THE WHOLE GRITTY CITY

Short Synopsis

Three New Orleans marching bands push to prepare for Mardi Gras parades, and three band directors battle for their students’ lives and souls. The Whole Gritty City shows lives stopped in their tracks by the violence of the streets, and the power of music to lift and sustain the survivors.

Description/Treatment

“Once that band gives you that down beat…just for that brief two or three minutes you forget every problem you had.  You have no cares in the world...Yeah it must be nice to live like that with no cares in the world” – Wilbert Rawlins

For those living in a city traumatized by a flood, besieged by a daily toll of street violence that has made New Orleans the murder capital of America, there’s a deep longing to have “no cares in the world”. But New Orleans is also the birthplace of jazz: a community that to this day draws on a deeply rooted musical culture to lift and sustain itself. And for thousands of kids in the city’s marching bands music is an escape, a refuge and a lifeline.

The Whole Gritty City is a film about a battle for survival against the odds. Some of the soldiers in that battle: 11-year old Bear, 16-year-old Kirk, 18-year-old Skully. Their weapons: the musical instruments they’re learning to play.

In post-Katrina New Orleans a few months before the Mardi Gras celebration, the directors of three marching bands push their young musicians to their limits to prepare to march in the two weeks of parades. As the film moves among two high school bands and an all-city middle school band, it focuses on the stories of the three bands’ directors and a few of their young musicians.

“I’m competing with the drug dealers” – Derrick Tabb

A roomful of 9-14 year-olds in The Roots of Music, the city's newest band, beat our rhythms on tables, still waiting for drums to arrive. Horn players barely coax sounds from instruments completely new to them. They all look up with respect, love, and a little fear, to the new program’s founder, Derrick Tabb, the drummer from the legendary Rebirth Brass Band. Tabb had once been an angry kid on a downward spiral until his own middle school band director set him on a new course. Now he’s determined to pass that lifeline on to the kids in his program.

11-year old Bear is intent on mastering his new trumpet as a section leader in The Roots of Music. The realities of the streets loom large in Bear’s life: in the blocks he avoids, the corners he flees at the sound of gunshots, in the photo of his brother, shot dead a year and a half ago at age 19.

“This ain’t no make believe. You all know struggle. Everybody’s struggling.” – Lonzie Jackson

Lonzie Jackson, the new director of The L.E. Rabouin High School Marching Band is transforming the band room into an oasis of order in a chaotic school. Most of these students live in poverty with a single struggling parent; since the hurricane some are living with no parent at all.

16-year-old Kirk is determined to be “the best tuba player in the Rabouin Band and in the state of Louisiana”. In his struggle with his temper and the need to act tough, music sustains him: when he’s not at band practice he’s at church where he performs impassioned mime dancing to gospel songs. During a parade Kirk gets into a fight with a drunken reveler, and finds himself suspended from the band that’s at the center of his life. Now set adrift, what direction will he take?

18-year-old Rabouin drum major Skully keeps a video camera close at hand, giving us a glimpse of his life outside of band, giving a shout-out to loved ones who have been killed. When he mentions “Mr. Shavers, the man who made it possible for me to be a drum major” Skully’s swagger falters. The popular young musician Dinerral Shavers started the band in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. With momentum building, just a week before the instruments arrived, Shavers was murdered. With Skully in position, the band pushes through the tragedy with a new leader, readying for the parades, with Mr. Shavers never far from mind.

“It’s hard to get the hood out of them. Because as soon as he hits that block, he’s got to get hood again.” - Wilbert Rawlins

Leading The O. Perry Walker High School Band is Wilbert Rawlins, a 6’4” gold-toothed powerhouse, driven to keep up his reputation as the best band director in the city. He builds his band from 4 students to over 200, a quarter of the school, insists on a minimum GPA, and exhausts the kids with daily rehearsals well into the night. Rawlins credits his own band director with saving him from the fates of his seven closest childhood friends, all lost to murder and drugs. Rawlins points with pride to his  former drum major Brandon, whom he steered away from trouble and into college. Now he’s hiring him as his assistant director, hoping he’ll carry on his legacy. Months later when Brandon is shot dead, Rawlins pushes past his devastation to plunge back into a mission more urgent than ever.  

“When you hand a child an instrument you give him control over the rest of his life.” - Wilbert Rawlins

Weaving these individual stories together are the stories of the three bands and the powerful music they create. Over days and weeks songs take shape. The directors demonstrate, demand, explain, drill, lecture, cajole and lay down the law. They lead kids through the excitement and exhaustion of the Mardi Gras parades, where amid outlandish floats and masked figures, they march for mile after mile past family, friends, and thousands of raucous spectators.

In conveying the struggles and triumphs of these young musicians and their teachers The Whole Gritty City reveals the power of music and mentorship that — against great odds — help hold a culture and community together, and give thousands of kids tools to survive and succeed.