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“If you love New Orleans then it will love you back” I was told on my first night in the crescent city. I was just heading outside for the street barbecue in the interval of the Rebirth Brass Band’s weekly show at the Maple Leaf. What I had just experienced was something that, despite being completely new to me, would come to be a familiar sight over my next two weeks. There is something quite unique about the way the people of this city come together through their loves of music, food and the culture that so distinctly influences the lifestyle eponymous  with the big easy.

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I had heard of The Rebirth Brass Band before I hit NOLA but after picking up a copy of Offbeat at my hostel shortly after arriving in the city, I noticed they were playing that night for a meagre cover of $8 and knew that was the only place I was heading. After an initial exploration of the Tremé on a sweltering evening in October, I hit a bar just opposite Louis Armstrong Park on North Rampart St. and cooled down with an ice cold bottle of the locally brewed beer Abita Amber. Suitably recharged and informed by the bar’s cross-dressed contingent that next time I should “come back a little more naked”, I headed for Canal Street to catch the St. Charles Avenue street car line westward in search of The Maple Leaf. A relaxed crowd swelled outside the bar as I approached and I knew I had the right place, an hour until the show and the place was filling up nicely and the drink was flowing. What struck me as I waited for Rebirth to take the stage was the cosmopolitan nature of the crowd, a gumbo of people seemingly from infinite backgrounds and lives all here to drink and dance the night away with their (in some cases adopted) city’s seemingly favourite sons.

With Rebirth in full swing I witnessed the NOLA vibe in full-flow, local favourites such as ‘Blackbird Special’ whipping the crowd into a fervour which lasted the entire of the hour and a half until the interval. Yes, that’s an hour and a half….until the interval. One thing you will never experience on a genuine NOLA night out is being short changed in any sense (I am of course excluding anything that occurs on Bourbon Street from the concept ‘genuine NOLA night out’) and in typical N’Orleans fashion, they don’t just do any old intervals, band members and friends there of have parked up outside with a behemoth of a barbecue attached to their trucks from which some damn fine meats are being vended. Across the road, from a pristine black Harley Davidson, its owner blasts out Michael Jackson’s Liberian Girl off the Bad album (a song exquisitely covered by Rebirth I was soon to discover) and a passing homeless guy moonwalks amongst the crowd. I sat on the curb next to the Harley and took it all in, I was here in New Orleans and New Orleans was happening all around me, it was the love that I had been told about.

A compelling city to explore New Orleans bursts with character and its inhabitants are its true gem, while the proud locals provide the city with its soul, young communities are drawn to the musical scene and the laid back lifestyle making for a stunningly creative and proud air to the city which sets it apart from other American cities, this is southern hospitality at its finest. At first it is seems unusual when you are asked “where y’at?” by a passing stranger, but once you realise that this means “how are you?” you soon discover that your wellbeing is genuinely of importance to people that you experience throughout the day and this attitude goes a long way to making you feel right at home and keen to explore the city to it.

 

 

Having spent a day trekking out to the only place in the city that would develop black and white film, a journey that took me through the stunning Metairie Cemetary, I was offered a lift back to the city by a guy called Michael (a keen photographer) who offered to show me some interesting parts of the city, not one to pass up on the opportunity to be shown some of New Orleans by a man who worked as a volunteer in the months following the storm we headed out to St. Roch, an area which is still in parts in an eerie post-apocalyptic state due to being completely disregarded by the government. While some art projects had existed here post-Katrina, they had been unsuccessful in kick-starting a full regeneration and had met the same semi-demolished plight as many of the flood-damaged houses which were now inhabited by an odd breed of out-of-town homeless settlers who lived in wolf-like packs around these derelict streets, occasionally wandering down to the edge of the French Quarter in an evening, much to the alarm of the elderly middle-class tourists who perused the restaurants in search of that perfect creole feast.

One thing that I considered an absolute necessity was to see Kermit Ruffins play his weekly Thursday  night slot at Vaughn’s, a show that leaves the narrow venue packed to standing room (if that) only. Kerm, not content with packing the place weekly also oversees the interval barbecue and is almost as famous for his food as he is for his music (which is a testament to how incredibly well he barbecues) in another night which typifies New Orleans perfectly, where else would you see a guy finish a song, nip outside for a “smoke” only for three women in their 40’s to drunkenly grab the mic and start to sing the song (Holy Cow) that Kerm has just performed, only for his band, The Barbecue Swingers, to strike up again and provide full accompaniment to the trio until an extremely relaxed Mr. Ruffins returns to continue the show? No-where else, simple as that.

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