your own judgment and you try to get out of 
it the best way you can. Anyway, I am very happy now and 
I am living a life pretty easy. And I'll always play music as 
long as I possibly can. All them crotchets, I'll put them down 
with my clarinet or my saxophone and I'll play al long as I 
have breath. I think I did the best that I could with my life.
I made everybody happy close to me. I had a lot of worries, 
but now I have decided I have figured that out because I 
figured the day would come when I'd have to leave here, which 
everybody does. Nobody lives for a lifetime. I'm not worried 
about the body. If I didn't do with it what they want, I have 
used it and it is finished and I am satisfied.

I'm an old man now; I can't keep hanging on. I'm even 
wanting to go; I'm waiting, longing to hear my peace. And all 
I've been waiting for is the music. All the beauty that there's 
ever been, it's moving inside that music. Omar's voice, that's 
there, and the girl's voice, and the voice the wind had in 
Africa, and the cries from Congo Square, and the fine shouting 
that came up from Free Day. The blues, and the spirituals, and 
the remembering, and the waiting, and the suffering, and the 
looking at the sky watching the dark come down -- that's all 
inside the music.

And somehow when the music is played right it does an 
explaining of all those things. Me, I want to explain myself so 
bad. I want to have myself understood. And the miusic, it can 
do that. The music, it's my whole story.

There's all the music that's been played, and there's all the 
music that hasn't been heard yet. The music of Scott Joplin, 
things he wrote. So many a piece of Will Marion Cook's. So 
many men who've spent their lives just making melody and 
who haven't been heard yet.

I'd like to hear it all one more time. I'd like to sit in a box 
at some performance and see all I saw years ago and hear all 
I heard way back to the start. I want to sit there and you could 
come in and find me in that box and I'd have a smile on my 
face. What I'd be feeling is 'the music, it has a home'. As long 
as I got a heart to be filled by it, the music has a place that's 
natural to it. I could sit there and listen, and I'd smile. And 
when I've got to go I could go that way. I could remember all 
the richness there is, and I could go smiling.

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