Watch Your Back Jazz Funeral t-shirt
Jazz Funeral

Jazz Funeral

Watch Your Back NYC

Regular price $25.00 Sale

The jazz funeral: New Orleans flair beyond compare.

Now you tell me, what is not to love? If you gotta go, you may as well let em know who the hell is coming, right?

This tradition was widespread among New Orleanians across ethnic boundaries at the start of the 20th century. As the common brass band music became wilder in the years before World War I, some white New Orleanians considered the hot music disrespectful, and such musical funerals became rare among the city's white citizens. After the 1960s, it gradually started being practised across ethnic and religious boundaries.

Those who follow the band just to enjoy the music are called the second line, and their style of dancing, in which they walk and sometimes twirl a parasol or handkerchief in the air, is called second lining.