Who Dat – various artists CD

Who Dat: New Orleans Party Songs is a collection of upbeat New Orleans party songs, at least on the surface. It’s also a thinly veiled set of funky second line chants in support of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints football team. But that’s not all. It’s also an exploration of the utilitarian street use of that old chestnut spiritual “When the Saints Go Marching In,” which is deconstructed and reconfigured here in all sorts of ways. The “Who Dat” chant has deep New Orleans jazz roots, and became the rough template for the “Who Dey” chant that fans of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals adopted in 1981. The chant was further popularized as “Who Dat” by Louisiana State University football fans a year later, and by Saints fans the year after that. While all of that is somewhat interesting, what makes this a very special cultural phenomenon is the hijacking of “When the Saints Go Marching In” into the equation, and the result is a pretty cool and funky set of jazzy chants that carries a ton of New Orleans DNA in its veins, and while it may be about a football team on the surface, there’s 200 years of musical history bubbling just beneath. With all that said, this set is darn near irresistible, regardless of where one stands on the merits of saints marching in or running a quarterback draw on third and long. Released in 2006, 13 tracks.