In funk music everything counts — every note, every beat, every silence, every breath. That’s why musicians who play funk are such masters of understatement. They don’t want to dilute the groove.  Members of the New Orleans band Galactic have been groove-makers for more than 25 years -- summa cum laude students of the city’s unusually large cast of funk and rhythm masters. In a medium that demands enough space to, as many musicians say, “smell the funk,” Galactic brings mind-altering layers of excitement to their compositions. 

And yet, the music can be counter-intuitive. Anything can happen in a Galactic song, but doesn’t. Band members who produce their recordings in-house say their most reliable tool is the “mute” button.  Saxophonist Ben Ellman, drummer Stanton Moore, and bassist Robert Mercurio join Gwen to play a few demos that highlight that approach.  (Other bandmates include guitarist Jeff Raines and keyboard player Rich Vogel, and lead vocalist Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph). 

On their 2019 release "Already Ready Already", Galactic continues to feel a gravitational pull, this time deeper into the groove, with a crowd of collaborators:  Princess Shaw, Miss Charm Taylor of the Honorable South, Boyfriend, David Shaw of the Revivalists, Maggie Koerner, and Erica Falls. 

And in late 2018, Galactic entered their most grand collaboration ever:  ownership of the legendary New Orleans music club Tipitina’s (“the current stewards” says Moore).  With it, they met an even greater challenge:  after the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered clubs, the band created “Tipitinas.TV” to showcase a series of Tips’ headliners, on stage in spectacular video-stream performances.

Musician and song documentarian Ann Savoy took the scenic route to South Louisiana from Virginia … by way of Paris. But since the mid-1970s she’s made herself right at home, marrying Cajun musician and accordion-maker Marc Savoy, and raising sons Joel and Wilson Savoy, multi-instrumentalists in their own right.

Nowadays, she’s usually singing and playing a variety of instruments with friends and family.  Among the bands are the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, the Savoy Family Band, the Magnolia Sisters, Ann Savoy and Her Sleepless Knights, and more. 

Besides traditional Cajun music, Ann Savoy is also drawn to the songs of Billie Holiday, Blue Lu Barker and Ruth Brown. Her Grammy-nominated album from 2006 Adieu False Heart, with Linda Ronstadt, is perhaps her most widely-praised musical collaboration. 

Germaine Bazzle taught “music appreciation” by day for 50 years in Louisiana classrooms, retiring in 2008. But she’s been teaching the same subject by night for a heck of a lot longer — at clubs, concerts, and festivals in and around New Orleans. Ms. Bazzle is the city’s pre-eminent modern jazz chanteuse -- among the first line of modern jazz musicians, as singer, bandleader -- even as jazz bassist, since her late teens.  City leaders said as much in early 2020, when they proclaimed March 5th “Germaine Bazzle Day.”

Bazzle scats. She mimics the sounds of instruments not on the band stand. She articulates every word of a lyric as an exercise in enunciation. She moves the way a Merce Cunningham or a Bill T. Jones might move, if they choreographed a dance to “Lush Life” or “Just in Time,” or some other melody that leaves listeners in puddles of joy and regret.  Her realm is the American Songbook. “I’m comfortable with them,” she says of standards, which she sings almost exclusively.

Bazzle has mastered live performance and the best of her recordings capture her before an audience. She’s only made a handful of records over a more than 60-year career, which may be why she’s such a draw at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.   

On this Music Inside Out, Germaine Bazzle and her Trio join Gwen Thompkins before a rapt audience at the intimate New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Center in March 2020 -- one of the last shows before the pandemic halted live public performances.

For more program information and playlist, go to the Music Inside Out website.

Robin Barnes was born and raised in the Lower 9th Ward, shuttling between her parents’ and grandparents’ houses and singing the songs they liked to hear. Armed with a tambourine at the age of six, she charmed her way into her father’s cover band. Since then, she’s grown into a commanding vocalist with a repertoire of gospel, soul and r&b classics, jazz, funk and pop songs, opera and her own compositions. Her 2016 EP Songbird Sessions reached the top five on the Billboard jazz chart. But jazz may be a confining genre for Barnes. The way she tells it, her tastes are far too eclectic to fit into any single category.  She joins host Gwen Thompkins in the studio - accompanied by bassist (and Barnes’ husband) Pat Casey - for songs and stories of a busy, talented singer.

As stages open once again for live performance, post-pandemic, musicians tell us about the look of music in their shows  — and in their memories. We asked New Orleans performers about the earliest concert they attended, their impressions, and if it informed how they look on stage now. The legendary New Orleans musician Danny Barker once observed “The audience listens first with its eyes”.  That sparked our conversation; some of the musicians we talked to agreed with Barker, and some did not.  But everyone had a story to tell.   Gwen speaks with drummer Johnny Vidacovich; trumpeter Leroy Jones and trombonist Katja Toivola; clarinetist Dr. Michael White; pianist and composer Courtney Bryan; guitar and banjo player Don Vappie; singer/guitarist Joy Clark; trombonist/singer Glen David Andrews; and trombonist Haruka Kikuchi.

For more program information and playlist, go to the Music Inside Out website