8 Thursday, October 6, 2016 Island Beat Hawaii Tribune-Herald set of drums and a sousaphone, which gave the band a unique sound and separated us from all the rest.” Trumpet player Gregory Davis uses a tried-andtrue New Orleans analogy to describe the sound of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. “It ends up being like a pot of gumbo — you drop in a little okra, a little shrimp and some crabs,” he says. “Before you know it, you’ve mixed in all these different ingredients and you’ve got a beautiful soup. That was our approach to music early on and still is today.” “A lot of bands in New Orleans play our music and they don’t even know they are playing our music,” he adds, laughing and recalling learning classical piano music at the age of 8 — lots of Mozart and Chopin. Lewis took up the saxophone at age 10. “It was classical saxophone because classical music teaches you technique,” he says. Eventually, Lewis would graduate to rhythm and blues, progressive jazz, rock ’n’ roll, even gospel music. But the traditional brass bands of New Orleans were all playing the same kind of music. It wasn’t the kind of music Lewis and the other band members wanted to play. “You know, something that had a beat where people could dance,” he says. “Where they could shake a little something, you know? And the older guys would say, ‘Well, you’re not playing traditional music,’ and we’d say, ‘Yeah, we’re playing traditional music and a lot of other styles of music, too.’ “I reached back to how I came up and I brought all of that to the table. That’s what I wanted to do. In some bands, you just have to play a certain kind of thing, a certain kind of music. “With the Dirty Dozen, you had the opportunity to really expand your musical abilities because you could play whatever kind of music you wanted to play. Whatever anybody brought to the table, it got played. So, you had freedom.” “Traditional” brass band music, he says, was a lot of hymns, marches and gospel tunes. “The difference between us and most of the brass bands of BAND From page 7 Photo: CHRIS MONAGHAM The Dirty Dozen Brass Band of New Orleans will play Friday night at Kahilu Theatre in Waimea and Saturday night at Kress Theater in Downtown Hilo. Showtimes both nights are 7 p.m. See BAND Page 9
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