Northwest Louisiana Art Gallery: Ron Hardy AKA Tarumbae

For information on how to purchase a work of art, please contact the artist through the "e-mail" link, or contact the gallery at info@nwlaartgallery.com.

"Running Outta Time"

Featuring Lee Lee

4:05 1.99 MB mp3

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"Wake Up!"

Featuring Young Budd, Jakie Lewis & Rocko

3:56 2.34 MB mp3

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"Brothers of the War"

Featuring Young Budd

4:15 2.92 MB mp3

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Hawaii Underwater

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"Love Letter"

3:59 3.65 MB mp3

Album Art and layout by De Anna Michelle

Reaching for the Stars

Tree of Life

Moving Train

Sixth Sence

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"Boom By Yah"

3:05 2.83 MB mp3

Album Art and layout by De Anna Michelle

Feelings

Eyes

Smell

Sound

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"Reggae Got Soul"

3:56 3.63 MB wma

Album Art and layout by De Anna Michelle

Taste

Be Aware

"The Return"

4:03 3.71 MB mp3

"God Son of Funk"

3:13 2.95 MB mp3

Artist Statement

February 25, 2004

To use my natural talents and trained skills in sustaining my life needs and uplifting my community are my goals. I found a leash on life through the world of percussions. Sharing this beautiful relationship with others is a blessing and brings me joy. Percussions though simple in nature seem to intrigue even the most complicated minds.

Realizing that people are as different as we are in number; I encourage young and old to find their place in the music circle. I believe that music is a right and not a privilege. A family that sings and plays together, stays together. Through Playaz and Playettes, Inc. I have used a large amount of my time, resources, and talent to expose the joy of music to my community.

In conversation with Clarence “Gate-Mouth” Brown, I asked him did he play the blues? He quickly replied, ”Man, I play music.” This led me to an understanding of myself; because my musical repertoire is also wide open without definition. Performing, song writing, arranging, producing, teaching, consulting, and promoting music is my life.

Ron Hardy aka Tarumbae

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Ledbetter Heights bar reopens as performing arts venue

January 17, 2006

Ron Hardy, director of Playaz and Playettes, stands in front of H&H Lounge, which he now will manage under his nonprofit group. The lounge is now an alcohol-free, family-oriented environment and will begin programming on a weekly basis soon. (Jim Hudelson/The Times)

H&H Lounge's new hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Playaz and Playettes is seeking ideas for programming as well as membership support for $15 per month. Membership includes access to H&H Lounge, as well as to private parties and events. For more information, call (318) 424-9297 or visit playazandplayettes.org.

By Jennifer Flowers
jenniferflowers@gannett.com

The tired sign of H&H Lounge, worn by decades of sun, wind and rain, welcomes its patrons with a motto: "Where the Party People Play."

Bacchanalian gatherings undoubtedly have left their mark inside the dim lounge. Deep crevices in seats not fortunate enough to have been repaired by green carpet squares look like gashes in the crimson vinyl. The smell of cigarette smoke has attached itself stubbornly onto every inch of wall, floor and fabric, including the ripped felt on a water-stained pool table and a dingy zebra-print sofa. A string of flashing lights snake around the walls and vie for attention with bright streamers hanging from the ceiling, while cracked mirrors on a small stage reflect the interior with a foggy haze.

"This is our pride and joy," said Ron Hardy, H&H Lounge's operator. "It's a product of the environment of the people. We have a lot of love in here."

Like many old holes in the wall, the Ledbetter Heights lounge at 717 Hope St. is no pretty sight. But its value to the community for more than 40 years is part of what kept its doors open for so long.

The lounge that closed in August has reopened as an alcohol-free performing arts venue under the management of Playaz and Playettes, whose director, Hardy, has helped manage the venue over the past nine years. A stone's throw away from the Shreveport City Jail and next-door neighbors with the legendary Pete Harris Café, the decades-old watering hole has a reputation that has been marred by violent crime and delinquency. But it also is a long-established social scene for many members of the neighborhood who want to see its doors open again.

A new vision

Many who frequented the bar were particularly fond of the fact that they could get an entire pint of gin for $10. But the lounge's liquor license was not renewed when H&H Lounge reopened, and Hardy has no plans to pursue one. This makes the venue more accessible to youths in his nonprofit arts group, which was built from the profits of H&H Lounge and uses the performing arts to develop the decaying low-income district. Young people studying music production under the Playaz and Playettes' Urban Music Workshop, for example, can showcase their work on the 20-x-10-foot stage area, which contains an updated PA system and can accommodate 100 people.

Steve Morgan, a Ledbetter Heights rapper also known as Big Poppa, has been learning music production at the Playaz and Playettes since he was 16. Now that H&H Lounge is back open, it is one of the only neighborhood venues where he can showcase his music.

"It's a place where I can always go to and do something for my people, and so they can see me in action," Morgan, 22, said.

H&H's transformation into a performing arts venue is part of a neighborhood revitalization initiative called the Ledbetter Heights Historical Entertainment District. The idea began with Playaz and Playettes about a year and a half ago to revitalize the area by becoming an incubator that would help bring in businesses and culture with private funds encouraged by federal tax incentives.

Wayne Cameron, a Ledbetter Heights resident, sat with a friend outside a house near 717 Hope St. on a crisp January day before the bar opened last week. Had the H&H Lounge been open at that moment, he guessed he would be in there instead. For years, Cameron used the venue to catch up and talk politics with old friends while watching western films together.

Though Cameron enjoys the company of a drink along with his friends and the tube, he feels the alcohol-free policy might deter troublemakers. "It would keep down confusion," said the 51-year-old former bartender at H&H. "People drink and misunderstandings usually erupt when they drink. I drink and I'm not about trouble. But if that's going to be the policy, it's going to be great. Just don't put your hand on the TV and change it from the westerns."

A dark past

Many Shreveporters know the H&H Lounge as the site of past shootings, stabbings and fights. On one night in April 2004 it was raided and shut down by the Shreveport Fire Department because of fire code violations. It reopened soon after. On the Thursday night that it was raided, police cited 37 people for various reasons including inadequate identification, under-age drinking and possession of narcotics. One among those cited was a felon in possession of a firearm.

The H&H Lounge's new focus would invite less trouble, said Craig Trammell, kitchen manager of Pete Harris Café for the past 10 years. The Highland resident recalls the venue did not have a working telephone, which meant that when trouble was brewing at H&H, Pete Harris Café's phone line was used to call the police.

"It was pretty wild," Trammell said. "Someone was always getting shot or stabbed. It brought in a lot of customers because it was always packed and it stayed open late, but it was a dangerous spot. We look forward to it opening again as a different kind of business, a much more positive kind of a business."

Police reports connected to the lounge reflect neighborhood concern. Just after 2 a.m. on a February morning in 2000, a 22-year-old woman was shot in the head in front of the lounge in what the police said was a gang-related skirmish. Another shooting occurred at about the same time a year later. A 26-year-old Houston resident named Jonathan Bellamy was fatally shot by a man named Brion Woodward at the club in March 2004.

The former H&H Lounge had a reputation for causing problems in the inner city neighborhood, according to Kacee Hargrave, spokeswoman for the Shreveport Police Department. "With the old H&H Lounge being gone, I anticipate crime in that area to drop because you don't have a business like that causing the majority of the problem," Hargrave said. "I don't know what effect this new business is going to have. It's not going to be serving alcohol, but that doesn't mean you're not going to have potential for criminal activity there. It depends on the owner, and who he allows in his establishment."

Hardy ascribes the violence and drugs that have found their way to H&H Lounge to the neighborhood where it is located. The bullet holes that have bored their way through the dashboard of his green GMC truck are a somber reminder of the high crime rate in the neighborhood's Allendale and Lakeside police district, whose seven killings in 2005 ranked it among the highest homicide rates in the city.

But young musicians like Morgan and his 15-year-old cousin, Ledarius Morgan, who grew up there, say the high incidence of crime is just a part of everyday life in their neighborhood. "H&H has never been a dangerous place to me," said Morgan, who called the area by its derogatory nickname, the Bottoms. "I fit in with the vibe because everybody I'm around was raised up the same way, rough, ghetto, all kinds of stuff."

Rebuilding a reputation

The lounge is named after two of its operators, cousins John Hardy and Emmanuel Hardy, Ron Hardy's late father. Ron Hardy returned home to Shreveport in 1996 to help his second cousin operate the lounge. When Hardy first appeared on the scene, he brought in a younger crowd with music programming. After four years, his various music projects and his Playaz and Playettes across the street gave him less and less time to manage the venue. But when his second cousin passed away in May, Ron Hardy became sole operator of the venue and is in the process of acquiring ownership of the building.

Hardy, who had shifted his focus from the lounge to other projects until recently, feels confident that if he is at the helm again as a physical presence, he can keep trouble at bay.

"People felt safer when I was there," Hardy said. "You let them in if they're not acting right, but you watch them. I don't prejudge people. You give them a place, but you watch them."

Pam Atchison, executive director of the Shreveport Regional Arts Council, sees many challenges for Playaz and Playettes as it takes on the new performing arts venue. Like SRAC's artspace art facility downtown, she feels the venue's viability will rely on increased programming and support from city and state grants that are becoming more and more competitive. "They have to do more programming than they've ever done," Atchison said about the nonprofit arts group, which won a Governor's Arts Award for outstanding small arts organization in 2004. "They have to keep it animated and operate without those liquor sales."

But liquor never was a big money maker for H&H Lounge, which sold alcoholic beverages at a notoriously cheap price. It was the admission at the door for special events that brought in money. By continuing admission fees and, with some luck, landing future grants and private funding, Hardy is confident he will make ends meet.

And running a business in Ledbetter Heights is a matter of knowing how things work in the blighted neighborhood, whose members have very little but do what they can to support community efforts they believe in. It is simply how the neighborhood operates, even if Hardy must pay cash and forego a paper trail Playaz and Playettes could use as leverage when it seeks public funding. "This is how this area works, where people don't have much but we have everything," he said. "If we want to do it for the club, this is how we make it. We're not grandiose: we just make it work."

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©The Times

January 17, 2006