Kyle DeCoste

Kyle DeCoste is a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at Columbia University. He holds a B.A. in Music from Bishop’s University and an M.A. in musicology from Tulane University. In his previous research, he worked with the all-female Original Pinettes Brass Band to understand the workings of gender in the brass band scene using a Black feminist framework.

The Stooges Brass Band has earned their rank as one of the elite brass bands in New Orleans. The band aims to delight audiences with a mix of traditional New Orleans brass sounds, contemporary jazz, and hip-hop beats. They’ve released two full-length albums, It’s About Time (2003) and Thursday Night House Party (2016), as well as the vinyl-only release, Street Music (2013). In addition to keeping an active second line schedule, they frequently tour domestically and internationally, appearing at gigs in places as varied as Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tokyo, Scotland, and Canada.

Research

Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game is a book project collaboratively conceived and written by the Stooges Brass Band and ethnomusicologist Kyle DeCoste. Through ethnographic vignettes, co-written texts, and dialogue with past and present band members of the Stooges, the book seeks to provide critical insight into the past twenty years of the New Orleans’s brass band scene, illuminating the struggles, joys, and fraternal relationships forged and fortified by musicians working to make a living playing music locally and abroad. The book aims to provide not only a narrative of the brass band scene in which the Stooges have been enmeshed for over two decades, but also dialogue about broader social issues including racial profiling and policing; the intersections of social class and musical genre; music education; masculinity; and music as labor.

Can’t Be Faded takes the form of a collaborative ethnography, a methodological model notably explored by New Orleans’s own Neighborhood Story Project (i.e., Barnes and Breunlin 2014; Breunlin, Lewis, and Regis 2009; Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club 2009). This methodological approach can be considered an intervention not only in doing fieldwork, but also in writing ethnographies. In this book’s collaborative model, the Stooges are not only the “subjects” of the writing, but are also active participants in the writing process from the editing stage through to contractual agreements with the press. Through both its methodology and content, Can’t Be Faded highlights the voices of musicians as authorities on their own experiences.