The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans [Hardcover]

Ned Sublette (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

With a style the Los Angeles Times calls as “vivid and fast-moving as the music he loves,” Ned Sublette’s powerful new book drives the reader through the potholed, sinking streets of the United States’s least-typical city.

 

In this eagerly awaited follow-up to The World That Made New Orleans, Sublette’s award-winning history of the Crescent City’s colonial years, he traces an arc of his own experience, from the white supremacy of segregated 1950s Louisiana through the funky year of 2004–2005--the last year New Orleans was whole. By turns irreverent, joyous, darkly comic, passionate, and polemical, The Year Before the Flood juxtaposes the city’s crowded calendar of parties, festivals, and parades with the murderousness of its poverty and its legacy of racism. Along the way, Sublette opens up windows of American history that illuminate the present: the trajectory of Mardi Gras from pre–Civil War days, the falsification of Southern history in movies, the city’s importance to early rock and roll, the complicated story of its housing projects, the uniqueness of its hip-hop scene, and the celebratory magnificence of the participatory parades known as second lines. With a grand, unforgettable cast of musicians and barkeeps, scholars and thugs, vibrating with the sheer excitement of New Orleans, The Year Before the Flood is an affirmation of the power of the city’s culture and a heartbreaking tale of loss that definitively establishes Ned Sublette as a great American writer for the 21st century. 

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Musician, musicologist and longtime New York resident, Sublette revisits his Southern roots and recounts a 2004–2005 pre-Katrina research sojourn in New Orleans in this blunt, eloquently humane and musically astute memoir—a worthy companion to his acclaimed The World That Made New Orleans, a music-laden cultural history of the city to 1819. Sublette delves into some quintessential dynamics of modern American popular culture—including racism and poverty as well as restive imagination and invention—through the prism of his childhood in virulently segregated, early rock 'n' rolling Natchitoches, La., and the fraught but idiosyncratic culture he finds in pre-flood New Orleans. If discussions of Elvis, early rock 'n' roll and hip-hop millionaires straight out of New Orleans's projects inevitably rehearse familiar narratives, Sublette carefully marks them out as part of a larger personal and social landscape. Sublette's sensitivity to the precariousness of a system that collapsed completely after he returned to New York is more than mere hindsight; his worldview dovetails movingly with his turbulent and alluring subject and its dogged rebirth. (Sept.)
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Review

"An intense and thoughtful 'companion volume' to The World that Made New Orleans . . . A powerful, heartfelt and sometimes angry take on a great American city."  —Kirkus Reviews

"Ned Sublette is a literary Spirit Master, and The Year Before the Flood is his most personal and astounding work, full of mad knowledge and unorthodox insights about race, crime, history, politics, music and all the other ingredients that flavor the righteous roux that is New Orleans." —T.J. English, author, Havana Nocturne and Paddy Whacked

"Ned Sublette is the rarest of writers. The Year Before The Flood—his third tour de force work on music, race, history, and conscience—is his most personal and memorable yet."  —Jeff Chang, author, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

"Ned Sublette sees the edgy magic of New Orleans with the eyes of both an insider and outsider. From race to music, from Parasol’s bar to the Mardi Gras Indians, he really gets it. His feel for the sources of jazz and funk flavor the book and make it a delight."  —Walter Isaacson, author, Einstein: His Life and Universe

"Sublette is a musical archeologist at heart . . . Part memoir, part history lesson, it's a scrapbook of the bustling port city at its most joyful, boisterous and deadly."  —Los Angeles Times

"Part memoir, part history, it's a profile of the rich New Orleans music culture that Katrina nearly erased."  —The Dallas Morning News

"A musician and musicologist, Sublette writes with passion and precision of New Orleans' music and Mardi Gras, violence and racism, and its unique—and now perhaps permanently damaged—culture."  —St. Petersburg Times

"Sublette's first-person narrative captures the Big Easy before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, and subtly hints at the surreal dysfunction that would take place immediately afterward."  —Time Out New York

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books; 1 edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556528248
• ISBN-13: 978-1556528248
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #396,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful and moving book by a great writer/musician, September 3, 2009

By 

Dennis Doros (Harrington Park, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans (Hardcover)

Ned Sublette went to Tulane in 2004 to do research for his history of the city: THE WORLD THAT MADE NEW ORLEANS. But the gritty, exciting and dangerous year he spent exploring the city's music, neighborhoods and traditions was the last before the devastation that was Hurricane Katrina. The damage caused by the levee breaks and the unconscionable--no, criminal--abandonment of the city's survivors changed this great and vibrant city--perhaps forever. Sublette's book is fierce and angry and very, very personal. I've been a fan of Sublette the musician for decades, but this book was a look into the life and the scholarship of a remarkable writer and person. For Sublette, New Orleans is fascinating on every level--and the levels all coexist. He describes the historical origins of a neighborhood, the musicians, slave owners and slaves who lived there, the current watering holes, the rappers who memorialized it (and their fates) and which second lines that snaked through it, playing jazz. He explores the divided Mardi Gras traditions from the segregationist Comus and Rex to the African-celebrating Zulus and the mysterious and wonderful Indians (who were inspired by Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show!). This is strong and wonderful--a book that takes history, politics and art seriously and personally. I really enjoyed every page and recommend it highly. (Actually this was written by Amy Heller, Dennis's wife and partner in Milestone Films)

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book affected my dreams, September 10, 2009

By 

Slim (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans (Hardcover)

I read this book during the hottest summer ever recorded down here in Austin, Texas. A little bit every night. I found it most enlightening in matters of historical value: life in Texas and Louisiana in the fifties through to the present, especially concerning race matters. And music! I am a musician, and the chapter "Tell It Like It Is" had me reminding myself to encourage all my musician friends to read this. But most importantly, this book affected my dreams. It was there I visited the streets of New Orleans pre-Katrina, courtesy of Ned Sublette. Dark and exhilarating, vibrant and ethereal. Sublette imparts a considerable love for his subject! And I have a newly acquired desire to revisit New Orleans in the flesh (it's been many years) to participate in her rebirth.--Lissa Hattersley

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Orleans now, December 31, 2009

By 

Ken McCarthy (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans (Hardcover)

Going to New Orleans for lovers of American music is like going to Greece for lovers of antiquity. If you're serious, someday ya just gotta make the trip.

The difference is that a surprising number of the "ancient" things past legends like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton recalled from the early part of the 20th century are still alive and well in NOLA today: social and pleasure clubs, Second Line parades. Indian tribes, jazz funerals, great musicians seemingly on every block .and what for my money is the best food on the planet.

If you can't get to New Orleans right now, get this book. It's the next best thing to being shown around by a native.

If you love New Orleans, this book will fill you with pride and joy and get you even deeper into the deepest city in America.