Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza

Abstract

Why New Orleans Matters Tom Piazza. New York: ReganBooks, 2005. Do you hear that sound, that low moan, distinct from the din of mourning for Katrina's dead and the utter physical destruction of vast expanses of property and land in Louisiana and Mississippi? More than a year after the devastation brought by the tropical demon, that sad, synchronized song is growing distant. But it's still being heard and felt: Those who treasure the unique music, cuisine, architecture, and dialect of New Orleans continue to mourn the potential loss of one of American culture's great natural resources. The tour books typically, and correctly, point to the depth of American musical roots, the multiple variants of rock and roll, RB people had no sanitary facilities, no medical care, and the weakest were easy pickings for the predators among them, he writes of the goings-on at the Convention Center. Thousands lived through scenes out of Goya or Hieronymus Bosch. Nobody came through ... to give them some hope (xi-xii). The author, a New Yorker enamored of the exotic sound of New Orleans music-from Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong to Fats Domino, Professor Longhair and Dr. Johnmoved to the Crescent City in 1994, after graduating from the Iowa Writers Workshop. But he fell in love with New Orleans in 1987, when visiting for the Jazz and Heritage Festival, known as Jazz Fest to locals and devotees. …