New Orleans music, even the old-style jazz heard at Preservation Hall and the Palm Court Cafe, is a tradition, but it's a living tradition.

You're not going to hear the exact same music from Dr Michael White, Evan Christopher, Tom Laughlin, Greg Stafford, Wendell Brunious, Bob French, George French, etc., that you might have heard 30-40 years ago from Billy and DeDe Pierce, the Humphrey brothers, Big Jim Robinson, and any number of others who have since passed on.

Today's serious traditional-jazz players have tremendous knowledge and respect for the music that came before (certainly deeper and more credible than that of some critics who decry their "inferiority" to their forebearers). Interestingly enough, many of them are members of musical families who have lived in the Treme (or elsewhere in the city) and carried on this tradition for generations.

Still in all, these are people living in the here-and-now 21st century, and as working musicians most of them are able to play, and have to play, more modern styles of jazz as well as various popular genres. It's impossible for this broad musical knowledge not to have some impact when a group of living breathing players provides a rendition of, say, St. James Infirmary, Bourbon Street Parade, or even When the Saints...

The brass-band phenomenon is a very interesting study in musical history. The late Danny Barker started a band of young teenagers back in, I think, the late 70s, and secured sponsorship from a local church. At the time, Danny was concerned that the old songs were being forgotten, and he taught these young kids all the correct numbers to play at funerals (before and after the body is "cut loose") and for other traditional functions and celebrations.

Danny was right. Back then, there was a very real danger of that tradition dying out. Fortunately, the kids learned to play and to love the old jazz standards, but of course they also loved, and could play, the contemporary music of their own generation.

I'm pretty sure that every member of the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band went on to a muscial career; most if not all of them participated in the brass band revival that began with the emergence of the Dirty Dozen, and that has blossomed over the last several decades.

The above-linked video is just one example of this new/old musical genre. It's quite sobering to reflect that without the determination of one man, the great Danny Barker, the entire brass band revival might never have happened and we would not have real street-parade music at all any more. Without the music, the S&P clubs might have died out, too, leaving no one to sponsor those groups of second-line dancers.

And Danny wasn't even a brass-band player; he was a string player, banjo and guitar, who left New Orleans to play and tour with Louis Armstrong. When he moved back home after Satchmo's passing, he was able to get gigs for himself, but he also was able to observe the gigs and the musical opportunities that couldn't be found any longer, that were fading into non-existence. That's when he became so concerned about keeping his favorite traditions alive.