The first time I nestled into a comfy corner of the sofa to watch the television show, Treme, I have to admit, I didn’t get it. I didn’t connect with the show or the characters. And I’m not proud of the fact. But then all that changed one windy, still very chilly March when I visited the city of New Orleans for the first time.
As authors, we invest a significant amount of time into our research and I’m no exception. Books, interviews with locals, movies – all of these resources provide invaluable information that we use to construct our fictional worlds. But I’m of the mind that says when you have an opportunity to visit a location in person, take it. Because in my case, being there made all the difference.
A few too many beignets later, I returned home and also to the television show. The second time, as the saying goes, was the charm. This time when I watched, it was as if a gauze had been lifted. Everything suddenly made since. Bucking the streaming trend, I took my time, watching an episode a week, using that time in between to let everything I’d seen marinate. To let my subconscious take that raw material and process it.
This isn’t to say that the series was perfect. I’ve read accounts by residents born and raised in New Orleans that on are both sides of the critical fence: some believe the depiction flawed while some on the opposite end think everything was spot on. As an outsider, an observer, I don’t feel that it is my place to put a stake in the ground either way. But what I can do is to credit the show for how it helped inform my writing.
I’m a writer who takes her time with an idea. What starts as a seed, planted into the fertile ground of my subconscious, often takes months, sometimes years to bear fruit. So, it comes as no surprise, that I got the idea for the Mambo Reina series long before I wrote one word or developed one character. And Treme had a lot to do with that.
What follows isn’t a declaration of love or hate for the show, nor a detailed analysis, I’ll leave that to other fans and critics. This is however, a recounting of how certain aspects of the show led me to do further, deeper research. All in an attempt to lend every ounce of authenticity I could to the narrative.
The Setting – Post Katrina
The television series starts in the months following Hurricane Katrina and focuses on the rebuilding of New Orleans as told through the lives of a varied cast of characters. It’s tough to watch at times, but I think it was important for the country to see. The series also did a phenomenal job of emphasizing the fact that the storm didn’t cause much of the damage, the levee failures did. This directly informed a scene in The Foreign Exchange where the main character comes face-to-face with those waters.
I knew that I wanted my story to showcase some of the after effects of the storm, but decided to set it a decade later, as I felt that setting it too close to the storm would overshadow the case. The focus had to be on the murder and my protagonist’s journey to becoming a detective.
Additionally, there is the aspect of what happened to her mother during the aftermath. I needed distance in order to play up that plot element. Though fictionalized, some of the damage done by the levee breach are still there, but I reimagined the setting to be that of a city where certain areas had rebounded and others were still rebuilding.
The Soundtrack
By some accounts, jazz was born out of the drumming from Voodoo rituals and celebrations where the enslaved were allowed to dance and play music, that took place in Congo Square. That makes New Orleans, and more specifically, Treme, the birthplace of one of the country’s most unique forms of music. Because of what I learned about that gathering place, now within the boundaries of Louis Armstrong Park, I decided to set an important scene in the novel there.
And the series did an excellent job of highlighting that history right alongside present-day jazz icons. From the cameos by trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and trombonist, Trombone Shorty, there was never a shortage of local musicians making an appearance. In fact, the mural outside of The Mother In Law lounge where Ruffins performs, inspired the look and feel of the outside of a bar in the novel.
The City as a Character
Culturally, New Orleans boasts an eclectic hybrid of African-American, French and Spanish influences. And Treme is the oldest African American neighborhood in the country. It’s a place rich in history. There was no doubt that this would be the part of the city that my main character called home.
From the series, I got to see parades, one of the characters (Clarke Peters), was a Big Chief. In one scene, he dresses up in costume and goes looking for one another member of his group. It was done and shot beautifully. That bit provided a bit of history to the storyline of one of my characters.
Bonus points on Character:
For my money, the performances are where Treme really shined. Some of the characters that had the greatest impact for me were: Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce) LaDonna Batiste-Williams (Khandi Alexander), and Albert “Big Chief” Lambreaux (Clarke Peters).
From Antoine came one on my character’s wry sense of humor. His ex-wife, LaDonna’s grit and spirit went to another–my heroine’s friend and sidekick. And it was the Big Chief’s single-minded determination that inspired quite a few others.
There’s so much that went into the development of my Mambo Reina series and I’m glad to say that David Simon’s Treme was a big part of it. I like to imagine that those who read the novels will smile inwardly when they see the nods to the show.
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