From an early age, Ellis Marsalis III knew what grief in New Orleans sounded like.

The shuffle of leather shoes walking a lost soul to the grave. The slow wailing of a brass band setting the pace. Some Sundays, he chased the sound, his ear catching the mournful notes of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.” When he heard the music switch from a somber dirge to an upbeat rhythm, he knew it was time to join in.

“Once a person is buried, you have the second line. It’s the party, the good time, the celebration of life,” Marsalis said. “It’s a community’s responsibility to celebrate the life of someone. Even if I didn’t know them, I pull out my umbrella, get my best dancing shoes on, and we’re gonna have a good time.”

In traditional jazz funerals, that moment between grief and catharsis when the deceased is lowered into the ground and the family says a final farewell is known as “cutting the body loose.”

Just as a casket feels lighter if more hands carry it, that metamorphosis of a private funeral march into a jubilant, street-winding second line is a way to process the death of one by joining arms with many. For generations, it’s been an important way to cope for the city’s historic black neighborhoods that through fires, plagues and hurricane seasons have had to get used to saying goodbye.

But the novel coronavirus pandemic has put jazz funerals on hold when communities need them most.

New Orleans hit hard by coronavirus

As of April 13, seven of the nation’s 20 highest COVID-19 death rates belonged to southeast Louisiana parishes. Orleans Parish had the nation’s eighth-highest rate with 276 deaths over the past month, more than double the city’s homicide numbers from 2019.

The death toll hovers at 367, and the danger of mourning the dead can be seen in Georgia, where a funeral is suspected to have sparked a coronavirus outbreak in Dougherty County.

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For the first time in the city’s history, a task force was assembled to oversee the “death care” of those who succumb to the virus, said Collin Arnold, director of emergency preparedness for New Orleans and a member of the task force. The gravity of his new responsibility hit him when the city asked for 20 refrigeration trailers from the state; 14 are parked outside the coroner’s office.

“We’re a very tightknit community of music and festivity, and I think that extends to our funerals, our jazz funerals and second lines. And unfortunately, those really can’t occur right now,” Arnold said. “This is an unprecedented event, and you just have to look at the numbers to know this is necessary.”

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The majority of those dying are elders of the African American communities.

According to the Louisiana Department of Health, the black population in Louisiana has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, accounting for 59% of the deaths statewide but representing 32% of the state population.

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As the death toll continues to climb in the age of social distancing, the absence of jazz funerals means, in some ways, the search for closure must be put on hold. There’s no way to cut the body loose.

“You can trace the impact of the health crisis in New Orleans by the silence of the city – no brass bands, no funerals, no church services happening,” said Tulane University ethnomusicologist Matt Sakakeeny. “Mourning is happening in the homes.”

Jazz musician buried in silence

Marsalis has felt the silence. He felt it when his father, famed pianist and jazz teacher Ellis Marsalis Jr., was buried this month.

For the past 30 years, the elder Marsalis could be found in Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro providing the soundtrack to Sazerac-sweetened New Orleans nights. The latest in a long line of jazz torchbearers, Marsalis taught the next generation of musicians – Harry Connick Jr., Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison – how to join him onstage. He was father to six children, four of whom became musicians, including Grammy winners Wynton and Branford Marsalis.

If anybody had earned the right to a jazz funeral, it was Ellis Marsalis Jr.

“That would have been a huge one for the city,” said trumpet player James Andrews, who has lent his horn to many of the ceremonies. “To lose a legend like Ellis Marsalis, thousands of people would have turned out for his funeral. It would have been one of the biggest in the books.”

Instead, Marsalis was buried without music. The only public sendoff was a black wreath with his picture hung on the door of Snug Harbor, which, like much of the city, sits shuttered and silent.

Like so many New Orleanians over the past month, Marsalis, 85, died in a hospital bed of complications from COVID-19. His family had 72 hours to prepare funeral arrangements, per state guidelines. Large gatherings are prohibited in a parish that’s seen one of the highest coronavirus death rates per capita in the nation, so he was laid to rest in an unpublicized ceremony, family members wearing masks and standing 6 feet apart.

“When people come together, the thing that is an alleviant to that stress and anxiety of loss, more than anything we’ve discovered in the world, is music. Nothing else,” Marsalis III said. “We were not able to have music. The circumstances dictated otherwise.

“Sometime in the future, we’ll give him a proper send-off.”

Jazz funerals have roots in African tradition

The exact origin date of New Orleans jazz funerals is unknown.

Mona Lisa Saloy, a folklorist at Dillard University, said traditions such as second lines and wearing matching clothes to a funeral come from West African tradition. Many of the songs are rooted in African American spirituals passed down from enslaved ancestors.

“New Orleans sold more Africans than any other city in the country,” Saloy said. “And as a result, we retained more Africanisms or cultural features.”

The hiring of brass bands to play funerals can be traced back to the 19th and 20th centuries, when social aid organizations collected dues from members and covered burial costs for those who couldn’t afford it.

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club is one such organization. Founded in 1909, it’s the city’s premiere African American Mardi Gras krewe, and it still provides jazz funerals for members who request it.

Since the Zulu parade in February, the 800-member organization has been rocked by seven deaths, five of which were caused by the coronavirus, said Zulu President Elroy James. Twenty members were diagnosed and recovered.

One of the five who died was Larry Hammond, elected the organization’s Mardi Gras king in 2007. Ordinarily, such a passing would reunite former Zulu kings from across the country. Clad in matching all-white tuxedos and white gloves, they’d have carried his casket to a funeral fit for a Zulu king.

“It leaves us, many members, including myself, feeling like we have not given him his due respect and proper closure,” James said. “The best I can do is call. And that just doesn’t feel like it’s enough.”

Jazz funerals are not the norm in New Orleans. Sakakeeny estimates 300 to 400 occur each year.

Mourning loved ones a struggle

From streetcar drivers to bartenders, from children to the elderly, every layer of the city has been affected by the virus. As traditional funeral services are limited to 10 people or less, the inability to properly mourn a loved one is a struggle shared by all.

Chaplain Mark Russell visited three coronavirus patients in hospitals in the past month. He presided over memorial services for each.

The services were held at private residences, chairs scattered around the room arm’s length apart. A camera livestreamed the gatherings for those who couldn’t attend. At the end, hugs were withheld in exchange for waves.

“It’s just not the norm,” Russell said. “COVID-19 has affected literally every single aspect of our lives, from grocery shopping to grieving.”

Funerals are a way to respect the dead, but they also heal the living. Jazz funerals in particular carry a restorative connotation in New Orleans that goes beyond a traditional burial.

Like many New Orleanians, Andrews can’t help but think back to Hurricane Katrina and the city’s darkest days.

Plywood has covered French Quarter windows for a month. Frenchman Street’s hallowed jazz halls, including Snug Harbor, are empty. Unlike the hurricane, the pandemic is a faceless enemy that grows stronger the closer the city comes together.

“Where are you gonna run? It's everywhere. It's bigger than Katrina,” Andrews said.

Andrews and his brother Trombone Shorty were some of the first musicians to come back to New Orleans after the levees broke in 2005. Seventeen days after Katrina made landfall, they played a show in Jackson Square.

He declared he would “rebuild this city note by note,” and he sees no difference now.

Eventually, this, too, shall pass. The city will come together. When it does, all who were lost will be mourned the only way New Orleans knows how.

“We’ll make a great thing for the many souls of people who died in New Orleans,” Andrews said. “I think we’ll have to put all the people in one big jazz funeral.”

Reach reporter Andrew Yawn at ayawn@gannett.com

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