280 pages, 6 x 9
63 b&w illustrations
Paperback
Release Date:25 Aug 2020
ISBN:9781496830043
Hardcover
Release Date:25 Aug 2020
ISBN:9781496830036
Can’t Be Faded
Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game
By Kyle DeCoste and Stooges Brass Band
SERIES:
American Made Music Series
University Press of Mississippi
. is a dynamic approach to collaborative research that offers a sensitive portrait of the humans behind the horns.
Comprised of lively firsthand accounts and honest dialogue, Can't Be Faded is a dynamic approach to collaborative research that offers a sensitive portrait of the humans behind the horns.
Can’t be Faded is, by every measure, an exemplary collaboration between the Stooges and DeCoste. Together they take us deep into the worlds, and indeed the heads, of New Orleans brass band musicians.
Can’t Be Faded contributes to and expands the growing landscape of recent, quality collaborative ethnographies with musicians and other cultural figures working in New Orleans, . . .. Can’t Be Faded will likely interest anybody with a personal or scholarly interest in the musical culture of New Orleans and its musicians
As a jazz biography, Can’t Be Faded succeeds exceptionally with introducing readers to the complex world of New Orleans brass band culture while also connecting it to the pressing social issues that frame the musicians and the music.
Kyle DeCoste’s work is a welcome and vital contribution not only to the scholarship of twentieth- and twenty-first-century improvisational Black American Music of New Orleans, but to the story of New Orleans culture and African American life. From the Stooges Brass Band members’ accounts of the joy of the 'Street Kings' stage competition, to the pain of behind-the-scenes competition in the brass band community, to the tragedy of violence that hits too close to home, Can’t Be Faded is a stellar document of musical life, community, and brotherhood. It is ethnomusicological, anthropological, and soulful, all at the same time.
Kyle DeCoste transports us to the streets and stages where the Stooges Brass Band reigns. He takes us backstage and into the lives of musicians who struggle to give the world their beautiful music. Most of all, he lets the Stooges speak for themselves. The result is an uproarious tale that—like the music—is deceptively complex. A true gift to all of us enchanted by New Orleans music.
The voices of the musicians who have served in the Stooges, rendered with sensitivity by the coauthor, make this a compelling read, showing how music builds community, despite the often-hyperbolic competition that defines New Orleans brass bands. This is a saga of bootstrap success akin to Louis Armstrong’s, outlining for today’s youth the challenges facing musicians striving for artistic and commercial success.
The . (2013), and ., he was awarded the 2021 Zora Neale Hurston Prize by the American Folklore Society. His articles have appeared in Ethnomusicology and the Journal of Popular Music Studies.