The first weekend of the first annual Zeitgeist Creative Music Festival exploded into life on Friday with sets by Nick Sanzenbach, Unit One and Children of the Sun. The highlight for me was the Children of the Sun set: Michael Ray, Carl Leblanc, Mikiel Williams and Shiek Rashied were joined by Sanzenbach & Jimbo Walsh in a set of Sun Ra standards: "Space is the Place," "El is the Sound of Joy," "Enlightenment" and others. The house was packed to standing room with people drifting in until almost the close of the evening. While as expected, the evening began with sparse crowds, listeners kept coming, including Zeitgeist faithful and the hoped-for spillover from the big festival across town. For only $5 admission it was the best music bargain in the city. Next door, at Ashe Cultural Center, generous plates of red beans & rice, potato salad, barbecued chicken and fried catfish with vegetarian gumbo were available for $3 and $5.

Saturday brought Latin music to the theater with Blake Amos and Saudade, Patrice Fisher and Arpa with Duo Calibri, and Chiko & Rogerio. Blake's danceable Brazilian beats preceded a mixed bag of folkloric and Latin pop styles from Duo Calibri; Arpa presented an array of harp-based folk and jazz that segued neatly into collaboration with the Latin musicians. Sunday brought a return to distinctive improvised jazz with Jac3, from Memphis, Cambre/Landnes, the Improvisational Arts Council, and Contra Contra Bass. While I had to miss the first two sets because of a rehearsal, I heard that the first band performed improvisations ("free bop") with John Coltrane's late period as a point of departure. Cambre/Landres, the guitar/drums duo of Rob Cambre and Endre Landnes, is a familiar act at Zeitgeist. Rob Cambre is responsible for producing a good deal of the new music shows now available in New Orleans and his indefatigable energy, in the face of great odds, has got to be applauded. Landnes is a monster drummer whose name should become as familiar to listeners as other young players like Quintology's Mark di Florio. Contra Contra Bass, a trio of acoustic and electric bass players, showed with humor and theatricality how many sounds can be wrung out of that staid member of the jazz rhythm section. They got some pretty strange noises out of duck calls, chopsticks, and even their bows and instrument cases, too.

The Improvisational Arts Council, led by festival organizer Janna Saslaw on flute, played an amazingly tight set of improvisation, some sections even having a composed feel. Over a plate of food at Ashe, someone asked incredulously if the group had ever played together before, feeling that the music was sheer chaos, but I disagreed. A piece might evolve out of a three way set of conversations between pairs of instruments, but will snap suddenly into a groove. Sometimes it just takes a little listening to discern the coherences of even the strangest combinations of sounds. It's easy to forget that Coltrane's mid-Sixties music, for instance, the monumental "Ascension," or Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" could once, and still do, drive some listeners out of the room. Poet Diane di Prima recalls in her memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman that, during a brief period of retreat to her family's house in the early Sixties, she often cleared the living room in order to write by putting on Ornette's music and waiting a few minutes. New movements in art-and here we're talking about a "new" music that's already 40 years old-needs a curious audience, one that is willing to listen and think, and not simply receive the familiar song structures of popular music or conventional jazz. People who berated Eric Dolphy, Coleman, and Coltrane for their departures might still feel this music doesn't swing or lacks a grounding in the blues and therefore isn't jazz. There are those who believed (and maybe still do) that Sun Ra was a charlatan. But to put a cap on the imagination is to close off invention and squash change in art. And without change there just isn't any art, only reproduction of expected standards of behavior, musical conformism, and commodity exchange.

People who have resisted following Zeitgeist to its home at 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. and those who have never heard of the place are missing something good. As a "multi-disciplinary art center" the theater, under its visionary director, Rene Broussard, is sponsoring truly modern music-the kind they say doesn't exist in New Orleans-making it available to crowds who can't find it at Jazz Fest. Those who mourn the lessened concentration on film at Broussard's house should appreciate the fact that music, performance art, poetry, and dance have kept the place afloat when film alone could not. They should come out in droves to hear this great music, and come back when films return on weekends after the Creative Music Festival ends on Sunday May 6.

Call 525-2767 for details or visit www.crosswinds.net/~zte.

Monday's offerings bring LA Monster (funk from D.C.) Afroskull; Antijazz; Andrew McLean's Tabla for 4; Mahfouz (Middle Eastern fusion) and Armand L'Ensemble. Tuesday presents the flute trio Ear Floss Ensemble; drum master Johnny Vidacovich; the Albert/Ankrum Project; poetry/jazz improv with the Frank Zappatistas, collaborating with Happensdance Modern Dance Company; and the seminal New Orleans improv group 3Now4 led by James Singleton of Astral Project.

Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. (@ felicity) (504) 525-2767

The Zeitgeist Creative Music Festival is co-presented by Anxious Sounds, Ashe Cultural Arts Center, Barrister's Gallery, Café Reconcile, the Improvisational Arts Council, OffBeat Magazine, and Zeitgeist.

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