New Wave Brass Band

New Orleans, Louisiana — Oscar Washington's traditional-jazz brass band

Oscar Washington's New Wave Brass Band carries the torch of the traditional New Orleans brass band — parade horns, rolling snare, and second-line rhythms in the classic style. Their 1999 GHB Records release Life Styles in Traditional Jazz runs the full repertoire, from “Bourbon St.” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” to gospel medleys and Mardi Gras numbers, led by Washington's snare drum and vocals alongside a lineup heavy with the musical Paulin family.

Why We Love New Wave Brass Band

New Wave Brass Band is the sound of New Orleans doing what it has always done: horns on the street, drums underneath, everybody moving. Oscar Washington's outfit keeps the traditional book — the hymns, the marches, the Mardi Gras standards — with a family-band warmth that comes from a lineup stacked with Paulins. In a city where brass bands keep reinventing themselves, there's something deeply reassuring about a band that holds the center. This is the tradition, played straight and played right.

Biography

Holding the Traditional Line

Oscar Washington's New Wave Brass Band is a working New Orleans brass band in the traditional mold: trumpet, trombones, clarinet, tenor sax, tuba, and a snare-and-bass-drum battery, all of it in service of the classic repertoire — second lines, jazz funerals, Mardi Gras, and the parade route. Washington leads from the snare drum, singing and driving the band in the old style.

Their calling card is Life Styles in Traditional Jazz, released in 1999 on GHB Records and still available through the Louisiana Music Factory. The twelve tracks read like a greatest-hits of the tradition: “Wolverine Blues,” “Bourbon St.,” “St. Louis Blues,” a gospel medley, “I Found a New Baby,” and the inevitable, irresistible “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The personnel tells its own story — six members of the Paulin family alongside leader Oscar Washington and tuba man Ronell Johnson — a band built like a family and playing like one.

Keeping the traditional book — the hymns, the marches, the Mardi Gras standards — with a family-band warmth.

— NOLA Music

The band remains part of the fabric of the city's traditional music scene, appearing alongside fellow keepers of the flame — the Tremé Brass Band, the Original Royal Players, the Storyville Stompers — at events like the Neighborhood Story Project's Talk That Music Talk book celebration at the Old U.S. Mint. For bookers and fans alike, New Wave is a direct line to the sound that started it all.