Music

Jazz artist mixes music, traditions in Bastrop

Celebrating ties between Texas and the Big Easy

BASTROP — Grammy-nominated jazz musician and composer Hannibal Lokumbe was living in New Orleans when he and his son, Heili, fled Hurricane Katrina in a pickup a friend gave them to outrun the storm.

They wound up here, not far from Smithville — where Lokumbe was born Marvin Peterson 58 years ago and where his mother lives still. Which is why the man who spent 10 years in Gil Evans' band in the '70s and has spent recent decades composing extravagantly ambitious works for strings, horns and voice that have debuted at Carnegie Hall and elsewhere finds himself at work on a more modest but no less important project: a celebration of the spirit of New Orleans in Bastrop on Saturday, complete with a "second-line" parade through downtown, Mardis Gras-style masks, and a concert at the nearby Hyatt Lost Pines Resort and Spa. Lokumbe and his band will do a tribute to Louis Armstrong; "Soul Queen of New Orleans" Irma Thomas is headlining.

Laura Skelding
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

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'I can't think of anything more important than letting the kids see what they are capable of,' Hannibal Lokumbe, at his Bastrop home, said of his students, including Lisa Wall, left, Jessie 'T.J.' Wishem and Jaime Cisneros.

Laura Skelding
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

(enlarge photo)

Jazz musician Hannibal Lokumbe has been been coming to this bridge over Cedar Creek near Upton since he was 5. Lokumbe, who was born in Smithville and fled Hurricane Katrina to Bastrop, will perform in a celebration of the region's ties to New Orleans on Saturday.

Hannibal Lokumbe

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"That storm will be part of me forever," Lokumbe said. "I will never get over people suffering. It was disastrous in one way and affirming in another way."

Four of the six years Lokumbe lived in New Orleans were spent in residency at the Contemporary Arts Center, but he and Heili fled in such haste that he left behind the text for "Trilogy," a work he wrote there.

(He found the text — handwritten on scrolls — intact and undamaged in a box during a return trip to New Orleans this month. Looking at the scrolls in his home here last week, Lokumbe said, "It doesn't get any more valuable to me than this.")

During Lokumbe's residency, Cami Hardee, senior vice president for Woodbine Development Corp. of Dallas, which develops resorts and hotels, was beginning to research the musical history of Bastrop County in order to give the new resort some local flavor. Hardee's search for the musician formerly known as Marvin Peterson was fruitless — in part because he moved around a good bit and in part because of the name change.

Then she happened to be in Baxter's restaurant across from City Hall in Bastrop when Lokumbe was having dinner with his son. From that meeting, a relationship began that eventually led to Lokumbe being one of two local composers having a hotel suite dedicated to him.

"I said, 'A suite? I'm not dead yet,' " Lokumbe said. (The other local composer is University of Texas' Dan Welcher.)

Lokumbe suggested a concert, which the Hyatt was already considering. With a New Orleans theme, Lokumbe immediately thought of a parade. Leaders and organizers of parades in the Louisiana city are known as the main line, traditionally followed by a second line of fans and dancers. (And, as it happens, the second line Saturday parade will include other displaced New Orleanians now living in Bastrop.) The sponsoring main line for the Saturday event is the Black Men of Labor Club, one of the oldest social aide organizations in New Orleans.

The parade, beginning at 1 p.m. at Fisherman's Park will be led by New Orleans' Treme Brass Band and the Black Men of Labor steppers and is dedicated to the late Roosevelt Williams — better known as the "Grey Ghost" — the barrelhouse piano legend born who was born here and frequently played Kerr Hall, now Kerr Community Center, a historically black social hub in Bastrop. Any surplus proceeds from the Lost Pines concert will go to renovation of the center. (A donation is suggested for parade participants, with proceeds also going to the center.)

The masks to be worn in the parade, some 300 of them, were made by Bastrop Independent School District art students, and Lokumbe visited a few of the students recently.

"I can't think of anything more important than letting the kids see what they are capable of, what is in them, to see the God in them. The creative act is all of our salvation. It takes time, it takes discipline, it takes perseverance to create something."

Why go to all this trouble in a place so far from his beloved New Orleans? Lokumbe already has another commission from the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is going to record his opera "Dear Mrs. Parks" next summer. His best-known work, "African Portraits," has been performed nearly a hundred times since 1990. And he has an 8-year-old son to raise.

"I made a commitment to the people of this county to rain down as much culture and music as I can, particularly to the kids," Lokumbe said. "I'm keeping my commitment to the community here. This area is very rich and fertile. I can go back and forth. New Orleans will always be my home, man. There's so much history around here that's untold. This area is rich."