......and the band played on

I just heard a piece on NPR about New Orleans music. Its worth repeating. The music we hear cascading from open doors in the French Quarter has its origins in the neighborhoods of the city. For over a century, generations of music students have been nurtured and developed by the unique culture of New Orleans. Young people learned the music from a tradition of neighborhood marching bands, school music programs and informal mentoring. Kids on their way to the bus stop played their instruments as they walked. Impromptu bands formed and dissolved and formed again. Musicians were (and are) respected and valued. Miles of homes housed young musicians. Now those homes are empty and the school buses are mostly parked.

There is a great effort to rebuild the music culture of New Orleans. There is a keen awareness of this loss of our culture. We thought the long and honored tradition of passing our music down from one generation to the next was a sturdy rope of behaviors and beliefs. Katrina showed us it was a thread, not a rope. Life is more fragile than we knew.

We do indeed "know what it means to miss New Orleans".