Influences: Ben Jaffe of Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times
November 16th, 2011
Ben Jaffe leads the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which makes its home in a storied New Orleans venue when it isn’t touring the world. Jaffe, son of the group’s founders, marched in carnival parades while still in grammar school. Now a tuba player and bassist, he extends the group’s original mission: to keep the music of 1920s New Orleans alive and accessible to audiences, and to maintain the rawness sometimes rubbed off by the “Dixieland” movement and its genteel followers. The band appears at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday for a collaboration with dance group the Trey McIntyre Project. Besides his expected roots in musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Jaffe, 40, says he’s also inspired by Muhammad Ali’s resistance to the Vietnam War draft, Pete Seeger’s involvement with the Civil Rights movement and Andy Warhol’s redrawing of art’s map. “Where do you go,” Jaffe asks, “when there are no limits or boundaries?”
