The incidents described in this book include the 1890 assassination of the New Orleans Chief of Police David Hennessey, the resulting Italian lynchings, and the 1906 murder of the seven-year-old child Walter Lamana. The first two incidents were the impetus for the 1999 HBO movie "Vendetta" and the book The Crescent City Lynchings by Tom Smith. The third incident had the most impact on many of the families documented in this book. The Walter Lamana child-killing story has not resurfaced for over a hundred years, until now.The high profile crimes of the late 1800s and early 1900s typically do not mention the places of origin of the families involved. The majority of those involved came from a small town in Sicily named Chiusa Sclafani, which is near Corleone, situated in the province of Palermo. Chiusa Sclafani is not mentioned in the movie Vendetta, nor the books covering the incidents and families involved.Fifteen years and roughly 60,000 hours of research are included in this book. This is one of most uniquely written books seen in centuries, and embodies a far-reaching and massive amount of documentation.For the most part this book is a reference material. Included are details of ancestor voyages, accounts of major incidents, the impacts those incidents had on these families, and more. There are steamer ship voyages documented for 27 families and for 795 individuals. There are 32 family trees presented. The Index includes 731 unique surnames and 2948 individuals documented in the family trees presented.The early chapters of this book describe the experience of the voyage and American citizenship process for our Sicilian immigrant ancestors, the "incidents" which occurred in New Orleans which caused the massive family dispersions, as well as a short description of Chiusa Sclafani and New Orleans.The middle chapters contain the steamer ship voyages for many of those who left the island of Sicily and entered America. This is the main artery of this book, which connects the present to the past and vice-versa. This chapter will help many people in their research by "jumping the ocean", a peculiar and meaningful genealogy term.The latter chapters of this book include the family descendant trees, which span from the earliest ancestors researched in Sicily, to the present. The first page (sometimes more than one page) of most of the family chapters includes a short dialogue explaining the familys entrance to America, detailing who migrated from Sicily to America, migrations from New Orleans to other places, many surname spelling changes, and more.Because the original research focused on the authors own family, the Palisi family documentation includes 400 years and 12 complete generations. Further, the Palisi chapter contains a heraldry entry found in a document dated from the 1500s, placenames around the globe where the name Palisi is used, and genetic DNA testing results of the Palisi line. Frank Palisi chose to include his own familys genetic DNA testing and results in this book since he was inspired by National Geographics (and their partner IBM) efforts to genetically test the DNA of a sampling of the worlds population to determine how the earth was repopulated after the last Ice Age.As a result of this book, first, second, and third cousins can now find out who and where their relatives are, after being separated over a hundred years ago.This book has attracted and will continue to attract historians, genealogists, mafia enthusiasts, university professors & students, and more!

Approached as a wellspring of cultural authenticity and historical exceptionality, New Orleans appears in opposition to a nation perpetually driven by progress. Remaking New Orleans shows how this narrative is rooted in a romantic cultural tradition, continuously repackaged through the twin engines of tourism and economic development, and supported by research that has isolated the city from comparison and left unquestioned its entrenched inequality. Working against this feedback loop, the contributors place New Orleans at the forefront of national patterns of urban planning, place-branding, structural inequality, and racialization. Nontraditional sites like professional wrestling matches, middle-class black suburbs, and Vietnamese gardens take precedence over clichéd renderings of Creole cuisine, voodoo queens, and hot jazz. Covering the city's founding through its present and highlighting changing political and social formations, this volume remakes New Orleans as a rich site for understanding the quintessential concerns of American cities. Contributors. Thomas Jessen Adams, Vincanne Adams, Vern Baxter, Maria Celeste Casati Allegretti, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Rien Fertel, Megan French-Marcelin, Cedric G. Johnson, Alecia P. Long, Vicki Mayer, Toby Miller, Sue Mobley, Marguerite Nguyen, Aaron Nyerges, Adolph Reed Jr., Helen A. Regis, Matt Sakakeeny, Heidi Schmalbach, Felipe Smith, Bryan Wagner

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.

Global Jazz: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography that explores the global impact of jazz, detailing the evolution of the African American musical tradition as it has been absorbed, transformed, and expanded across the world’s historical, political, and social landscapes. With more than 1,300 annotated entries, this vast compilation covers a broad range of subjects, people, and geographic regions as they relate to interdisciplinary research in jazz studies. The result is a vivid demonstration of how cultures from every corner of the globe have situated jazz—often regarded as America’s classical music—within and beyond their own musical traditions, creating new artistic forms in the process. Global Jazz: A Research and Information Guide presents jazz as a common musical language in a global landscape of diverse artistic expression.

The critical role of Europe in the music, personalities, and analysis of jazz

During the formative years of jazz (1890–1917), the Creoles of Color—as they were then called—played a significant role in the development of jazz as teachers, bandleaders, instrumentalists, singers, and composers. Indeed, music penetrated all aspects of the life of this tight-knit community, proud of its French heritage and language. They played and/or sang classical, military, and dance music as well as popular songs and cantiques that incorporated African, European, and Caribbean elements decades before early jazz appeared. In Jazz à la Creole: French Creole Music and the Birth of Jazz, the author describes the music played by the Afro-Creole community since the arrival of enslaved Africans in La Louisiane, then a French colony, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, emphasizing the many cultural exchanges that led to the development of jazz. Caroline Vézina has compiled and analyzed a broad scope of primary sources found in diverse locations from New Orleans to Quebec City, Washington, DC, New York City, and Chicago. Two previously unpublished interviews add valuable insider knowledge about the music on French plantations and the danses Créoles held in Congo Square after the Civil War. Musical and textual analyses of cantiques provide new information about the process of their appropriation by the Creole Catholics as the French counterpart of the Negro spirituals. Finally, a closer look at their musical practices indicates that the Creoles sang and improvised music and/or lyrics of Creole songs, and that some were part of their professional repertoire. As such, they belong to the Black American and the Franco-American folk music traditions that reflect the rich cultural heritage of Louisiana.

This book interprets how ancient civilizations responded to various stresses, including environmental change, warfare, and the fragmentation of political institutions. It focuses on what happened during and after the decline of once powerful regimes, and posits that they experienced social resilience and transformation instead of collapse.