THE WHOLE GRITTY CITY
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5_min_trailer_Md.mp4
Images
Bear practicing at home
Roots of Music drumline
Skully before a parade
O. Perry Walker High School Band
Christopher
Darius in rehearsal
Roots of Music Band director Lawrence Rawlins
Jazz
Topics
Arts & Culture: Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop Music, Rap, Rhythm and Blues
Human Development: Children, Education, Poverty, Urban, Youth
Information & Media: Culture
Politics: Justice and Crime
Project Geography
US: Louisiana
Identity Niches
African American, Children, Youth/Teen
Budget
Raised to date: $ 124,730.00
Estimate to complete: $ 217,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $ 341,730.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 01/15/2010
Status
Post Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
TV
Key Personnel
Richard Barber
Producer and Director
Richard Barber is a producer, editor and writer for television and film. His work has been recognized with Christopher, Peabody and Emmy awards, including the 2002 CBS documentary “9/11” directed by Jules and Gideon Naudet, for which he was a producer/editor. He has produced and edited at CBS News for “Street Stories”, “48 Hours” and “Sunday Morning”. Before working at CBS he edited television series and independent documentaries including the Emmy-nominated “Who Will Teach For America?” and projects produced by Robert Drew for PBS and National Geographic. His independent films and videos include “Nightclub”, which received a PBS grant through WXXI-TV, and the award-winning short “Reflecto-Vision”. He began this current project after working as a producer/editor on the Emmy-nominated 2007 “CBS 48 Hours” broadcast about the murders of New Orleans filmmaker Helen Hill and musician Dinerral Shavers, founder of the L. E. Rabouin High School Marching Band.
Andre Lambertson
Director of Photography, Co-Producer
Andre Lambertson is a photojournalist and cinematographer dedicated to documenting people who otherwise have no voice. He has exhibited internationally and has created award-winning photo essays for magazines, books, foundations, and museums. Recent film and video projects include “Ausungate”, a documentary about the spirit of an Andean peak, directed by Tadd Fettig and Andrea Heckman; “Skydancer”, a film about a female Lama in Tibet directed by Kay Dechen; and "Backwalkingforward" directed by Kavery Dutta. His ongoing video and photography project, “Ashes”, focuses on juvenile violence in America. He has received three Picture of the Year awards, the World Press Photo Award, a George Soros Foundation Media Grant, and the Pulitzer Center grant for photographic and video work about former child solders. He teaches at the International Center of Photography.
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
We are poised to develop relationships already begun with local New Orleans and Louisiana organizations. These in turn can lead us to develop partnerships with national organizations. They all offer potential for a range of outreach activities: screenings and discussions, workshops and video modules, and opportunities for press attention.As the film gives an outlet to the voices of its young protagonists, so can it encourage young viewers (and their parents and advocates) to recognize their own lives, and to speak out themselves and add their own voices to the conversation. Even in screening some of the material from the film-in-progress, we have seen the strong response that comes from young people who see themselves empowered and listened to and their lives and concerns and accomplishments taken seriously.There is a lot of potential to bring the film to a much wider audience of youth and mentors, and also to bring it to people who want to learn about their lives and concerns and to find ways to engage.
The Roots of Music, the music and tutoring program at the center of the film, is being seen as a model for other programs. Its founder is a popular New Orleans musician who was a finalist in CNN’s Hero of the Year Awards. The Youth Empowerment Project works with at-risk-youth, and works hand-in-hand with a network of kindred organizations around the country. We have already provided them with video material they have used to generate group discussions. Other potential local partners include The Greater New Orleans Afterschool Partnership and Silence is Violence.
As we develop contacts with similar organizations we can develop screening and discussion programs, and develop ways to use the film and video modules in workshops about youth mentoring and youth empowerment. We should not overlook the participation of churches in the same kinds of programs. There are also ways the film could tie into ongoing programs, such as the 21st Century Foundation’s Black Men and Boys Initiative. The film would also be of interest to professionals working in the area of juvenile justice, with possibilities for screenings at conferences and workshops.
Organizations like MENC, The National Association for Music Education, will be able to spread the word and use the film and excerpts in advocating for music and arts programs in the schools.
We are also developing relationships with Matt Sakakeeny, a musicology professor at Tulane University, Doctor Al Kennedy, a history professor at the University of New Orleans, and Fredrick Weil, a Sociology professor at Louisiana State University. There is great potential to develop a role for at least one of them as an educational ambassador, and to branch out from there to other institutions. With the rich material we have gathered about the role of music education and marching bands in the history of New Orleans music, there is the potential to develop video materials to be part of an integrated curriculum.
We will seek out popular musicians, in New Orleans and nationally, as potential spokespeople for the film and its message of the power of music education. Music, too, is one of several angles that can attract press coverage. Other potential for press interest lies in its intrinsic interest as a feature story, and in the film’s relevance to issues of juvenile crime, urban community social issues, and New Orleans recovery and culture.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Richard Barber | $ 28,349.00 | 10/01/2009 | |
| The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation | $ 1,400.00 | 02/10/2009 | |
| Richard Barber | $ 16,981.00 | 01/02/2009 | |
| Richard Barber | $ 23,000.00 | 10/01/2008 | |
| Richard Barber | $ 23,000.00 | 03/20/2008 | |
| Individual donor | $ 4,000.00 | 01/10/2008 | |
| Richard Barber | $ 23,000.00 | 11/25/2007 | |
| Richard Barber | $ 5,000.00 | 10/02/2007 |
Location(s)
190 12th Street
Brooklyn, NY, 11215
See Google Maps
Short Synopsis
“The Whole Gritty City” is a story about survival – about kids and musicians waging war against the violent legacy of the streets. Their weapons: the musical instruments these kids are just learning to play. In New Orleans, the birthplace of Jazz and America’s murder capital - the stakes are life and death.
Description/Treatment
Nighttime on a New Orleans street. Under the moody glow of a street light, 11-year-old Bear Williams sits on the hood of a pickup truck playing trumpet. The notes float down the street amid the sounds of kids tossing a football. As young as he is, the harsh realities of the streets already loom large in Bear’s world: In the blocks he avoids on his way home from school, on the corners where he fled at the sound of gunshots and in the photo of his oldest brother, shot dead a year and a half ago at age 19.
The Roots of Music Marching Band and Derrick Tabb:
The documentary feature film follows Bear through two years in the life of the new Roots of Music Marching Band. The novice musicians range in age from 9-14. Most of these kids couldn’t read a noe. Now they're learning to read music, play instruments and march with the precision of an army regiment. Their goal: to march in New Orleans' famous Mardi Gras parades. But the gift of music has another purpose. The program’s founder, Rebirth Brass Band snare drummer Derrick Tabb, passes on a legacy that saved and changed his own lifeHe’s competing for the lives and souls of these kids against the siren song of the streets. He is driven by a sense of gratitude and duty, by a love of these kids and of New Orleans music, and by daily images of young lives ending way too soon on the streets and in prison.
CHARACTERS:
Bear
11-year-old Bear Williams looks out at his world with eager curiosity and a restless ambition to figure things out. Now intent on figuring out how to play a trumpet, he’s become the leader of the band’s trumpet section. But when he’s suspended from the program for messing up in school we sense the precariousness of his life.
Jazz/ Dariun and Darius
We meet other band members, like 12-year-old Jazz, who plays four instruments and wants to be a musician like her father. Drummers Dariun and Darius, identical twins, lived isolated and protected lives before they joined the band, kept at home by parents afraid for their safety. Using small video cameras, Jazz, Bear and the twins show us their homes, their stoops and their neighborhoods, and tell us about their own lives .
Wilbert Rawlins
Bear hopes one day to march in one of New Orleans’ high-powered high school bands. His 15-year old brother Diggy plays in the city’s best. Band director Wilbert Rawlins is intent on maintaining that reputation, pushing his kids to their limits, and helping them discover who they really are. He knows what this lifeline can mean for them. Growing up in a tough neighborhood Rawlins lost his seven closest childhood friends to murder and drug.
Skully/ Dinerral Shavers
For the younger kids like Bear there’s still a short window of time before they face the pressures of the streets full blast. By the time they’re in high school, kids like 17-year-old Skully are facing them every day. In his own video diary Skully gives a shout-out to people in his life who have been killed, including friends from his clique “Gritty City”, and a man he looked up to as a father: “Mr. Shavers”.
Skully and images of Shavers tell the story: Dinerral Shavers had promised to make Skully a drum major. Against daunting odds, with no instruments or uniforms, Shavers, a 24-year-old snare drummer and substitute teacher, started a marching band at Rabouin High School when it reopened a year after Hurricane Katrina. A week before the band’s instruments finally arrived Shavers was killed by a bullet fired into his car. It had been meant for his teenaged stepson, caught up in a neighborhood feud. Devastated by the loss of a man who meant so much to them, Skully and the other band members forged ahead to realize Shavers’ dream. They now have a new band director, but they still say a prayer for Shavers before every performance.
Kirk
Another band member mourning the loss of Mr. Shavers,Kirk is determined to be "the best tubal player in the Rabouin Band and in the state of Louisiana." But he struggles to control his temper and the need to act tough. At a Mardi Gras parade he lashes out at a drunken reveler who collides with the band, and gets kicked out as a result. Hoping to get his spot back, Kirk still relies on music to help transcend his anger, in the impassioned mime dancing to gospel music he performs at his church. In his senior year he gets a chance to play tuba again - now in Wilbert Rawlins’ legendary band.
Fighting For Their Lives: What Happens If They Lose?
For 17-year-old Chris, a friend of Skully, the violent world of the streets he portrays in his rap songs increasingly becomes an inescapable reality. Chris lost his best friend to murder, and he shows the scene of a shooting where he nearly lost his own life. On juvenile probation, Chris goes to a youth mentoring program while trying to raise a young son, finish high school, and find a job. But he gets expelled for fighting with a teacher, and months later he’s in jail awaiting trial on a charge for armed robbery and carjacking.
Shelita Haynes knows all too well what the streets are like. She’s is a real life CSI – Crime Scene Investigator for the New Orleans Police Department. We follow her to the scene of a shooting. We see the danger on the streets through her eyes – the eyes of an investigator and the eyes of a mother. Haynes is so grateful that her two sons are in the Rabouin marching band. “For some of these kids, the band is all that they have. If it wasn’t for the band, they’d be out here in the streets.”
Mardi Gras
The stories of the kids, their mentors and the crush of the outside world yield a rich tapestry of battling the odds. Then after their final push of learning to march, the 90 members of the Roots of Music Marching Band join dozens of other bands that power the Mardi Gras parades. They step out in their new uniforms holding their instruments. All eyes are on them: family, neighbors, schoolmates, and thousands of frenzied, celebrating spectators. But watching them perform most intently are Derrick Tabb and the others who have guided them this far. They celebrate knowing they have won this battle - for these kids, for this year - but tomorrow the battle goes on.
NOTES ON FORMAT, STYLE AND POINT-OF-VIEW
Over the course of two years, with verite footage and informal interviews shot in hdv, and video shot by the kids themselves, we have entered into the unique, passionate world of the bands, and into these kids’ lives. As the film is propelled forward by the unfolding story of Bear, Derrick Tabb and their band, other voices begin to reveal the wider world these kids and their mentors are a part of, and the destructive and positive forces at play in their lives. The film captures the beauty, grace, wisdom and humor that endure in a community that remains vital despite the problems that afflict it. We see and hear how music pervades and lifts these lives, from marching bands to second lines to gospel choirs. The film documents the music as it’s learned, rehearsed and passionately performed, and music will also drive some of the film’s sequences.