"Brass-band music used to be a singular strain of New Orleans's cultural heritage. It was defined by its free-wheeling polyphony, its repertory of dirges and stomps and its appearance primarily at parades and funerals. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band has changed everything but the instrumentation to reinvent a modern omnivorous brass-band music that embraces be-bop, funk, and rhythm-and-blues. The arrangements are crisply focused and the music sounds at home in a club as well as on the march. Yet for all the changes, the Dirty Dozen has retained an essential part of the tradition - their performance still conveys a sense of communal jubilation."
- Jon Pareles, NY Times
"They hurl styles together with cavalier optimism, play with relentless bravura, and have zero patience for navel-gazing of any sort."
- The Guardian UK
"Whether you experience the Dozen on stage or on the street, they are guys anyone would feel lucky to meet in this lifetime. The music that comes through as they perform, resonates with feelings of familiarity, uniqueness, humor and daring – all at once, all the time."
- John Bell of Widespread Panic
"For more than two decades, their ability to be funky – to play complex syncopated rhythms with a carefree flair that automatically makes listeners want to get up and dance – has never been in doubt. Although the Dirty Dozen uses traditional instrumentation, it doesn’t sound traditional. By incorporating elements of modern jazz, pop, R&B and other genres into its style, the band has kept fresh what could easily have become a stodgy, time-bound formula. Twenty-five years from its New Orleans debut, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band continues to be a national treasure: steeped in both the past and the present, impossible to categorize, and mighty funky."
- Mac Randall, The New York Times |
