What are they celebrating and why?
They are celebrating but not in the way you would think of it! It is the “celebration of a person’s life”, that you witness today! Jazz funerals of a sort, were at the heart of an early African slave religious practice, of celebrating of the life of a deceased person. When the church’s funeral service was over, and the procession began the movement from the church to the hearse , the band would play slow, sad, funeral hymns, known as a “dirge”. When the processional reached the cemetery or the tomb, the processional would be led by a “Grand Marshal”, the brass band and mourners would move to the burial site, with the band playing a dirge to signal the struggles, the hardships, the ups and downs of life. With a nod from the pastor, the grand marshal would stop the band and move them about 20 to 35 yards away from the place of interment, or a, “respectable distance”. On the way back, the brass band music became much more joyful. The band played high-spirited tunes such as “Didn’t He Ramb
