The 'most important jazz festival in history' will help pep up post-Katrina New Orleans, writes John Moran
'There are few who can visit her for the first time without delight; and few who can ever leave her without regret; and none who can forget her strange charm when they have once felt its influence' - Lafcadio Hearn on New Orleans
Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans is an old song close to the heart of most New Orleanians. Almost eight months on from the great disaster that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the song carries even heavier emotional freight. And for those still scattered in exile all across the US, hearing local jazz legend Louis Armstrong's version must be heartbraking.
For many people prior to Katrina, a mention of the name New Orleans could conjure up visions of earthy cool and smoky glamour. After all, it was the birthplace of jazz, and home to many legendary jazz and blues musicians, a refuge and "half-dressed muse" to writers, a place of exotic Cajun, Creole and Caribbean cuisine. There was Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, and maybe even voodoo.
Something fabulous seemed to be available in the Big Easy.
All this luminous lustre was lost late last August when the levees broke and torrents of water deluged 80 per cent of the New Orleans metropolitan area, leaving nearly 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the aftermath.
Having been in New Orleans in September 2004 for a symposium on Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn, who lived and worked in the city between 1877 and 1887, I shared the drama of the near miss by Hurricane Ivan. I also developed a deeper affection for the place and its friendly ways, and barmaids saying "baby". But after all those desperate images and stories, post-Katrina, I feared that the place could never be that same again.
Returning in the hours of darkness means I can't make out much by way of damage on the journey into the city from Louis Armstrong airport. But I'm happy to see the smiling face of the genial owner of the atmospheric pension where I had last stayed in a quiet corner of the French Quarter.
French-born Maurice Delechelle survived Katrina and its aftermath with his pedigree Maltese companion Gigi in his pretty B&B above the Croissant d'Or Patisserie where he was pastry chef before his recent retirement.
Maurice's biggest fear was of fire, because so many buildings in the Quarter are mostly made of wood. "There was looting and some people were burning buildings. I could see big fires. So I kept watch at my window at all the shadows running past. I think I should leave if it happens again," he chuckles.
Walking around the Quarter next morning it is a big relief to see so little sign of damage in this beautiful, world-renowned neighbourhood. In Jackson Square in the heart of the Quarter, sitting on a bench facing St Louis Cathedral, surrounded by pretty Spanish colonial architecture, hearing the rattle of riverside streetcars and the occasional foghorn boom of a Mississippi steamboat, it feels good to be back. All has not been lost, it seems.
But New Orleans has become a tale of two cities, and you don't have to travel far from the Quarter to find places where many hundreds of people lost their lives. I had been forewarned I'd be "struck dumb" by Katrina's devastation.
"Be sure to venture out to the Ninth Ward and the Lakeview areas around the 17th Street and London Avenue canal levee breaches. It's heartbreaking," says Ellen Johnson, who was working for the Tennessee Williams Festival I am attending.
And so it is. As you enter abandoned neighbourhoods and witness the desolation, you get a creeping sense of eeriness. Block after block of abandoned suburban neighbourhoods with houses in various states of disrepair and destruction. No traffic. No sign of any family life. Not one dog or cat. Dead gardens. If you have ever wondered what a nuclear dawn could look like, this is surely it.
While the survivors of New Orleans have been through a terrible ordeal, including a great emotional backwash that has yet to recede, there have been signs that they are emerging from their nightmare. The decision to proceed with Mardi Gras in February, despite understandable reluctance from some who felt it was too soon, is now seen as having been hugely important.
"Mardi Gras brought us all together," says Debbie McDonald of the Garden District Bookstore. "The floats were either satires on the hurricane or were beautiful reminders of the things we hold to be important."
Another contribution to renewal is the annual Tennessee Williams Festival. Appreciative audiences pack the events I attend. At one of these, Transylvanian writer and poet Andrei Codrescu says his adopted home has always been a "counter-culture city", and post-Katrina would attract and inspire writers, poets, painters and musicians who would transform the disaster into new expressions of art.
John Biguenet, author of the highly acclaimed novel Oyster, was one of Katrina's "exiles". He returned with his family to find their home uninhabitable and his treasured book collection turned into what he calls "pulp fiction".
Biguenet tells me that New Orleanians are not very good at mourning what they've lost.
"Our jazz funerals begin with all due solemnity, but by the time we head home from the cemetery, the sad procession has turned into a rollicking parade. Our festivals always feature food and music, and whatever else we've lost, we haven't forgotten how to make both of those things," he says.
Nor, I'm relieved to say, has lovely Lisa forgotten how to mix a mean Ramos Gin Fizz in the Old Absynthe House on Bourbon Street. And she still calls me "baby".
Food and music will be very much in evidence over this weekend at the annual French Quarter Festival, which showcases the city's many kinds of music and food.
Coming up over the next two weekends, however, is by far the most significant event of the year, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Many tens of thousands are expected to converge on the Big Easy for the event, which will also provide a major test for the city's ability to cater for such big numbers so soon after Katrina.
Performers will include local legend Fats Domino (who was lucky to survive Katrina), Bruce Springsteen, Etta James, Bob Dylan, Dave Mathews, Herbie Hancock, Allan Toussaint with Elvis Costello, and a host of other headline acts for what has been dubbed "the most important Jazz Fest in history".
You can bet that if and when Fats Domino takes the stage to perform his classic blues anthem Walkin' to New Orleans, there will be one almighty outpouring of emotion - and it will be good.