New Orleans is not only home to the richest musical culture in the US, it’s also served as a place where musicians from around the world have experienced massive personal breakthroughs.
Artists spanning a vast range of styles from Ray Charles to Ornette Coleman to Duane Allman have all acknowledged the city as the place that let them discover how deep their own music could go.
Here’s a band made up of folks born elsewhere who’ve found the city to be a sweet home indeed. The Panorama Brass Band playing Hugh Masekela’s …

The New Orleans Musicians Clinic describes the community it serves the following way:
“New Orleans musicians, tradition bearers, and their families.”
What are “tradition bearers?”
If you know New Orleans, you know that in addition to the city’s unique musical culture, the city also has social traditions – Mardi Gras Indian tribes, social aid and pleasure clubs, and other groups – that are not found anywhere else in America.
In this video, Chuck Perkins, the New Orleans-born poet whose work is featured at the end of the video on the SavetheClinic.org home page, …

A lot of people have inquired about the music at the very beginning of the Save the Clinic promo video.
Who is it? What CD is that from? Where can I get a copy?
There’s no CD and what you heard wasn’t recorded in a studio either.
It came from an informal backyard jam, or in this case a parking lot jam, led by Treme born singer and trombonist Glenn David Andrews.
No prep. No rehearsal. No score. Just a reverent jam on a Mardi Gras Indian chant.
Unfortunately, I don’t …

Kip McDonough 15 School for the Creative Arts celebrates Mardi Gras with its own parade
Today’s video illustrates an aspect of New Orleans’ musical culture that’s little known to people outside the city.
It’s this: New Orleans is one of the great centers of music education in the world.
In fact, the case can be made that the entire city is an open air Conservatory.
From generation to generation
One of the features that makes New Orleans so unique is how its music is passed down from generation to generation. …

The Treme Brass Band says good bye to a much-loved club
Treme Brass Band captured in this home video is featured in the new HBO series “Treme.”
Good call by the producers because it would be hard to pick a group that better embodies the city’s musical spirit.
The Treme Brass Band is a people’s band. You can find them providing music for funerals, parades, social and pleasure club second lines, and other community events all over the city. And every Wednesday night you can catch them and their friends at the …