“Laissez les bons temps rouler.”
With handkerchief in hand, LSUS alumni director Jazmin Jernigan ends each graduation ceremony with that French phrase, which means “Let the good times roll.”
And with that phrase, the Blanc Et Noir Marching Society brass band strikes up, and band leader Robert Trudeau struts down the center aisle of Brookshire Grocery Arena with parasol in hand and whistle in mouth.
With that phrase on a sash across his chest, Trudeau and band members lead the newly minted LSUS graduates out of the arena with traditional New Orleans standards like “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Down By The Riverside.”
The trumpet blasts, the bass drum booms, the tuba bellows, and the saxophone wails waft across the streets circling the arena as the crowd meanders out of the doors waving their LSUS handkerchiefs on beat.
LSUS graduates will leave the ceremony with a diploma in hand, but Trudeau and band members want them to take a little piece of Louisiana with them as they write the next chapter of their lives.
“As a tour guide who does walking tours of Shreveport, I know the importance of sending people away from their visit with a little something extra,” Trudeau said. “To walk out of the arena where the sound all around you is of Louisiana music, and to see people chatting there with big smiles on their faces, is special.”
The smiles can be attributed to finishing a college academic journey that, more often than not, didn’t just consist of a traditional four years of college directly after high school graduation.
But as the cap-and-gown clad graduates meet up with their families and pose for pictures, more than a few cell phone cameras are pointed at the band as crowds gather to soak in Louisiana sounds.
The syncopated beats move the feet of all in reach.
Band members are more than happy to spread the second-line tradition born in New Orleans and forged by the collisions of cultures and traditions from West Africa, France, Spain, Canada, and indigenous America to name a few.
“It’s an amazing feeling having people come up to you and say that they really enjoyed what we were doing,” said Nathan Johnson, tuba player and music teacher at Caddo Middle Career & Technology. “We were talking to somebody from Africa, and they said they never knew music like this existed.
“For me, it’s a wonderful opportunity to show what we do – the sound of Louisiana.”
BECOMING AN LSUS TRADITION
The Blanc et Noir band has been enriching LSUS graduations since 2019, starting at the request of Cynthia Ramkelawan, whose daughter CyVanie was graduating. The chemistry major followed in her mom’s footsteps as a dentist.
LSUS held multiple virtual graduations during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the band, and its sound, were back in full force once graduations returned face-to-face.
While local Louisiana residents may not be immersed in the traditional Louisiana culture more prominent in the southern portions of the state, LSUS’s December graduation can whet the appetite of many who know Mardi Gras is around the corner.
“We’re proud to share a slice of Louisiana hospitality with our graduates,” said Jernigan, LSUS’s alumni director. “We have a Commencement Welcome tradition the day before graduation in which our graduates come on campus and meet each other.
“From the second line band that leads graduates out of the arena to the slices of king cake served at our Mix and Mingle, LSUS creates a unique experience around graduation that is wrapped in Louisiana flair.”
As LSUS’s online graduate programs have grown, the majority of LSUS graduates hail from outside the state and are being introduced to Louisiana music for likely the first time.
“I tell people all the time that it’s OK for Shreveport and North Louisiana to celebrate this part of Louisiana culture, too,” Trudeau said. “Even if we haven’t been as connected and heeled to it as much as South Louisiana because of the traditional divide in the state, it’s OK for us to celebrate this as well.”
BRINGING SECOND LINE TO SHREVEPORT
Robert Trudeau started Blanc et Noir, a French phrase meaning black and white, with co-founder Jerry Davenport.
Trumpet player Don Dirty Redd Crenshaw was instrumental in finding musicians for the group, which has featured a variety of players through the years.
The group started in 2008 playing birthday parties, wedding receptions, and funerals, ultimately branching out to Mardi Gras parades like Highland and Columbia Park.
Many players have come through the group, but Trudeau and his whistle have been a mainstay.
“The Grand Marshal can play a whistle, which is what I love to do,” Trudeau said. “Light percussion like a tambourine also goes well.
“But my main job is to interact with the crowd. Whether that’s taking pictures with people using my gold-fringed umbrella to frame the shot or just talking to people and explaining what we’re doing.”
But Trudeau’s love affair with Creole culture started much earlier as the Massachusetts native of French-Canadian descent moved to Louisiana as a young boy and spent four years at St. Joseph’s Abbey in the woods outside of Covington.
While boys had to sneak around to listen to the Rolling Stones or watch The Beatles, they were introduced to a variety of West African influences through the Benedictine monks living there.
“There’s a record called Missa Luba, which is a Catholic mass sung in a West African dialect,” Trudeau said. “There were also records in which Mardi Gras Indians were playing in tiny taverns in impoverished neighborhoods, using tambourines and forks on glass.
“That’s where my background in the second-line tradition starts from.”
Pair that with Trudeau’s college days in New Orleans and an eagerness to join second line parades, which were typically all black, on streets like Claiborne Ave.
Trudeau has lived in every corner of the state, from the bayous of Napoleonville to the woods of Alexandria and the deltas around Monroe.
He’s called Shreveport home since meeting his wife Talbot and taught in the Caddo Parish School system.
Part of that education was an after-school jazz band that toured the talent shows of the day at places like Booker T. Washington High, Huntington High and Southern University Shreveport.
Three of Trudeau’s bandmates at LSUS graduation this past December – Justin Lewis (band director, Walnut Hill Middle), Arcemio Smith (strings itinerant in Caddo Parish), and Nathan Johnson (band director, CMCTS) – are educating youth through music.
Lewis said teaching youth and playing in the second-line jazz band go hand-in-hand.
“Both of these parts of our lives, they sharpen each other,” said Lewis, who started performing music in church as a young boy. “When you’re doing second line, you’re becoming a better teacher.
“And it’s an example of teaching how to perform. It helps us relate and teach better about something we’re doing on a consistent basis.”
Sharing Louisiana’s sound with the next generation ensures that sound keeps flowing – at LSUS graduations and around Shreveport – for decades to come.
For more information on the band, visit their Shreveport Second Line Brass Band page on Facebook.
