Congo Square 2011

2011
Everything Old is Renewed Again™: Fats Houston A Portrait in Dignity
by Kenneth Scott, Jr.

Celebrating and remembering are the heart of New Orleans’ culture. Our unique gift to the future is delivering and renewing our past. This year’s Congo Square proves that reclamation is its own reward. The immortal Matthew “Fats” Houston, the most iconic grand marshal ever to strut a New Orleans street, graced the 1976 Jazz Fest poster and while this marvelous retake celebrates the 35th anniversary of that glorious slice of time and place, it also lovingly memorializes the great man’s passing. Jazz’s evanescence defied personification until Fats Houston fronted the Eureka, Olympia and Young Tuxedo Brass Bands, crafting the definitive grand marshal persona out of found objects turned into sashes and a strutting gait that defied duplication as it defined dignity. If you were lucky enough to have witnessed Fats elevate the prosaic (for in his day, parades literally formed at the drop of a hat) to the sublime, you experienced the zenith of New Orleans’ cultural humanism.

Editions:

5,000 Numbered prints on archival paper, 20” x 38”, $72.50
1,000 Artist-signed & numbered prints on 100% rag paper, 21” x 39”, $239
500 Artist-signed, hand remarqued & numbered prints on 100% rag paper, 21” x 40”, $329
100 Artist-overpainted, signed & numbered canvas screen prints, suitable for stretching, 26” x 40”, $595

Congo Square is part of the New Orleans Jazz Festival. It is a living celebration of the African-Caribbean culture at the root of much of America’s art and music.