New Orleans musicians share their favorite Christmas songs, from bounce to blues 21DEZ25

 CELEBRATE BECAUSE IT IS CHRISTMAS!!! I love this from NPR's Sunday Morning Edition...

New Orleans musicians share their favorite Christmas songs, from bounce to blues

December 21, 20258:10 AM ET

By 

Rosemary Westwood

7-Minute Listen

Transcript

Irma Thomas; Big Freedia; Tarriona "Tank" Ball

Sean Gardner/Getty Images; Nelson Cosey; Josh Brasted/Getty Images for Essence

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Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

NEW ORLEANS — When you think about music in New Orleans — you probably think of jazz or blues, or maybe funk and bounce.
Christmas carols? Not so much.

But many musicians in New Orleans have deep roots in the church.
Since it's that time of year, Rosemary Westwood from member station WWNO asked a few of the city's favorite musicians about the songs they like to listen to around Christmas.

John Boutte, jazz singer

John Boutte

Johan DeGrandes

John Boutte's singing career lifted off after a chance encounter with Stevie Wonder. "He told me I had a signature voice," Boutte says. "And I was like, 'What's that?' He says, 'You sound like you — nobody else.'" Music was embedded in the city's Treme neighborhood, where he was raised. During Christmas Eve Mass, he sometimes sang along to "O Come All Ye Faithful." But Boutte said Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" best embodies the purpose and hope of the Christmas season. "One of these days, we'll get it straight and we will have a really beautiful Christmas," he said. "I don't know if it'll be this year."

Big Freedia, bounce queen of New Orleans

Big Freedia

Tony Broussard

Freedia grew up in a Baptist church and has never shied away from her faith, filling her Instagram profile with booty-shaking videos and prayer hand emojis. "Being that I'm a Black, gay artist, I'm not afraid to let people know that I believe in God," Freedia said. She started in her church choir, later became choir director, and has gone on to record a handful of Christmas songs that are "strictly Big Freedia." Among her favorites? Freedia's "Santa is a Gay Man." Her family didn't have much growing up, but her parents always found a way to make Christmas joyful. "They made sure that they went hard and did everything in their power to make sure that we woke up with gifts and we were thankful for the day that Christ was born," she said.

Tarriona "Tank" Ball, lead singer of Tank and the Bangas

Tarriona "Tank" Ball of Tank and the Bangas performs onstage during Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2024.

Josh Brasted/Getty Images for Essence

Ball is known for blending genres, with a sound that's both playful and full of soul. Her grandfather was the preacher in the Baptist church where she was raised. "I think church gave me a big moral compass, just about how to treat elders or community, family," she said. Some of her favorite Christmas songs are Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby," anything by Donny Hathaway, and "Silent Night" by The Temptations. Singing feels like church, she said, and she hopes that the audience can feel that spirituality when they hear her sing "Silent Night." "I hope people feel closer to God. I hope they feel comforted."

Leroy Jones, jazz trumpeter

Leroy Jones

Katja Toivola

Jones is part of the Preservation Hall collective, a group of musicians who play in a tiny venue in the French Quarter, where you can hear New Orleans jazz every day of the week — entirely acoustic. He's recorded an album of Christmas hymns in three-part trumpet harmony, including one he loves most, "Away in a Manger." The song brings the listener back to the night Christ was born, Jones said. "The lyrics to that song really paint the picture for that whole scene and that night, when he was discovered by (the Three Wise Men), which was probably a magnificent experience."

Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes, accordion and harmonica player

Bruce Sunpie Barnes

Skip Bolden

Christmas in Bruce Barnes' childhood home was full of instruments and songs. "They would play music, especially during the Christmas season, all night long," he said. "Blues, blues and more blues." Barnes still plays some of those classics, including "Christmas Tears" by Freddie King. His family were sharecroppers. "So everything around Christmas meant that, for the most part, they could get some relief from the everyday hardship of doing what they were tasked to do," he said. Through music, they created "magic and medicine and healing." His mother's side was Baptist, his father's side was Pentecostal. Other blues sung at Christmas were spiritual songs that reminded you not to forget about those who were struggling, said Barnes, asking God to bless the soldiers, the wounded ones, the ones on welfare, and people everywhere.

Irma Thomas, soul queen of New Orleans

Irma Thomas

Sean Gardner/Getty Images

Irma Thomas has been a titan in New Orleans music for decades, and at 84, she's still singing at church. "I'll probably be singing in my church choir till I cross over," she said.
Thomas has long been a mainstay in the gospel tent at Jazz Fest, and she calls gospel music a form of prayer and praise. "A lot of times when you can't find the right words to say a prayer, you can just find a good song, a good gospel song, and just sing it, and it's coming from the heart," she said. Thomas has twice recorded "O Holy Night," a song she hopes gives people solace at Christmas, no matter what they might be going through. The song reminds people to have hope. "All I want to do is bring joy to folk," she said.

Rev. Franklin Graham says churches and synagogues are forbidden in most Muslim countries 3OKT10

IT is sad a man of faith like Rev. Graham, someone who has the ability to influence opinion and attitude of millions of Christians, doesn't choose his words with more care, and doesn't do more research on an issue he feels compelled to speak out on. I believe Rev. Graham is a gifted Christian preacher, and I am willing to give him the benefit of doubt that he didn't know the facts on the issue. I do have an issue with those who believe sharia forbids conversion to Christianity, and resent the restrictions Muslim countries place on proselytizing and religious conversion to Christianity. The Muslim community in the U.S. enjoys our constitutional right to freedom of religion, the Islamic world should honor and enforce the right to freedom of religion as mandated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

 

On ABC's This Week on Oct. 3, 2010, host Christiane Amanpour held a town hall debate on whether Americans should fear Islam.

Naturally, the issue of the so-called Ground Zero mosque came up.

Amanpour asked the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, about his comments following 9-11 that Islam is a "very evil and very wicked" religion.

"I understand what the Muslims want to do in America," said Graham, president of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and the international Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse. "They want to build as many mosques and cultural centers as they possibly can so they can convert as many Americans as they can to Islam. I understand that...I understand what they're doing. And I just don't have the freedom to do this in most Muslim countries. We can't have a church. We're not able to build synagogues. It's forbidden."

Imam Osama Bahloul, leader of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tenn., and a panelist on the show, said Graham was incorrect.

"For someone to say we are not allowed to build a church in a Muslim country, this is absolutely not right. You can Google this," Bahloul said.

We spoke to several experts on religion and government in Muslim countries. And the consensus was clear: there are, in fact, Christian churches and/or synagogues in almost every Muslim country.

"Reverend Graham is wrong," said Yvonne Haddad, Professor of History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Georgetown University. "Churches are flourishing in Jordan and Syria. In Egypt, the Christians find restrictions on church construction which has recently been partially lifted."

  Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic relations, agreed that Graham was incorrect. "There are lots of Christian churches and synagogues in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Indonesia, Qatar, Kuwait ... If you go to any number of so-called Muslim countries you will see thriving Christian and Jewish populations."

One member of the Iranian parliament is Jewish, Hooper noted.

"The only one where you don't see it, where you can't have a Christian church or synagogue is Saudi Arabia," Hooper said. "It's only an issue in Saudi Arabia."

The cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia are considered the two holiest cities in Islam, explained Akbar S. Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University. And so, he said, no churches or synagogues are allowed there.

"That is like the Vatican in terms of Catholicism," Ahmed said.

But where he grew up in Pakistan, for example, Ahmed said, there is a huge Christian church. While there are now very few Christians left there, the building is deserted but remains untouched. After 1948, he said, most Jewish people living in Muslim countries migrated to Israel. But there are still many churches in Muslim countries, as well as synagogues. One of the top advisers to the king of Morocco is Jewish, he said.

There may be periods of turmoil, or some narrow-minded leaders who have attacked churches over the years, Ahmed said, but there is nothing formalized in Islamic law that forbids the building of churches or synagogues.

"Today, because of the general atmosphere in the air, there are many untruths being spread about Islam," Ahmed said.

While the facts about whether most Muslim countries allow churches or synagogues is pretty cut-and-dried, there is another facet to this claim. Graham was speaking in the context of Muslims building mosques in order to convert people to Islam in the United States. And so we think it's fair to also look at whether it's possible to build a church or synagogue in most Muslim countries with the aim of converting people. And on that point, Graham is on firmer ground.

According to a 2007 Council on Foreign Relations "backgrounder" on religious conversion and sharia law, authored by Lionel Beehner, "Conversion by Muslims to other faiths is forbidden under most interpretations of sharia and converts are considered apostates...Some Muslim clerics equate this apostasy to treason, a crime punishable by death."

According to the report, while a vast majority of Muslim countries no longer prescribe death for apostates (instead opting for some lesser form of punishment), "some states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, still do hand out death sentences."

Shireen Hunter, visiting professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, said that Graham "cannot be more wrong," about there being a prohibition against churches or synagogues in most Muslim countries.

But, she said, "conversion is a totally different thing."

There is a great deal of debate in the Muslim community about Islamic law regarding conversions. Some argue Islam teaches there is no compulsion to faith. And while enforcement of religious laws against conversion is more aggressively applied by some Muslim countries than others, "this is an issue that is there."

In many countries in the Middle East, religion dictates your legal status as well, explained Nathan Brown, an expert on Islamic law at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. While legal enforcement of bans against conversions from Islam are rare in most Muslim countries, "conversions are practically difficult," he said.

We think a Catholic church recently built in Qatar is a good example of how this is handled.

According to a March 2007 Al Jazeera story about the construction of a Catholic church: "Although the country's native inhabitants are entirely Muslim -- and are prohibited by law from converting to another faith -- the new Catholic church will cater to the large number of Christian migrants who have come to the Arabia Gulf state in search of work."

Archbishop Paul Hinder, the Catholic Church's Bishop of Arabia, explained in the story that he oversees churches in Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and even in Saudi Arabia, "the birthplace of Islam, where Christianity is practiced behind closed doors." On the Christian communities in Saudi Arabia, Hinder clarified: "It's not an open church. Privately the Christians may gather in their houses in a very discreet manner."

We think Graham erred when he said that in most Muslim countries, "We can't have a church. We're not able to build synagogues. It's forbidden." That's demonstrably false. The construction of churches is not forbidden in most Muslim countries, only Saudi Arabia. And so, on balance, we rate Graham's comment False.