New Orleans Travelogue - Part 4: Did I mention there's music?

If you've ever wandered down Bourbon Street after dark, or even during the day, you know there is no shortage of music to be heard. You also know there is no shortage of touts trying to push you into their joint, or sometimes half-naked girls trying to pull you into theirs. Curiously, though, I actually found jazz pretty hard to come by.

When I say jazz, I mean jazz. On my first afternoon in New Orleans, Mrs. S and I went straight to the Music Factory music store. There, they have jazz broken out into several sub-categories such as: blues, traditional, vocal, modern, ... and such. They also have zydeco, New Orleans jazz (?), and a couple of categories that didn't make sense (to me). I relay this as a point of reference in that, in the city that may or may not have invented jazz, you can't really walk up to someone and say, hey, where can I go to hear some good jazz music, one - because there are so many places where one could go, and two - because they won't know what kind of jazz you are talking about (and you might not know, either).

So on our first night in the Big Easy, we cut to the chase and went to Preservation Hall. We weren't too keen on paying $10 to stand in a non air conditioned barn, but we figured we owed ourselves the experience. Plus since the band only does 45-minute sets, we figured that would be good enough.


Well, it was touristy, but I have to say, the band was very good and the experience was worth it. It was a sextet, with alto sax, drums, trombone, tuba, piano and lead trumpet. They sang a few songs, but mostly just played. You couldn't really hear the piano unless she (a Japanese woman no less) was soloing. But the sound was good and very, I'll say "traditional". Of course, they try to make money selling you nondescript CD's and by taking requests. I paid $5 to hear St. Louis Blues, mainly because I think I was the only native English speaker in the audience and it was the only song name I could think of that I thought the band could play. They seemed to appreciate it, though, and I was accommodated also with a piano solo. But it was hot and muggy, so when that set ended, we called it a night.

Here's me in front of the hall the next day.


We stumbled into some more live jazz the third night of our stay, but I'll leave that for my next post.