Interview With Delfeayo Marsalis

By Lolis Eric Elie

Delmond Lambreaux (Rob Brown) sits in with Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra at Snug Harbor during the second episode this season. We get to see Delfeayo wearing one of his hats, but there's much more to the work and music of the fourth of the six sons of Ellis and Delores Marsalis. Delfeayo is playing music out on the road now, as is often the case. We conducted this Q&A in a series of email exchanges.

My first memories of you are as the family recording engineer. The trombone came later, as I recall. You've produced some of the most important albums of our generation. Do you still do any of that work?

Delfeayo Marsalis: I started trombone and recording simultaneously, but since you don't need technique or tone to start recording (just check out 96 percent of today's pro-tools home studios), I was able to work immediately. As I see it, I had two major advantages over everyone else: One, I wanted to produce/record acoustic jazz and two, no one else my age wanted to produce/record acoustic jazz. The process I use can be costly, so I seldom produce anymore. When I do, it's usually a soundtrack or just as a favor to someone local.

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A Vietnamese Staple: Vermicelli Salad with Beef

By Lolis Eric Elie

The Vietnamese have made New Orleans their own. Thanks in large part to the efforts of the late archbishop Philip Hannan, thousands of Vietnamese men and women have come to south Louisiana in the years since the war. They have formed enclaves in several different sections of the metro area, most famously in Versailles, the section of eastern New Orleans served by Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic church and its affiliated community development organization.

New Orleans is a logical place for the Vietnamese to settle. Vietnam is largely surrounded by water; fishing is an important part of the livelihood, and fish are an important part of the diet.

When Sonny (Michiel Huisman) falls in love with Linh (Hong Chau), he gets a sense of the challenges facing the fishing community. He also gets a taste of Vietnamese food. Though at one point he tells Linh, he's tired of eating pho, the emblematic Vietnamese soup, he doesn't say anything about the beef and vermicelli noodle salad that is also a staple on Vietnamese tables.

We have our own delicious recipe for this dish in our forthcoming cookbook, Treme: Stories and Recipes from the Heart of New Orleans. Even though the book won't be published until spring, here's a foretaste:

Kimberly Rivers Roberts, the Woman Behind Trouble the Water

By Lolis Eric Elie

'Trouble the Water' received an Academy Award nomination for its incredible, real time depiction of the federal levee failures of 2005. In the hours leading up to Hurricane Katrina, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, the subject of the film, interviewed her neighbors as they prepared, or didn't prepare, for the approaching storm. Though she has no training as a journalist or filmmaker, Roberts raised many of the questions and captured many of the images that a more seasoned journalist would have chosen to depict. During the storm, she kept her camera rolling as she and her husband, Scott, struggled to survive the winds and rains. Working with filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, Roberts' video footage became one part of a larger story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. During the festivities, Roberts, then pregnant, gave birth to her daughter Skyy.

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