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Dr. Sybil Kein was devastated after Hurricane Katrina
swept through New Orleans. The storm destroyed not only her home, her car, and
her 5,000-plus books but also her entire collection of Louisiana French
Creole research — one of the largest in the world. Kein began traveling in the 1970s from the University
of Michigan, where she worked as an English professor, to her native New
Orleans to interview people who knew and played music with jazz legend
Louis Armstrong. After nearly 20 years of work, she compiled their
stories into a jazz musical, Didn’t He
Ramble: Lil’ Louie in New Orleans. It’s
the only known account of Armstrong’s early life, Kein says, from the
time the musician carried coal to Storyville — New Orleans’
prostitution district — until he left the city in 1922. “It contains the elements of Louis
Armstrong’s early life in New Orleans — no one else has done
that,” Kein says. “It took years and years of research and
having the luck of interviewing people who knew New Orleans.”
Kein thought that the creation had been lost in the
flood, but then her good friend Todd Cranson, the band and orchestra
director at the University of Illinois at Springfield, realized that he
still had a copy from years earlier, when the duo performed a suite from
the musical with other New Orleans musicians. In a special tribute to the world-renowned Creole
scholar and composer, the UIS Chamber Orchestra and Chorus will perform
“Suite from Didn’t He Ramble!” as the conclusion to the
group’s annual Spring Showcase Concert, 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 2, in
the UIS Public Affairs Center’s Studio Theatre. Kein’s complete jazz musical has yet to be
performed, but Cranson says he hopes that this performance will spark the
interest of Springfield’s art community. “Louis Armstrong went to Chicago when he left
New Orleans, so it’s likely that he came through here,” Cranson
says. “Springfield doesn’t seem like that unusual of a place to
premiere it, so I think we should go for it.”
Kein will present a brown-bag lecture, “Gumbo
People: Celebrating and Teaching the Creole Culture of New Orleans,”
noon-1 p.m. Friday in the UIS Visual Arts Gallery, located in room 201 of
the Health Sciences Building. She’ll share folklore and personal
stories collected for the musical, including some from Julia Boudreaux,
Kein’s great-aunt, a lacemaker who provided women’s
undergarments for the infamous brothel owner Miss LuLu White. Because many aren’t aware that Louisiana French
Creole even exists, Kein says, she’ll speak about the language and
culture, how they originated, and how the Creole culture compares to the
Caribbean French culture. Kein will also play selected songs and read poems,
including one she penned after seeing the devastation of her home in New
Orleans. “I haven’t read it to any
audience,” Kein says. “I haven’t been able to, but I
think I can now so students can get an idea of how it feels when you lose
everything.”
Kein says she hopes that students and other members
of the community will walk away from her lecture and the performance with a
greater appreciation of Creole music and of Armstrong’s contribution
to jazz. Kein’s visit is being sponsored by UIS Music,
the sociology/anthropology and African-American-studies departments, and
the UIS Speakers’ Awards Committee.
Contact Amanda Robert at arobert@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2008.
