New Orleans Jazz Hero
Luther Gray is a preservationist firmly rooted in the present. Born in Chicago in 1952, raised on bebop and the music of Theolonius Monk and Art Blakey, he gravitated at an early age to African drumming, and when he moved to New Orleans in 1984 immersed himself in in the rhythms of the second line, the long reach of African memory pulsing in the street dancers at funerals and parades of social aid and pleasure clubs.
Since then he has been a dynamic presence here, active in the enduring parade culture, founding musical groups and producing their records, working with a team to carve bambouola drums (now on display at the Louisiana State Museum of History) from century-old cypress trees, and helping to establish the Congo Square Foundation, named for the field behind the original city center where enslaved Africans transplanted musical and dance traditions of their mother culture.
Today that area sits inside Louis Armstrong Park, facing Rampart Street; in 1997 the foundation drove public opinion in securing a historical marker for Congo Square, now on the tourist trail. In 2013 Luther helped launch the Congo Square Living Classroom Field Trip, an on-site tour of the Armstrong Park sculpture garden followed by the drum and dance workshop.
Gray points to Congo Square as “the only place in the antebellum where African people could gather freely and openly on Sundays and practice their drumming, their dancing,” and while he strives to have that history remembered – his organization Bamboula 2000 annually reaches some 5,000 students from elementary, middle, high schools and universities around the country with The Imagination Tour.
“Our culture never got cut off,” Luther Gray asserts. “This is a place of great spirituality and a place of great creativity.” The Jazz Hero that culture,sustains and expands upon it. For many years, he’s led the Sunday drum circle in Congo Square.
By Jason Berry
