Lionel Batiste - Mister New Orleans Himself

I picked this particular clip to open my cycle about post Katrina New Orleans with footage of a risky stunt by Lionel Batiste - bass drummer of Treme Brass Band, vocalist and probably the most pronounced character from rich in freaks and oddballs city. They call him tenderly "Uncle" there and in turn he often addresses his audience "my nieces". It is hard to tell how old he is, seems like that as far as memory goes he's always looked the same. Also it is hard to tell what he's made of beside personalized approach to anybody crossing his path. Here he is popping up in front of Kirk Joseph's 504 Brass Band in the yard of St.Augustine Catholic Church in historic Treme. Battste survived Katrina in Laffite Project and spent several months afterwards in Arizona. Somehow he represents the most quirky cultural fabric, sometimes hitting flat sense of humor and musical tradition of Big Easy. It was fall of 2006 - time that the obvious truth finally settled in communal mind - the city as it used to be will never be rebuild,and by the virtue of characters as Batiste may be just a degenerated mutation of its former self.