The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, an energetic and world-famous group of jazz musicians, will perform two concerts 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Saturday on campus.
The concerts are a part of the Carolina Union Performing Arts Series' 2004-05 season and will take place in the Great Hall of the Student Union.
Since tenor saxophonist Kevin Harris and trumpeter Efrem Towns founded the band 27 years ago, the eight instrumentalists have developed their own innovative hybrid style with five horns, a sousaphone and drums.
The band continues to incorporate funk, R&B, bop, gospel and rock into New Orleans brass band marches, a tradition it modernized and popularized among younger musicians. The group tours constantly in the United States and in more than 30 other countries.
"I hope the students enjoy good music and entertainment and also learn a bit," said Don Luse, director of the Union. "There isn't a better touring New Orleans brass band performing today."
The band's loyalty to the history of its city and its reputation as representatives for an antiquated style of music have led New Orleans to designate an official Dirty Dozen Brass Band Day.
As proof of their open-minded attitude to diverse genres, the band's 10 albums have featured guests as legendary and disparate as trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and rock star David Bowie.
Their latest album, Funeral for a Friend, already is being regarded as a masterpiece. It is a powerful homage to the jazz funeral, returning to the original purpose of the brass bands that influenced jazz.
More than a century ago, when most black Southerners could not afford life insurance, social and pleasure clubs would provide funeral arrangements. Brass bands played both dirges and dance tunes for the funeral processions.
