Satchmo Summerfest 2022

With 2 days of music and food, the French Quarter’s Satchmo Summerfest celebrates New Orleans native, Louis Armstrong’s birthday. The festival started with The Roots Of Music parading to the Old U.S. Mint, home of the New Orleans Jazz Museum where you can find Armstrong’s first coronet. 

The band is a wonderful reminder of the importance of keeping the city’s traditions and culture alive. Grammy Award-winning snare drummer of Rebirth Brass Band, Derrick Tabb, co-founded The Roots Of Music non-profit program providing hundreds of at-risk youths (8-14 years old) with instruments, education, tutoring, meals and a ride home. 

Treme Lightens Up

I’m behind on Treme blogging but not on Treme watching. As I’d hoped, HBO’s Tremehas given us a break on the gloom and doom, finally  – “It’s Carnival Time!” Surviving the near-relentless darkness of the season made it crystal clear why parades are so important. If it was hard to watch post-Katrina New Orleans once a week for an hour, it must have been nearly unbearable to survive in reality. I get to hear people’s Katrina stories here and recently met someone who’d been in the Dome. As the pieces of the puzzle come together in my head through all the stories, it becomes undeniable that the experience hit every sense and is truly a you-had-to-be-there thing. But Treme tries and I continue to enjoy it.