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Get Your Own! | View Slideshow If you are interested in my musical accomplishment…go to www.breggettrideau.com check out some cool stuff. If you want to know about me…, here we go. I am a New Orleans (born and raised) girl and I am proud of my heritage. I am proud in spite of the picture that “Katrina” paints of New Orleans people. I love the Saints and I am an LSU Alumni. I love having a distinctive New Orleans accent. I find it rich and unique. I love Second Line and Zydeco music. I love the Neville Brothers, Charmaine Neville, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton (composer), Buddy Bolden (raggin’), Dr. John, Harry Connick Jr., Professor Longhair, etc. Matchless is the New Orleans sound. This is simply because of the complexity of its Haitian, French, Cuban, African, Native American, White American and European mixes. Les Gens De Couleur Libres.The Free People of Color in New Orleans Today, commonly known as "Creoles" or "Creoles of Color" contributed greatly to the city’s unique personality. New Orleans is the melting pot of sound. I LOVE STRAIGHT AHEAD JAZZ!!! I am fed up with the constant pull to smooth jazz, R&B, neo soul, and hip-hop, in order to be considered valid. All of these genres are fantastic in their own right, but they stem from JAZZ, which stems from the blues. Why are we like this…the creators of a thing with no staying power? We move on as soon as we think someone else has copied our creation. They get the credit and we make our way on to something else, to be stolen and profited from by others. I fight hard to keep true to that that I love the most, though I do not always win. I still like to swing a song. I live for bossa novas. What is so wrong with that? I have been told that I am too young to sing that style, and that I will never make it “BIG” singing old style jazz. I guess I will not then. It is up to God anyway, as far as I am concerned. Bernard Wright said, “Sing what you believe and what you love and the audience will believe and love it too”. Rachella Parks-Washington advised, “Do what is honest at the time and you will always give your best…at that time.” I think that is true for me. Yet, I find it hard to find musicians that believe as I do. I find this true mostly in African American musicians more than white musicians. How did this happen? The Blues (the 1st American form of music) is where Jazz emerged from; therefore, I must speak on the “Blues” just a little. West Africans brought to America and enslaved used call-and-response forms of field hollers, cadences and other “negro” work songs as a coping mechanism, if you will. Once freed, the ex-slaves from the Mississippi Delta turned this “survival technique” into what is known today as the Blues. The “call” then came from the guitar and voice “responded” or vice versa. Blues is the foundation of jazz as well as the prime source of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, gospel and country music. Jazz is the 1st American form of music that became popular worldwide. Therefore, I ask, how can we call “straight ahead” jazz obsolete? If the blues is not, then how is this so? If country still has a twang then why can’t we swing? Why are Diana Krall and Joss Stone, who are truly awesome, getting Grammy awards when Nancy Wilson and Gladys Knight can’t get an invite to perform at them? Why does age mean the end when you still have the gift? It makes the older resent the younger and the younger disrespect the stylings of the older. That can be HELL, trust ME when I tell ya. Why is beauty more important than talent today? Thank god, it was not like that when Diana, Patty, Martha, Mary, BB, Buddy, Ray, Bobby and Ella started out. We would be screwed musically for sure. PEACE!
