oneparticularwave » Second Line…

Second Line… December 2, 2007

Posted by ~V~ in : Images, Spirituality, Philosophy, Portland, New Orleans , trackback

. “Two years ago I was watching
. all the Katrina coverage on TV
. and knew another family coming
. down to do construction for the
. relief effort,” says Peter Spring.
. “I thought I’d join them, then
. thought about what I could offer
. with my own special skills
. and tools.”

Now living by the Mississippi
River in a warehouse that he
turned into a workshop and
performance space, Spring,
57, has donated hundreds
of musical instruments to
musicians, schools and churches
in New Orleans, while teaching a new generation of artists how to play. He’s been doing it since October 2005.

. His mission is personal.
. In 2002, Spring’s 22-year-old
. son, Steven, a talented
. musician in his own right, died
. of a rare form of bone cancer.
“The most amazing thing about my son is that not once through all the pain of his cancer did he complain or waste any time,” Spring says. “He just played as hard as he could right up to the end.
That’s what I had to live up to.”

Crushed by the loss of his son three years earlier, Spring was adrift when the floodwaters of Katrina began washing over the birthplace of jazz. Inspired to help, he founded the nonprofit Steven Spring Foundation, which he named after his son. Spring held a fundraiser in his hometown of Ashland, Oregon and began collecting instruments. By the end of September 2005 he had collected over 60 instruments — from pianos to flutes — loaded them all in a trailer, and started his first 2,800-mile road trip to Louisiana.

. “I feel a huge debt to this
. city — particularly the
. African-American people —
. for inventing jazz, which I think
. is the best thing that’s come out of America,” says Spring, who plans to stay in the city for three more years. “I have absolutely no doubt that I am in the right place doing the right thing.”

Spring arrived in New Orleans
soon after the city reopened,
at a time when most of New
Orleans remained uninhabitable.
On his first night, Spring repaired the piano at Donna’s Bar and Grill, a well-known jazz club on Rampart Street that had flooded after the hurricane. The next day he joined New Orleans’ first post-Katrina second line parade on Bourbon Street, marking the passing of the storm and the start of the city’s rebirth.

“At every point after deciding to do this, fortuitous things have happened that make it seem like it’s all been planned,” Spring says.
“Of course, that’s the essence of jazz.”