Music and All That Jazz

“ I’m not positive, but I think all music came from New Orleans.” – Ernie K-Doe

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz and the city some of the world’s most popular musicians – from Louis Armstrong to Lenny Kravitz – have called home. A melting pot of musical inspirations and innovations, New Orleans has embraced music as an indelible part of its history, an important facet of its identity, and one of the most colorful threads in its cultural tapestry. From street performers to intimate clubs, jazz funerals to festivals, and symphonies to headlining rock concerts, music permeates – and enriches – every day of life in New Orleans.

Walk the streets of New Orleans, and you’ll hear it: the hum, the beat, the rhythm. It’s everywhere. It pours out of nightclubs and concert halls, rises from churches and theatres, rolls down the streets, echoes across festival grounds and fills our neighborhoods. Jazzy and jubilant, soulful and spiritual, rocking and rolling – New Orleans music tells the story of the city and its people to anyone who will hear it, and in the most eloquent ways imaginable. Come and listen.

Louis Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz musicians. Armstrong defined what it was to play Jazz. His amazing technical abilities, the joy and spontaneity, and amazingly quick, inventive musical mind still dominate Jazz to this day. Only Charlie Parker comes close to having as much influence on the history of Jazz as Louis Armstrong did. Like almost all early Jazz musicians, Louis was from New Orleans. Read the lyrics of his most famous song:

When The Saints Go Marchin'

Well when the saints go marchin' in
Well when the saints go marchin in
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marchin' in

When the sun refuse to shine
Well when the sun refuse to shine
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the sun refuse to shine

Well when the saints go marchin' in
Well when the saints go marchin in
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marchin' in

Well when the saints go marchin' in
Well when the saints go marchin in
Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marchin' in

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