By Pru Sowers
Tue Oct 06, 2009, 12:00 PM EDT
PROVINCETOWN - Now that the chill winds have settled in again, many part-time residents are preparing to leave for a variety of locales and activities. But Bethany Bultman is going back to what seems like an almost insurmountable challenge that doubles as her passion: operating a health clinic for the uninsured jazz music community in New Orleans.
Bultman is the daughter-in-law of artists and long-time Provincetown residents Jeanne and Fritz Bultman. Jeanne died last December, while Fritz, a well-known abstract expressionist, died in 1985. Both were instrumental in the founding of the Fine Arts Work Center, and Jeanne was an advocate for the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore. That creative and political passion was passed on to their son Johann, the founder of the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic (NOMC), who along with Bethany currently runs the health care organization.
Despite the popularity of jazz around the world, the music community in New Orleans is in danger of dying out simply because most of the professional musicians live on the edge of poverty. The reason is partly because of racism, Bultman said, and partly because the dark and smoky bar atmosphere associated with jazz music rarely commands lucrative gigs and record contracts.
“New Orleans is the birthplace of America’s only indigenous art form — jazz,” she said. “But 90 percent of [jazz musicians] live on less than $15,000 a year and that’s usually for a family of four. I would interview a jazz legend who I adored and find out they had no fresh food because there was no door on their refrigerator, so they lived on fast food.”
Living at or below the poverty level means there is usually no money for doctors and medicine, much less health insurance. That’s where the musicians’ clinic comes in. Anyone in the New Orleans music community – a musician, a soundman, the bartender in a jazz club and their dependents over the age of 17 – can go to the clinic. Over 1,800 patients come for health care which, for a $10 fee, can range from routine examinations to drug prescriptions to surgery. The services are provided by a small staff and a large group of volunteer providers who are tapped when their specialty is needed. The medical departments of Louisiana State University and Tulane Medical School also help in the unique healthcare partnership. And that is helping the local music community stay alive. Bultman talks about the stories she would research as a writer in which a jazz legend would die young of something that could have been cured.
“It was death by lifestyle. And I’m not talking sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. It’s eating fried chicken every day and drinking five bourbon and cokes. I was so sickened by writing the same story over and over again,” she said. “On top of that, many have work-related health issues. A lot of musicians haven’t gone to a dentist since they were little. If you lose your tooth and you’re a professional horn player, you lose your profession.”
The clinic opened in 1998, and its health model aims not only to heal physical illnesses but also “wounds caused by bias, poverty, prejudice and indifference.” That mission has been particularly difficult since Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, decimating the town, families, the music community and the NOMC.
“We lost everything. Louisiana State University couldn’t donate health services anymore. They had whole departments that didn’t come back. And musicians wanted to come back but they couldn’t without health care. They didn’t want to live in Houston. They wanted to be in their city, with their band, playing their music. But the jobs have not come back. Tourism hasn’t rebounded,” said Bultman.
And if Katrina wasn’t enough, the NOMC is facing what may be its most significant challenge. The three-year federal grant that keeps it afloat is set to run out next September and there are no plans by the current administration to renew the program. As a result, Bultman is spending her days pounding the Internet pavement in search of new sources of grant funding, a time-consuming and exhausting pursuit. That’s one reason she is in Provincetown this fall, to carve out some quiet time to focus on raising money.
“The problem we’re facing is the third installment [of the grant] is far less and we have far more patients. And they’re sicker because we’ve become their medical provider. We’re taking austerity measures now. We will survive, but at what level we will survive we don’t know,” she said.
One possible casualty of the funding crisis is an innovative program offered by the NOMC. Post-Katrina, an offshoot of the clinic, the New Orleans Musicians Assistance Foundation, has tried to keep the music alive by funding music gigs for its patients. Through a series of grants made to local non-profit organizations, money is given to hire a band for events such as a farmers’ market or a homeless center lunch. Each band member is paid $100 per gig and while it is not enough to live on, it does keep them playing.
“It’s keeping this music alive,” she said. “It gives people something to look forward to.”
But the grant program may have to be cut if the clinic can’t find new sources of funding for its $2 million annual budget. Their private donors have just about dried up, Bultman said; hence her current effort to write grants in the solitude of Provincetown, a place she has visited since 1973.
“We think, really, music is a calling,” she said, explaining why she and her husband are not giving up. “Art is a calling. ”
Pru Sowers can be reached at psowers@provincetownbanner.com