Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Members of the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg patrol past Preservation Hall on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter on Thursday. The site was built in 1750 as a private residence and, since 1962, has been a sanctuary for New Orleans musicians and jazz fans. The hall has been updating its Web site -- www.preservationhall.com -- as it connects with musicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

By Nate Guidry, Post-Gazette
Hurricane Katrina was democratic in its devastation, stranding even one of New Orleans' most famous citizens, Fats Domino. He wasn't plucked from a roof, but he was ferried to safety from his flooded home in a much-televised rescue.

	Nate Guidry, Post-Gazette Members of the Hot 8 brass band wind their way through the crowd on the grounds at the Louisiana State Museum's Old U.S. Mint early last month. The group was one of nearly 100 performing during the Fifth Annual Satchmo Summerfest. Click photo for larger image.

The 77-year-old Domino, whose real name is Antoine Domino, represents the sound and spirit of this Louisiana city in the same way that the names Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Fountain and Professor Longhair conjure a time, a place, a feeling.

Guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, who fled his bay-front home in Slidell, La., a few hours before it was swept away, was en route to Austin when he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized in Port Arthur, Texas. Brown's daughter, Celeste Biles, said the plan is to have her father, who also has inoperable cancer, transported to Austin when he is well enough to travel.

Vocalist Charmaine Neville, a member of one of New Orleans' great musical families, told the Baton Rouge newspaper The Advocate of being raped and watching people commit suicide before she was able to flee New Orleans in a city bus commandeered by a young man.

"What he took from me was nothing, because he can't take my spirit," said Neville. "He can't take my soul. My soul is New Orleans."

Neville said the city will be back.

"It may take us a couple of years, but it's going to happen. We will not abandon our home. God put his foot down, and that's why Louisiana's shaped like a boot. He said good people who have faith in me, who love life, who love good food, who love music, these are the kind of people who need to be here, and that's why we were born here."

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Jimmy New, peering from a doorway in the French Quarter, is among the stragglers still residing there. He had worked at The Napoleon House bar and cafe in the Quarter. Click photo for larger image.

At its base, New Orleans music is blues and jazz, improvisation and syncopation. Then it fans out, drawing inspiration from parade, funeral, funk, Mardi Gras, Cajun, Creole, Caribbean and Latin music.

Last year, the city hosted more than 10 million visitors, many to sample that cuisine and music scene, and was on track this year to eclipse those figures. The city also was having success with tax incentives to film companies, making it possible for the filming of "All the King's Men," "The Skeleton Key" and parts of "The Dukes of Hazzard" and other films.

Now, the bedrock and lifeblood of the city and the culture that it spawned have been threatened by flood waters and disease and a forced exodus.

Once the water recedes, officials will begin the long, arduous task of rebuilding.

The catalyst for that rebuilding will be things that have always made New Orleans unique: its music, neighborhoods and cuisine.

The people who make the food will be back to feed their fellow New Orleanians. The buildings may be down, but residents of the close-knit neighborhoods are vowing they will be back and will rebuild.

Along Canal Street will come the sound of cymbals anchored by a clothes hanger atop bass drums, and tubas, trombones and trumpets will fill the air in a joyous cacophony. And as people here have done for years, a second-line parade will wind its way across Decatur Street, up Esplanade Avenue and down Rampart Street. Near the entrance to Louis Armstrong Park, the crowd will stop, tip their heads in the direction of Satchmo's bust, and the band will launch into Armstrong's "Do You Know What It Mean to Miss New Orleans."

Jack Stewart, a member of the New Orleans Jazz Commission, said at music will be used to help overcome the devastation.

"We are already beginning to see that played out with the fund-raisers that are being organized by Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr. and others," said Stewart, who remained in the city until Wednesday. "Music will be one of the catalysts that help revive the city."

So much to do

New Orleans is where you could find Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager, a crawfish po boy sandwich, a bowl of gumbo, mustard greens and butter beans, collard greens and red beans, muffalatas and chicory coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde.

	Nate Guidry, Post-Gazette Before Katrina: A second-line parade winds its way from the Treme section of New Orleans to the grounds of the Louisiana State Museum's Old U. S. Mint. The parade was part of the Louis Armstrong Satchmo Summerfest activies. Click photo for larger image.

Where else but New Orleans can you spend the day on a voodoo tour or find the mausoleum of voodoo queen Marie Laveau?

"It's going to be difficult, but I feel confident that we are going to rebuild," said Larry Lovell, spokesman for New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., the city's leisure travel promotion entity. "What you find in New Orleans you can't find in any other American city."

Lovell spoke of the geography of the city and the cohesiveness of each neighborhood.

"New Orleans has all these neighborhoods, each having their character," he said. "Uptown, which is where I live, is different from downtown. Downtown is different from Mid-City, which is different from Treme and so forth."

The historic streetcar that goes from Uptown to Downtown, journeying through the heart of the city, provides insight into its development, culture and architecture.

"New Orleans is one of those places that grow on you if you appreciate those kinds of things," Lovell said. "We have our traditions, and they are dear to us. They represent who we are. They are a part of New Orleans culture."

And Canal Street is where to find it, said Bruce Boyd Raeborn in a 2002 Post-Gazette interview. Raeborn is curator of Tulane University's William Ranson Hogan Jazz Archive.

"That culture begins at Canal Street, which is the dividing line between the American city, above it, and below it was the old French, Spanish and African city -- the French Quarter, Treme and Faubourg Marigny," said Raeborn.

"Each of these neighborhoods had different cultural characteristics, different accents, languages and musical styles. "

	Nate Guidry, Post-Gazette Ellis Marsalis performs at Snug Harbor in the Fauborg Marigny section of New Orleans last month. Click photo for larger image.

New Orleans is famous for its dining, restaurants with names like Dooky Chase, Louis XVI, Brennan's and the Commander's Palace. Some of the favorites among locals are the Mona Lisa, Johnnie's Po Boy, Camellia Grill and Mother's. The city is also home to some of the nations top chefs, Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudhomme and Frank Brigtsen.

Andrew Braun, a chef who previously worked at the New Orleans Court of Two Sisters and is currently at Pittsburgh's 17th Street Cafe, said New Orleans cuisine is different from any place else in the country.

"It's a mixture of Spanish, French and African," said Braun. "It's known for everything from spicy sausage and special sauces to gumbo and jambalaya. There are just so many unique dishes, like okra, shrimp and crawfish."

A riff and a prayer

That uniqueness is also part of the music of New Orleans.

	Nate Guidry, Post-Gazette Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins was a Thursday-night regular at Vaughan's in New Orleans' Bywater section. Click photo for larger image.

"Everything mingles into the other until nothing is purely itself but becomes part of one big funky gumbo," said pianist and New Orleans native Dr. John in his autobiography, "Under A Hoodoo Moon."

It is a city that gave birth to jazz, to Jelly Roll Morton and to Louis Armstrong. The area has continued to be an incubator for young musicians and emerging styles and remains home to popular musicians, including pianists Ellis Marsalis and Allen Toussaint, guitarist Alex Chilton, singer Irma Thomas and trumpeters Nicolas Payton and Terence Blanchard, who all emerged unscathed from the hurricane.

In a statement released through his publicist, saxophonist Branford Marsalis said all of his family members were able to evacuate the area. He said he watched in "despair" as the flood waters submerged his city.

"It's hard to see this happening to my home and the people of New Orleans," he said. "My thoughts are with our friends and neighbors in this difficult time and I ask you to support them in any way you can as I surely will."

Before the devastation, a trip to New Orleans led most visitors to the French Quarter and, inevitably, to 726 St. Peters Street and Preservation Hall, where early jazz styles were performed.

But music was being performed all over the city. Uptown, at the intersection of Tchoupitoulas Street and Napoleon Avenue was Tipitina's, former home of pianist Henry Roeland Byrd, aka Professor Longhair.

A few blocks away on Oak Street was the Maple Leaf, where great entertainment could be found any night of the week. At the corner of Tulane and Carrollton was one of the city's most celebrated venues, Mid City Lanes, locally known as the Rock 'n Bowl. On Rampart Street across from Louis Armstrong Park was Funky Butt and Donna's Bar and Grill, where groups like Big Sam's Funky Nation and the Dirty Dozen brass band regularly performed.

On Lesseps Street, in the Bywater section of the city, stood Vaughan's, which was the Thursday-night home of the irrepressible trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and his Barbecue Swingers.

Across from the Quarter in the Fauborg Marigny section, jazz came alive at places like the Spotted Cat, Checkpoint Charlie, Blue Nile and Snug Harbor, where Ellis Marsalis regularly held court.

A new day

Although burst levees left about 80 percent of the city flooded with water up to 20 feet deep, the French Quarter has emerged as perhaps its driest section. The landmark Preservation Hall remains solid and most of the centuries-old buildings seem to have been spared.

Martha Rial , Post-Gazette Kenny Claiborne, left, and his neighbor, Kay Vereen, move to a Neville Brothers recording while Claiborne broadcasts music from a speaker system in his French Quarter apartment. Claiborne, a musician, started Radio Marigny (named for a neighborhood below the French Quarter) to bring music and life back to the hurricane-ravaged city. Vereen and her husband own The John bar on Burgundy Street in the Quarter. Click photo for larger image.

But the Quarter is a desolate place these days, with mostly men in uniform visible: The 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, N.C., was performing what the Army called "presence patrols," for both the remaining residents and the criminal element that has emerged during this disaster.

In a residential area called the Marigny Triangle, some diehards could be seen walking or on balconies. On Chartes Street, Cajun and country music blared from a second-floor apartment, where a determined Kenny Claiborne was broadcasting music from speakers that reached several blocks away.

When New Orleans does rebuild, its culture will be a cornerstone of the process.

"Music is part of the big three," said Stewart. "New Orleans is food, architecture and music. Everyone in New Orleans is a musician or has a relative who's a musician, whether they are professional or amateur."

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On the Internet

Web addresses for Gulf Coast cultural sites. As of late last week, not all of the sites had been updated to include their status after Hurricane Katrina.

CULTURAL SITE	INTERNET ADDRESS
American Association of Museums	www.aam-us.org
Old Capitol Museum of Mississippi History, Jackson, Miss.	www.mdah.state.ms.us
Audubon Nature Institute, Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species, New Orleans	www.auduboninstitute.org
Marine Life Oceanarium, Gulfport, Miss.	www.dolphinsrus.com
Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum, Biloxi, Miss.	www.maritimemuseum.org
Jefferson Davis home, Biloxi, Miss.	www.beauvoir.org
Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, Miss.	www.georgeohr.org
Preservation Hall, New Orleans	www.preservationhall.com
National D-Day Museum, New Orleans	www.ddaymuseum.org
Confederate Memorial Hall, New Orleans	www.confederatemuseum.com
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans	www.ogdenmuseum.org
Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Ocean Springs, Miss.	www.walterandersonmuseum.org
Longue Vue House & Gardens, New Orleans	www.longuevue.com