Sneak Peek: Exclusive Preview from HBO’s Treme, Season Three (video)

At the outset of Season 3 of the HBO series Treme Antoine Batiste is rushing to attend a second line in memory of New Birth Brass Band tuba player Kerwin James in 2007, a little more than two years after Katrina. He arrives in the Treme neighborhood to find Glen David Andrews leading a vast array of brass band musicians in the funeral march standard “I’ll Fly Away” when police cars surround the celebrants and tell them to disperse. It’s a chilling moment in New Orleans history that actually occurred. The police tell Andrews that there are noise complaints, and he immediately lowers his trombone and continues singing “I’ll Fly Away,” getting right in the cop’s face. His anger and defiance is real beyond anything an actor can produce. It’s the look of a man fighting to defend his family and friends against a final insult so total as to nullify his very existence, something beyond even death. Finally Andrews is dragged off by the cops and the scene ends. [via OffBeat]