The flavor of Louisiana

You wake up at Narita International, ears still clogged. You yawn in a car, but your eyes, filled with novelty, are peeled. You lie down in a hotel room 7,000 miles from home. You flip through channels on the TV, blinking away hours of jet lag and a series of indecipherably aggressive clips for products unknown. Arnold Schwarzenegger comes on to sell energy drinks, then more ads in Japanese.

Just as culture shock threatens to set in, you feel the boom-ducka-boom of a second line beat. You see the French Quarter. You hear grand promises of bounty in the Big Easy. You can almost smell Café du Monde.

This TV spot is as much of Louisiana as most outsiders will get. To them, it is wholly exotic, like a bustling Tokyo street market must seem to Henry Turner Jr.

In 2004, not long after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Baton Rouge-born bandleader found himself in Japan on an official Morale, Welfare and Recreation Tour of U.S. military facilities with his reggae soul outfit the Flavor. He was watching television in his Negishi hotel room when a simple tourism commercial for New Orleans lit the spark on a long-gestating idea.

“I thought, ‘Hell, we’re selling the wrong thing,’” Turner says. “I started putting Louisiana before the band. We became Louisiana reggae soul.”

But Turner’s realigned focus was not to be in name only. Recalling the necessity of individuality he learned as a young soul singer competing for airtime on the few hundred black urban-centered radio stations in the country, the rabid reactions to the savory red beans and rice he would cook for friends and hosts on the road, and the far-flung popularity the half-dozen artists on his own Hit City Digital Records enjoy, Turner decided on that day in Japan to bring a piece of Louisiana to those hungry for it.

After funding-related delays and diversions, the first Ultimate Louisiana Party was born last summer with help from Turner’s Oregon-based promoter Johnny Midnite.

Kitsch is king at an Ultimate Louisiana Party, where Mardi Gras beads are jewels. Whether his band has taken over a restaurant, some warm corner of an outdoor festival or a patron’s backyard, strings of the popular carnival necklaces color the landscape. The music and the cuisine are the main magnets, though, especially in the spice-starved Northwest. Using Tony Chachere’s, Tabasco and other local ingredients, Turner blackens catfish, whips up skillet cornbread, and of course, cooks red beans and rice from his mother’s family recipe.

Turner used to cook the dish in bed and breakfasts, hostels and friends’ houses—wherever the band stayed—and when word got around, everyone requested it for the Louisiana-themed menu.

“When you grow up in Louisiana, there’s a buffet effect,” says Turner, who now spends winters off the road in Baton Rouge writing and recording new material. “Our music and our food is so second-nature, we don’t even think about it. Some people enjoy it, and others ignore it, because it can become overwhelming. But there are people all over the world really seeking it out. In these places that don’t have red beans and rice, they go crazy for it.”

Midnite says Turner’s parties are more than concerts. They are a celebration of our unique part of the world.

“The food and the atmosphere they create goes a long way to setting a mood that goes beyond just listening to music,” Midnite says.

But one thing party-goers will not find is any note of a traditional Louisiana song. No “You Are My Sunshine.” No “Mardi Gras Mambo.”

Turner and his band fill two-hour sets with all original songs, a unique blend of smoothed-over funk and Southern-inspired reggae soul. It sounds like a slanted reflection of Bob Marley’s rock’n’roll-influenced reggae rhythms and has earned old and new prime placement in recent episodes of NBC’s Chuck, CW’s Supernatural and ABC Family’s Lincoln Heights.

“I grew up an R&B guy listening to the Commodores and the Bar-Kays, but even back then we were skankin’ and putting reggae rhythms and imitating Jamaican lyrics on top,” Turner says. “What Marley did was try to Americanize his vocals and put American rock guitar over island rhythms. We’re just the opposite, but it almost comes out the same.”

From the jump and jive of “I’m So Hot,” the breezy unity prayer of “Come Together as One” or the washboard-scrubbed groove of “Louisiana Funk,” Henry Turner Jr. and the Flavor export sounds both traditional and fresh as self-appointed ambassadors of Louisiana culture. The most recent Ultimate Louisiana Party was held last month in Pomona, Calif.

“These people in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, they love it,” Turner says. “And I’m a firm believer that whatever works, don’t stop.” henryturnerjr.com