Without music there would be no New Orleans. Without New Orleans there would be no music. As musician Harry Connick Jr told me: 'The city has the greatest musical heritage in the world — jazz, blues, Cajun. For me, New Orleans is all about the music, the clubs, the guys that play.'
But did the music die five years ago when Hurricane Katrina tore the place apart, leaving tens of thousands still without a home? No chance. As Connick Jr, who made his first stage appearance in the city aged eight, insists: 'Music was everywhere when I started out — in Jackson Square, on the River Walk, on street corners — and it still is.'
Few tourist attractions are more famous than Bourbon Street - a rackety riot of clubs, dives and drink at the heart of the French Quarter — but, laments Connick Jr, 'Today, there is only one jazz club on Bourbon while the rest are daiquiri bars and shops selling T-shirts. When it's to the exclusion of jazz, it breaks my heart.'
The club he is referring to is Maison Bourbon though traditionalists can also make a pilgrimage to Preservation Hall, half a block away on St Peter Street (preservationhall.com), where venerable local legends play to 'protect and preserve' the city's musical soul.
Just out of the Quarter in Frenchmen Street, the sound of blues, reggae and cajun music spills out of a dozen clubs, such as Snug Harbour (snugjazz.com), where Ellis Marsalis plays piano most Fridays, the Blue Nile (bluenilelive.com), the Apple Barrel (+1 504 949 9399) or the Spotted Cat (+1 504 943 3887).
Take a cab to Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club on St Claude Avenue (sweetlorrainesjazzclub.com), or to Tipitina's on Napoleon Avenue (tipitinas.com), which holds an audience of 1,000, or to the cramped Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge on North Claiborne Avenue (k-doe.com). The heartbeat of the city can be found - and heard - in the old slave quarter of Tremé, home of The Candlelight Lounge (+1 504 524 2672), where the 'second line' funeral processions take place every Sunday. Mourners who are not close relatives follow the cortège to the cemetery but once the obsequies are over they honour the dead with wild street parties.
Don't miss trumpeter James Andrews, who fronts The Crescent City All Stars. He says, 'It has been tough since Katrina and there are still a lot of musicians who don't have a home to come back to. But we have the spirit, man. Come along to one of our jam sessions and y'all find out.'
WAY TO GO
British Airways flies from London Heathrow to Dallas/Fort Worth and then on to New Orleans as a codeshare with American Airlines. Visit ba.com.
