Can A Scene Survive Without Its Backdrop?

New Orleans is, of course, an important place in the history of American music. But what many Americans don’t know is that there is far more to the Big Easy than jazz funerals and Dixieland. “New Orleans is a jazz town, but also a funk town, a brass-band town, a hip-hop town and a jam-band town. It has international jazz musicians and hip-hop superstars, but also a true, subsistence-level street culture. Much of its music is tied to geography and neighborhoods, and crowds.” Because of that reliance on neighborhood identity, many are asking whether the New Orleans scene can ever be rebuilt. After all, if the Lower Ninth Ward has ceased to exist, what happens to the sound cultivated by its residents for so many decades?