Each spring we honor one of the men who put New Iberia on the map, a man who proudly called his home New Iberia.

Soon, this community will have the opportunity to see a play written about him. I, for one, can’t wait because I have read and heard so much over the past four decades about the legendary jazz musician William G. “Bunk” Johnson.

A playwright was chosen late this spring to write the story about the life of the jazz musician, a trumpeter who died in 1949. The Shadows-on-the-Teche, where Johnson sometimes worked as a yardman when he wasn’t playing the trumpet, partnered with the Bunk Johnson Jazz, Arts and Heritage Festival, city of New Iberia and its Main Street Program and the Iberia Parish Library to get the ball rolling on this great endeavor.

The play is being funded by a grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Chosen to write the musician’s story was Ifa Bayeza of Annhurst, Massachusetts, a woman who has risen to the challenge after hearing about the project through her association at the Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University.

“Blending the telling of an African American story in a setting that took place in an area where there are Southern plantation sites … as a dramatist, that excites me,” Bayeza said in a story in today’s The Daily Iberian.

“I didn’t want it to be just a biography or just a list of the musicians he played with. As a dramatist, you want to explore his passion and his drive concerning the music and letting that be the force that propels the story.”

If all goes well, she said, the final draft for the theatrical performance will be finished before Sept. 15. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to see the cast of six on stage live this fall.

This is a win-win for the community, Shadows-on-the-Teche, Bayeza and, of course, Johnson, who wowed crowds from California to New York to New Orleans. 

 It’ll be one more way we recognize him and his importance to New Iberia.

DON SHOOPMAN

SENIOR NEWS editor