Students delight in food, music and history during New Orleans trip

Before they landed in New Orleans, Dr. Jack Sullivan told his students to be prepared to sing.

Sullivan, the director of Rider University’s American Studies program, has led a yearly trip to the Crescent City for the past 25 years, giving students a highly informed tour of the historical, cultural and gastronomical delights of a city overflowing with them.

Over the years, it has become a tradition for Sullivan to arrange for students to hop on stage and perform with professional musicians entertaining the crowds in popular clubs and restaurants throughout New Orleans.

On three separate nights, Jessica Stanislawczyk ’16, a Westminster Choir College senior voice major from South Brunswick, N.J., grabbed the microphone to sing backed by professionals with international reputations. One night, she joined Kermit Ruffins, the trumpeter and standard bearer of New Orleans culture and tradition, and the Barbecue Swingers to sing at The Little Gem (where Louis Armstrong appeared in 1904) to sing “Misty,” the jazz staple that was heard regularly in the repertoires of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Frank Sinatra.

“I found it pretty nerve-wracking, but once I got going, it was exhilarating,” says Stanislawczyk, one of 14 students on this year’s trip — two of whom, Cassie Anderson ’16 and Amanda Agnew ’16, also had the opportunity to perform on stage.

Sullivan has been leading the trip since 1990, missing only one year because he was leading a Rider student group to Greece. The trip normally takes place over winter break in January and is associated with a special topics in American Studies course, which follows in the spring. Students are required to write four papers that combine the primary research conducted during the trip with analysis and reflection on their personal experiences. 

“It provides the perfect American Studies experience,” Sullivan says. “It is fundamentally a trip about music, but it’s completely multidisciplinary and has evolved into more of a cuisine experience.”

Sullivan has cultivated a network of friends and acquaintances in New Orleans who help enrich the students’ experiences. Antoine’s, in the French Quarter, has been serving Louisiana Creole food since 1840, making it the oldest family-run restaurant in the U.S. Through a connection, Sullivan arranges for a special price for the students to eat there. “The history of the French Quarter is embodied in that restaurant,” Sullivan says, “but it never occurred to me that we could eat there. Now, we spend most of the day at Antoine's.”

Other restaurant owners are similarly generous, and traditions build each year Sullivan visits. At Galatoire's, on Bourbon Street, Sullivan and his students have been served for years by the same waiter, who provides them with an ideal experience of traditional French Creole cuisine. (“I have dreams about Galatoire's,” Sullivan says.) Other friendships deepen. Ruffins was one of the first New Orleans regulars to embrace Sullivan, encouraging him to send Westminster students on stage.

Learning about the history of jazz was a major draw for Stanislawczyk, who studies classical music at Westminster, to enroll in the trip. “I always liked jazz but never listened to it a lot,” she says. “I knew there would be jazz everywhere in New Orleans and that’s what got me interested.”

In addition to Kermit Ruffins, students took in performances of Grammy Award-winner Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band and Germaine Bazzle, whom Sullivan describes as one of the last old-New Orleans jazz singers, and many others. “For the students, a lot of them do experience traditional jazz for the first time, and a lot get hooked,” Sullivan says.

Of course, the music of New Orleans encompasses zydeco, Cajun music and many other influences in addition to jazz, and Sullivan tries to expose students to the nooks and crannies of the city’s musical culture. Last year, he brought them to a performance by the Pinettes, the only all-female brass band in the country, he says. The city also has a great opera tradition. “It’s the only place in the country that has a significant French opera history,” Sullivan says. “That blows the minds of the Westminster students.”  

Sullivan’s repeated trips to New Orleans have led to a new book, New Orleans: America's Musical Star, set to be published by the University Press, Mississippi. The book is an analysis of the current music scene based on interviews with New Orleans musicians, many of whom Sullivan has developed relationships with through the trip. Jon Batiste, the Louisiana-born bandleader who directs the band for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, wrote the book’s introduction. Sullivan has written six other books, the most recent on the music of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, Hitchcock's Music (Yale University Press, 2006).

In addition to destinations centered on the city’s music and food, Sullivan shares other culturally important sites and rituals — some that are off the beaten path or normally restricted to locals. Sullivan has entered his students into second line parades (part of traditional brass band parades) and enjoyed neighborhood barbecues with New Orleans residents. “I try to find activities that tourists don’t necessarily do,” Sullivan says.  

“Jack was the perfect guide,” says Stanislawczyk, whose other experiences traveling as a student include a trip to England with the school choir Williamson Voices. “He was totally in his element, extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic to share what he knows with students.”

The trip has been powerful enough that at least three students who took it wound up moving to New Orleans to live full time after graduation.

“New Orleans is a uniquely exciting city,” Sullivan says. “It’s a celebratory culture. There’s always a sense of ‘let the good times roll’ — that life is to be enjoyed to its fullest. People are there because they want to be there. There’s a kind of life force and electricity in New Orleans that you can’t experience anywhere else. It’s an inspiration to the students.”