First it was a CD, next the filming of an IMAX movie and then the real disaster.
One year before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blasted Louisiana’s coastline in the late summer of 2005, the state’s musicians sent out a joint SOS — “Save Our Swamps.” The CD showcases the talents of blues, rock, reggae, “swamp pop” and Cajun performers, all of whom earmarked profits from CD sales to Voice of the Wetlands (VOW).
Tab Benoit, a Louisiana bluesman and VOW’s founder, waxes poetic when talking about the state’s valuable wetlands.
“The bayou is a magical place where land and water live as one.”
His recording, “Fever for the Bayou,” is featured in “Hurricane on the Bayou,” an IMAX film currently showing at IMAX theaters around the nation.
Produced and distributed by MacGillivray Freedman Films and narrated by actress Meryl Streep, the movie takes viewers on a panoramic airboat ride through the vegetated bayou region, showcasing its beauty and fragility.
The film originally was called “Storm on the Bayou,” but the name was changed after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit in the middle of production. The hurricanes provided a graphic opportunity for the filmmakers to document the vulnerability of coastline communities after wetlands vanish into open water.
In the film, the marshy waters and its banks abound with sights and sounds to stir the senses and the soul — sunbathing alligators, smooth saxophonists, steamy Cajun cooking and graceful waterfowl in flight.
The documentary describes the wetlands loss in Louisiana’s Mississippi Delta region. Since the 1930s, more than 1.2 million acres of wetlands have vanished — more than 100 square miles as a result of the two major hurricanes alone.
Benoit, a 2007 Grammy nominee and one of four New Orleans’ musicians in the movie, invites viewers into his bayou-based lifestyle.
“I always said I wished someone would come along to wake up the world about the wetlands. Be careful what you wish for,” Benoit says as the camera pans the destruction.
While sitting in the pilot’s seat of his personal floatplane, Benoit soars above vanishing marshes. He describes the need to plant mangroves, rebuild dwindling islands and redirect the Mississippi River’s sediment. While it will take lots of time and resources upfront to do what he suggests, the payback will come in the form of less-costly storm damage, Benoit says.
“Good stewardship of the wetlands is good economics, too.”