Blues for New Orleans

As a battle cry for summoning up our collective will to save our Creole city, "Blues for New Orleans is clear and strong."-The Times-Picayune "Blues for New Orleans is a generous study of Mardi Gras, but it is also a creative intervention, a passionate explanation (and defense) of creolization, a cultural rescue operation. It is a furious, blues-tinged, erudite hymn to our greatest vernacular city. Read it and weep; read it and rejoice!"-Edward Hirsch, President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation "Will New Orleans become a memory and a myth? Will the bon temps ever roulette again? I took for granted many of the things in this book as I experienced them every day. As residents, we never imagined a day when we would be called on to plead for recognition of our worth to our city. But, like the old folks said: 'It goes to show, you never can tell.' Without an awareness of the many contributions to the city's culture inherent in the make up of the neighborhoods, the planners can't begin to plan realistically. The information in this historic work is much needed by those who are rebuilding New Orleans. I thank the authors for their deep and clear insight on New Orleans culture and what goes into making an artistic American city."-Charles Neville "If there was ever any question about the resilience of this endlessly fascinating city, this imaginative book should lay it to rest. In the land of dreamy dreams, where order is a doubloon's throw from disorder, and paradox reigns with pleasure, the carnival spirit has always held New Orleans together even when its civic culture seemed broken beyond repair. Blues for New Orleans is more than a study of Mardi Gras' origins in the polyglot order of Atlantic World Creoles; it is a wonderful meditation on what it would mean to lose New Orleans."-Lawrence N. Powell, author of Troubled Memory and other works on Louisiana