City of a Million Dreams | movie | 2021 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

Every jazz funeral is a drama, a freeze-frame of the city.  The marching band leads the procession of grief to the slow  | dG1fNDRhVjJUaHg0ZUE

Transcript

00:00We celebrate and laugh at death.

00:13We're sad because you're not here anymore.

00:16We're happy because you're going to a better reward.

00:25No place else in the United States is going to let black people

00:28take over the streets every Sunday for four hours long.

00:32It's just not going to happen.

00:39As someone dealing with American racism,

00:41trying to find your place in this life and society,

00:44you can be transformed into another world

00:47that really sets you free.

00:50This spirit goes back to Congo Square.

00:53Many of the slaves believed that when they died,

00:58they would go back to Africa.

01:03The groups that came here, music and funerals went together

01:06in all of these cultures.

01:08Got to have music, got to have a parade,

01:10got to look good when you die.

01:12It's really a combination of European and African,

01:16which makes it American.

01:20But New Orleans has always been a hazardous place to live.

01:23It's hard to survive here.

01:25If I don't do anything else before I leave here,

01:40I need to do what I can to repair the world.

01:43After Katrina hit, there was that question on the table,

01:57are we even going to fund rebuilding New Orleans?

02:02We need to hold on to our culture.

02:04That's the enduring lesson of the jazz funeral.

02:07Return again in another life, and it will be jubilant.

02:15We do this in their ancestral memory.

02:19That music and those experiences is what allowed New Orleans

02:33to be the most African city in America.