The hurricane Katrina runs smack into the historical port city of New Orleans. The water wins out. It generally does. This is its nature.

The infrastructure and morale of the city take a tremendous hit. But the essence, its spirit, begins to rekindle. "Juju," a West African term for the spirit world, will carry this city through. It always has.

Ironically, if there's any city that could have taken the hit that it did, it is this one. Beyond the commercial veneer, violence, poverty and historical inequalities, New Orleans has been, still is and always will be a place of deep musical magic. Voodoo — in actuality, a transplanted West African transformational healing ceremony — isn't even a metaphor here. This is the underlying modus operandi.

This is my first post-Katrina visit. The occasion is attending the first of two extended weekends of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at the end of April. Economically and spiritually, the fest is New Orleans's Christmas season. I've lost count of how many I've been to.

However, this time my visit is not just about the music, but also about driving around the devastated neighborhoods and talking to people. My time here is about the worst and best of the forces of American culture.

Half the city has still not returned. Those home owners who have may not have not gotten enough insurance money to even clean up their backyards. And then, with insurance companies skyrocketing their rates, only the wealthy can afford the readjusted mortgages. Criminal.

The people — many black and much poorer than the average American — have taken a bad rap, both from the New Age left and the Christian right, as if they somehow deserved this. Hogwash. The drunken reputation of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras decadence veils the rich blending of African and European oral traditions that have made this city the foundation of our country's popular musical culture. In short, New Orleans music has liberated the hips (and trapped souls) of America.

The French Quarter, the original city, built above sea level, is where this magic began. Under French, then Spanish and finally American occupation, a strange blend of ethnic groups — Parisians and Spaniards, Acadians from Nova Scotia, transplanted Africans — began to form the gumbo that still permeates the culture and music.

What allowed this vibrant mixing of cultures was what was missing: the Protestant ethic that had colonially stripped cultures of their ritual core. Drums were banned throughout the States in fear of their power to revitalize the spirits of a repressed African culture. Not so here. Celebration remained a way of life. Slaves were permitted to gather weekly in song and dance at Congo Square, a vital link sustaining, in an American form, the pulse of Africa.

At the same time, many freed slaves arrived from the Caribbean, literally adding the rituals of voodoo into a mix that already included African dances such as the Bamboula and Calinda. Those still enslaved were permitted to marry and, as families, participate in this ceremonial activity. At its social pinnacle was a mixed-race Creole class made up of freed slaves, often the offspring of French slave owners and their black mistresses. The social hierarchy had been turned upside down. When the Americans began pouring in throughout the 1800s, New Orleanians couldn't help but think of them as crass and crudely undercultured. Under the whip of the American slavery system, however, many of these freedoms would soon be lost.

But everyone still knew in their hearts who were the true leaders of the community. The musicians were one mere twinkle of an eye away from the griot/storyteller/healer talents coursing in their African memories. That the original European colonizers were noticeably more unleashed than the Americans — after all, Carnival/Mardi Gras came from the French — only added more flame to this celebratory fire. As a result, New Orleans's 20th-century sounds — ragtime, jazz, blues, gospel, rhythm 'n' blues, rock 'n' roll — all had that extra syncopated spiritual something. The blues, Cajun and zydeco rural musics of the surrounding parishes were similarly affected.

My time this year actually doesn't start out so celebratory. With my traveling companion backing out at the last moment, I arrive in New Orleans unexpectedly alone. But then the magic — as this town seems to readily provide — starts to kick in. First, I recognize this guy hanging out at the House of Blues cantina where I've stopped in the Quarter for a bowl of gumbo. I say, "Tesuque Pueblo." He says, "Yup" and buys me a beer.

Having just landed that day, my intention is to call it an early night. It isn't to be. Angelique Kidjo, Africa's premier diva, happens to be playing at the House of Blues nightclub adjacent to the restaurant. Someone turns to me and asks if I would like a free ticket for the show. Ambivalence, aloneness cease. Still two days away, the spirit of the jazz festival has begun. This is the beginning of countless waves of an inner joyous weeping rippling through my nervous system, a bottomless well of cathartic camaraderie.

Before the show starts I talk with a striking, tall Creole woman, the first of many Katrina conversations with New Orleans locals. "I had no desire to come back," she explains. "But then it became apparent that as an artist, no other city would fill me the way New Orleans has. There are a lot of people fighting over a small amount of money to rebuild. But it's really those who returned to keep the creative soul going who are rebuilding this city."

Kidjo, an internationally renowned pop star, ignites the crowd. By the end of the show the stage is overflowing with dancers, an unbelievably sensuous array of movement that I've never seen any other state's stage come close to matching.

And then it happens. The visions of what New Orleans symbolically embodies for the planet start coming to me: Out of the apocalyptic waters, rebirth. Out of the sorrow and neglect, a kind of coming together that transcends money, time, culture, race. Empires, governments, Yankee dollars come and go. But there is some exotic kind of permanency that links human hearts with the communal expression that extraordinary music and dance induce. And, just think, I haven't even made it to the festival yet.

The full impact of Katrina's aftermath hits me the next morning. Waking up in an East New Orleans Motel 6, I ask where I can get some breakfast. I am told, "Nowhere — none of the restaurants have been rebuilt. You have to go back into town," accompanied by a look that says, "If you only knew what we have been through." When staying in the Quarter, and shuttling back and forth to the festival grounds, realities are a bit cloaked. But the heaviness is now readily apparent.

Forsaking food, I drive into the Ninth Ward, one of the poorest and hardest-hit neighborhoods, and also home of many of the city's talented musicians and parading social clubs. Countless houses are still boarded up, the notorious "X" inscribed on the doors indicating officials have checked the home to see who might be remaining, dead or alive. But then interspersed are brightly built new row homes, elevated on platforms should another flood come their way.

And then I see dozens of working bodies hammering away and buzzing about like drone bees — mostly young white folk. It turns out these are America's volunteers donating their time and labor for Habitat for Humanity's "Operation Home Delivery." Two of New Orleans's musical ambassadors, Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., have come together to help publicize public support for the project.

The inner weeping — inseparable tears of grief and joy — resumes. The government is off squandering its resources on a futile war in a foreign land, the insurance companies are looking out for maintaining their "bottom line," and all kinds of politicians and entrepreneurs are squabbling over the few contracts actually manifesting. But the most visible rebuilding I see is coming from people who aren't making a dime. Once again, the generous nature of the human spirit seeps through.

I have never quite understood the nature of the flood from press reports, and my continual conversations with locals reveal the fuller story. People seemed relieved to be able to share — a kind of post-traumatic stress release. The breaks in the levees varied from gradual to furious. One local resident describes the flooding from the 17th Street canal as the worst: "It was biblical — cars overturned, homes completely destroyed." And then, a block away, all might be intact because of its advantageous perch on slightly higher ground. Destruction is fickle.

By the time I arrive at the fest, I have seen enough of the cycles of apocalypse and rebirth to appreciate that a city's spirit has the amazing power to offset and transcend the harshest of natural disaster, socioeconomics and politics. The next four days of music — essentially daily from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next morning — will fundamentally support that belief.

I hook up with my Tesuque friend and then with a jazz-fest junkie from San Luis Obispo, California, I have met online. She has two friends with her, and instantly the five of us become a bonded group of midlife merry pranksters.

What becomes immediately apparent as we wait in line for our tickets is that people have come in from all over the world, including many local musicians who have been transplanted. The numbers come in at around 375,000. I can't help but feel they have returned to support what they know they can never possibly experience elsewhere. With eleven different stages — varying from blues to jazz to funk to gospel to zydeco/cajun to mainstream rock/pop to world/reggae to soul — there is little musical territory left unexplored. With acts changing every hour, you inevitably end up missing over 90 percent of the performances.

But it doesn't really matter. As one meanders from stage to stage, some intangible accelerated groove takes over the playing. The greatest acts often turn out to be the ones you don't know. Whether you squeeze yourself into the throngs coming to see the celebrity headliners or venture toward relatively "unknowns," it all sizzles.

At one point, three bubbling young women see this midlife professor (that's me) getting down with some righteous dance moves. Two come over bumping and gyrating, wrap their arms around me, and ask the third to take a picture. I suddenly feel 25 years younger.

Having to come back down to earth is inevitable, but not without another strong dose of juju delivered in the process. Some of the unfathomable schedule conflicts I have to negotiate are these: Van Morrison or Percy Sledge (the guy who croons "When a Man Loves a Woman"), Rod Stewart or Norah Jones, and, most difficult of all, neosoul queen Jill Scott, R & B veteran Bonnie Raitt or Bobby Jones and the Nashville Super Choir. (Jones brings the best of gospel music to the nation every Sunday morning on Black Entertainment Television. I have been rocking out on percussion for gospel churches for the last seven years, so this is a music and spirit that has etched itself in my soul.)

I solve the first two sets of conflicts by sneaking over to both stages, a strategic slipping through the crowd's maze. But the last one is sheer sacrifice. Jill Scott is my homegirl, both of us having attended Temple University in our hometown of Philadelphia. Her lush vocals and exalted poetic songwriting deserve my full attention. Perched amidst what is predominantly a New Orleans local crowd, it is a heavenly sunset farewell. Or so I think.

Checking in my bags the next morning, I'm told I have been bumped from my flight because I was not at the gate a half hour prior to departure. Not able to get on the next three flights via standby, I finally get it: I'm supposed to stay another day. I look at the fest schedule and notice that a special gospel gathering started two hours ago at a local university chapel. I rent a car again and drive immediately to the venue.

Literally, the second I walk in, the headliners, Bobby Jones and the Nashville Superchoir, are being introduced. The timing is just one more piece of magic. The crowd is entirely local worshippers, all having, in deep faith, come through the Katrina saga. As Jones shares, "You know, it's like slavery days all over again. They're not giving us a whole lot down here. But the Holy Ghost got us through back then, and it's gonna get us through now." The music, the people, those words again shred my heart.

After three decades of my coming to Louisiana, the pieces of the puzzle finally start to come together: New Orleans has put the kick into America's pop music, but it really isn't American at all. It's Caribbean, it's African, it's disenfranchised Europeans all squeezed together under an American veneer. The core rhythm itself, the clave ( doo-doo-doo, bop-bop), is found more persistently in Latin music, an homage to the endless syncopation of on and off beats that invites what West African –derived cultures experience as spirit possession.

In gospel, this is called "getting happy." They may look happy, but what the joy of the music and the dance is doing is allowing the deep pain that history has brought to be released and, thus, endured.

After this gospel cleansing, my bag now on its way to New Mexico, I go to a local dollar store to buy a change of shirts and underwear. Aptly, I find a T-shirt that pronounces, "Too Blessed To Be Stressed." I joyfully hook up again with my merry-prankster friends that night, and we attend a local block party, a benefit to buy instruments for the local school system. At one point, Bonnie Raitt walks in and straps on a guitar. She is not there as featured vocalist, but simply as a musician among an incredibly rich community of musicians joining in on a jam.

The MC then takes the stage and states, "After Katrina, one of New Orleans's greatest ambassadors was missing. He was finally found and plucked off a rooftop. He has since come through a sickness and so is not here tonight to play, but to simply show his support for our community."

Out from the crowd walks a short, squat elderly man with that patented ear-to-ear grin. It is Fats Domino. It doesn't get any more magical than that.





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	New Orleans music has liberated the hips (and trapped souls) of America. American Juju: New Orleans Gets Funked Up by Stephen Powell The hurricane Katrina runs smack into the historical port city of New Orleans. The water wins out. It generally does. This is its nature. The infrastructure and morale of the city take a tremendous hit. But the essence, its spirit, begins to rekindle. "Juju," a West African term for the spirit world, will carry this city through. It always has. Ironically, if there's any city that could have taken the hit that it did, it is this one. Beyond the commercial veneer, violence, poverty and historical inequalities, New Orleans has been, still is and always will be a place of deep musical magic. Voodoo — in actuality, a transplanted West African transformational healing ceremony — isn't even a metaphor here. This is the underlying modus operandi. This is my first post-Katrina visit. The occasion is attending the first of two extended weekends of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at the end of April. Economically and spiritually, the fest is New Orleans's Christmas season. I've lost count of how many I've been to. However, this time my visit is not just about the music, but also about driving around the devastated neighborhoods and talking to people. My time here is about the worst and best of the forces of American culture. Half the city has still not returned. Those home owners who have may not have not gotten enough insurance money to even clean up their backyards. And then, with insurance companies skyrocketing their rates, only the wealthy can afford the readjusted mortgages. Criminal. The people — many black and much poorer than the average American — have taken a bad rap, both from the New Age left and the Christian right, as if they somehow deserved this. Hogwash. The drunken reputation of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras decadence veils the rich blending of African and European oral traditions that have made this city the foundation of our country's popular musical culture. In short, New Orleans music has liberated the hips (and trapped souls) of America. The French Quarter, the original city, built above sea level, is where this magic began. Under French, then Spanish and finally American occupation, a strange blend of ethnic groups — Parisians and Spaniards, Acadians from Nova Scotia, transplanted Africans — began to form the gumbo that still permeates the culture and music. What allowed this vibrant mixing of cultures was what was missing: the Protestant ethic that had colonially stripped cultures of their ritual core. Drums were banned throughout the States in fear of their power to revitalize the spirits of a repressed African culture. Not so here. Celebration remained a way of life. Slaves were permitted to gather weekly in song and dance at Congo Square, a vital link sustaining, in an American form, the pulse of Africa. At the same time, many freed slaves arrived from the Caribbean, literally adding the rituals of voodoo into a mix that already included African dances such as the Bamboula and Calinda. Those still enslaved were permitted to marry and, as families, participate in this ceremonial activity. At its social pinnacle was a mixed-race Creole class made up of freed slaves, often the offspring of French slave owners and their black mistresses. The social hierarchy had been turned upside down. When the Americans began pouring in throughout the 1800s, New Orleanians couldn't help but think of them as crass and crudely undercultured. Under the whip of the American slavery system, however, many of these freedoms would soon be lost. But everyone still knew in their hearts who were the true leaders of the community. The musicians were one mere twinkle of an eye away from the griot/storyteller/healer talents coursing in their African memories. That the original European colonizers were noticeably more unleashed than the Americans — after all, Carnival/Mardi Gras came from the French — only added more flame to this celebratory fire. As a result, New Orleans's 20th-century sounds — ragtime, jazz, blues, gospel, rhythm 'n' blues, rock 'n' roll — all had that extra syncopated spiritual something. The blues, Cajun and zydeco rural musics of the surrounding parishes were similarly affected. My time this year actually doesn't start out so celebratory. With my traveling companion backing out at the last moment, I arrive in New Orleans unexpectedly alone. But then the magic — as this town seems to readily provide — starts to kick in. First, I recognize this guy hanging out at the House of Blues cantina where I've stopped in the Quarter for a bowl of gumbo. I say, "Tesuque Pueblo." He says, "Yup" and buys me a beer. Having just landed that day, my intention is to call it an early night. It isn't to be. Angelique Kidjo, Africa's premier diva, happens to be playing at the House of Blues nightclub adjacent to the restaurant. Someone turns to me and asks if I would like a free ticket for the show. Ambivalence, aloneness cease. Still two days away, the spirit of the jazz festival has begun. This is the beginning of countless waves of an inner joyous weeping rippling through my nervous system, a bottomless well of cathartic camaraderie. Before the show starts I talk with a striking, tall Creole woman, the first of many Katrina conversations with New Orleans locals. "I had no desire to come back," she explains. "But then it became apparent that as an artist, no other city would fill me the way New Orleans has. There are a lot of people fighting over a small amount of money to rebuild. But it's really those who returned to keep the creative soul going who are rebuilding this city." Kidjo, an internationally renowned pop star, ignites the crowd. By the end of the show the stage is overflowing with dancers, an unbelievably sensuous array of movement that I've never seen any other state's stage come close to matching. And then it happens. The visions of what New Orleans symbolically embodies for the planet start coming to me: Out of the apocalyptic waters, rebirth. Out of the sorrow and neglect, a kind of coming together that transcends money, time, culture, race. Empires, governments, Yankee dollars come and go. But there is some exotic kind of permanency that links human hearts with the communal expression that extraordinary music and dance induce. And, just think, I haven't even made it to the festival yet. The full impact of Katrina's aftermath hits me the next morning. Waking up in an East New Orleans Motel 6, I ask where I can get some breakfast. I am told, "Nowhere — none of the restaurants have been rebuilt. You have to go back into town," accompanied by a look that says, "If you only knew what we have been through." When staying in the Quarter, and shuttling back and forth to the festival grounds, realities are a bit cloaked. But the heaviness is now readily apparent. Forsaking food, I drive into the Ninth Ward, one of the poorest and hardest-hit neighborhoods, and also home of many of the city's talented musicians and parading social clubs. Countless houses are still boarded up, the notorious "X" inscribed on the doors indicating officials have checked the home to see who might be remaining, dead or alive. But then interspersed are brightly built new row homes, elevated on platforms should another flood come their way. And then I see dozens of working bodies hammering away and buzzing about like drone bees — mostly young white folk. It turns out these are America's volunteers donating their time and labor for Habitat for Humanity's "Operation Home Delivery." Two of New Orleans's musical ambassadors, Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., have come together to help publicize public support for the project. The inner weeping — inseparable tears of grief and joy — resumes. The government is off squandering its resources on a futile war in a foreign land, the insurance companies are looking out for maintaining their "bottom line," and all kinds of politicians and entrepreneurs are squabbling over the few contracts actually manifesting. But the most visible rebuilding I see is coming from people who aren't making a dime. Once again, the generous nature of the human spirit seeps through. I have never quite understood the nature of the flood from press reports, and my continual conversations with locals reveal the fuller story. People seemed relieved to be able to share — a kind of post-traumatic stress release. The breaks in the levees varied from gradual to furious. One local resident describes the flooding from the 17th Street canal as the worst: "It was biblical — cars overturned, homes completely destroyed." And then, a block away, all might be intact because of its advantageous perch on slightly higher ground. Destruction is fickle. By the time I arrive at the fest, I have seen enough of the cycles of apocalypse and rebirth to appreciate that a city's spirit has the amazing power to offset and transcend the harshest of natural disaster, socioeconomics and politics. The next four days of music — essentially daily from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next morning — will fundamentally support that belief. I hook up with my Tesuque friend and then with a jazz-fest junkie from San Luis Obispo, California, I have met online. She has two friends with her, and instantly the five of us become a bonded group of midlife merry pranksters. What becomes immediately apparent as we wait in line for our tickets is that people have come in from all over the world, including many local musicians who have been transplanted. The numbers come in at around 375,000. I can't help but feel they have returned to support what they know they can never possibly experience elsewhere. With eleven different stages — varying from blues to jazz to funk to gospel to zydeco/cajun to mainstream rock/pop to world/reggae to soul — there is little musical territory left unexplored. With acts changing every hour, you inevitably end up missing over 90 percent of the performances. But it doesn't really matter. As one meanders from stage to stage, some intangible accelerated groove takes over the playing. The greatest acts often turn out to be the ones you don't know. Whether you squeeze yourself into the throngs coming to see the celebrity headliners or venture toward relatively "unknowns," it all sizzles. At one point, three bubbling young women see this midlife professor (that's me) getting down with some righteous dance moves. Two come over bumping and gyrating, wrap their arms around me, and ask the third to take a picture. I suddenly feel 25 years younger. Having to come back down to earth is inevitable, but not without another strong dose of juju delivered in the process. Some of the unfathomable schedule conflicts I have to negotiate are these: Van Morrison or Percy Sledge (the guy who croons "When a Man Loves a Woman"), Rod Stewart or Norah Jones, and, most difficult of all, neosoul queen Jill Scott, R & B veteran Bonnie Raitt or Bobby Jones and the Nashville Super Choir. (Jones brings the best of gospel music to the nation every Sunday morning on Black Entertainment Television. I have been rocking out on percussion for gospel churches for the last seven years, so this is a music and spirit that has etched itself in my soul.) I solve the first two sets of conflicts by sneaking over to both stages, a strategic slipping through the crowd's maze. But the last one is sheer sacrifice. Jill Scott is my homegirl, both of us having attended Temple University in our hometown of Philadelphia. Her lush vocals and exalted poetic songwriting deserve my full attention. Perched amidst what is predominantly a New Orleans local crowd, it is a heavenly sunset farewell. Or so I think. Checking in my bags the next morning, I'm told I have been bumped from my flight because I was not at the gate a half hour prior to departure. Not able to get on the next three flights via standby, I finally get it: I'm supposed to stay another day. I look at the fest schedule and notice that a special gospel gathering started two hours ago at a local university chapel. I rent a car again and drive immediately to the venue. Literally, the second I walk in, the headliners, Bobby Jones and the Nashville Superchoir, are being introduced. The timing is just one more piece of magic. The crowd is entirely local worshippers, all having, in deep faith, come through the Katrina saga. As Jones shares, "You know, it's like slavery days all over again. They're not giving us a whole lot down here. But the Holy Ghost got us through back then, and it's gonna get us through now." The music, the people, those words again shred my heart. After three decades of my coming to Louisiana, the pieces of the puzzle finally start to come together: New Orleans has put the kick into America's pop music, but it really isn't American at all. It's Caribbean, it's African, it's disenfranchised Europeans all squeezed together under an American veneer. The core rhythm itself, the clave ( doo-doo-doo, bop-bop), is found more persistently in Latin music, an homage to the endless syncopation of on and off beats that invites what West African –derived cultures experience as spirit possession. In gospel, this is called "getting happy." They may look happy, but what the joy of the music and the dance is doing is allowing the deep pain that history has brought to be released and, thus, endured. After this gospel cleansing, my bag now on its way to New Mexico, I go to a local dollar store to buy a change of shirts and underwear. Aptly, I find a T-shirt that pronounces, "Too Blessed To Be Stressed." I joyfully hook up again with my merry-prankster friends that night, and we attend a local block party, a benefit to buy instruments for the local school system. At one point, Bonnie Raitt walks in and straps on a guitar. She is not there as featured vocalist, but simply as a musician among an incredibly rich community of musicians joining in on a jam. The MC then takes the stage and states, "After Katrina, one of New Orleans's greatest ambassadors was missing. He was finally found and plucked off a rooftop. He has since come through a sickness and so is not here tonight to play, but to simply show his support for our community." Out from the crowd walks a short, squat elderly man with that patented ear-to-ear grin. It is Fats Domino. It doesn't get any more magical than that.