On a recent Saturday trip to Chinatown we crossed paths with a brass band playing on the side of the street, a litter of paper swirling on the pavement around them. It was the Green Street Mortuary Band, finishing their accompaniment of a morning funeral procession. The band’s modern incarnation is part of a long history of Chinese-American funeral tradition in San Francisco (of which I knew only a little before going down this internet rabbit hole).
Guiding Our Dead, Saving our Spirit: The Cost of Being Chinatown’s Mortuary Band
Dignity, Honor, Respect - A Spirit’s Last Journey with the Green Street Mortuary Band