The To Be Continued Brass Band spends almost nights making a ruction at the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets. On Tuesday afternoon, they popped up unexpectedly far from their usual stomping grounds: At the corner of California Avenue and the 16th Street Mall in business district Denver.
Wearing black and atomic number 79 "New Orleans for Obama" T-shirts, they drew a crowd as soon as they dismissed up the brass on a corner recently occupied by a vocal radical of Sept. 11 conspiracy protestors.
The musicians came to Denver under the aegis of Finding Our Folk, a New Orleans-based, post-Katrina nonprofit that aims "to engage young people in the political process," aforesaid organizer Le'Kedra Robertson. Taking the To Be Continued Brass Band to the Democratic National Convention "is to expose them to something that's not at home."
They for certain brought a lot of home with them. The snare and bass membranophone patter and big, bold waves of trumpet, trombone and saxophone were remarkably New Orleans. Not surprisingly, the band's tip jolt did a brisk business. After 10 minutes, they paraded up the sixteenth Street Mall, a pedestrian retail thoroughfare bissected by two lanes for electric-powered light rail trains.
As they stopped-up to play on the sidewalk, rafts of people pressed in close approximately them, snapping photos, smiling and dance. "You guys got it going on!" shouted i man with long fuzz.
Soon a pair of mounted policemen made their way up the sidewalk and pulled up aboard the band. Would they shut down pat the pavement concert? No.
"You guys ar welcome to play here," one mounted officer said to the musicians, reflecting the mostly tolerant attitude of the hundreds of officers deployed throughout downtown. "Just exit some space for people to walk, so they're not in front of the busses."
A cheer went up, and the band played on. Denver occupant Annette Quill brought her four-year-old daughter, Cecelia, downtown on Tuesday "to see a small bit of history." Running into the To Be Continued Brass Band "was even better," Quill said. "This was a bonus."
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