You can’t move.Not when the Michael Foster Project starts to play.
Michael Foster begins tapping his foot and blowing on his sousaphone. Then John Gray comes in with his trumpet, and you’re entranced. Gray turns the trumpet into a true work of art. No one moves at first when he plays, not even to dance, for fear that they’ll miss a single one of his brilliant notes.
Then the rest of the band joins into the song, and it’s dance time. The sousaphone, the trumpet, the sax and the drums are flowing as one instrument, in harmony. It’s a beautiful sound.
Michael Foster plays the sousaphone during an early July performance.The band prepares to launch into another song.
The dim light of The Roux House sets up a perfect atmosphere for the multi-genre band’s music. When passersby hear them from outside The Roux House, they stop where they are—then they come in.
The Roux House is overflowing with people of all ages, races, sexes and ethnic backgrounds helping themselves to the big pots of Café Americain red beans and rice, drinking at the bar and clapping along—worshiping at the altar of jazz.
It’s rare these days that Foster performs at Red Beans and Rice Mondays, an event he created two years ago. He likes to let other local artists shine, ideally having a different artist perform every Monday. But for this one night in early July, it truly was Michael Foster Presents: Red Beans and Rice Mondays.
“This is for the city of Baton Rouge to be able to enjoy something promoting Louisiana culture every week at the same time,” Foster says. “Every Monday you can come down and get a free meal that is great Louisiana cuisine and free, great live Louisiana music.”
In addition to different performers each week, a different local restaurant makes the beans every Monday as well, Foster says. When the event first began in 2014, Foster and his band—which originally formed in 1992 and has toured the world together—played every Monday, and he cooked all the beans himself. Luckily, he says, since the event has taken off so much and he has outsourced cooking, he no longer has to transport large vats of food in his truck and risk spilling everywhere.
Foster is intent on proving jazz is as essential to Baton Rouge as it is to New Orleans. That’s the true meaning of Red Beans and Rice Mondays: giving back to the community through the art form he and his band love most.
“It’s my baby; I did create it, but it doesn’t belong to me,” Foster says. “It belongs to the city.”
Red Beans and Rice Mondays have become a tradition at The Roux House. Foster says each night, they give out pounds and pounds of beans, hardly having any food left over. When there are beans left over, though, Foster and his band go out and feed the homeless with it.
“The idea is to keep a cycle going,” he says. “Have something nice for the community like this event, then we take donations from it and go out to schools and give away keyboards and other instruments with the money, touch these kids’ lives with music, and hopefully they’ll come to love the arts and give back to the community.”
Foster hopes that his “baby” long outlives him—spreading his message that jazz and red beans and rice are native arts to be celebrated and protected. From the look of the crowd one night at Red Beans and Rice Mondays, it appears his message has been both heard and felt.
Food and tunes
Red Beans and Rice Mondays, presented by Michael Foster Project, takes place every Monday starting at 7 p.m. at Roux House on Third Street downtown. facebook.com/redbeanmondays
Fittingly, the tip jar is a giant pot not unlike the ones used to cook the red beans and rice for the weekly show.
