Music is the language of us all (Cat Empire)

Emerging from the bayous of southern Louisiana a gearbox fixed with a spitball and something from the garbage, we were back on the road to our rendezvous with our friends Don and Jenny Broyles. They had once again arranged to lavish kindness on us with a stay with them in a grand old New Orleans hotel, replete with rooftop pool and PB&J sandwiches and milk at 10pm every night in the lobby.

New Orleans is like no other city we have experienced in the US. Bawdy, brazen and boozy. Dark alleys and Katrina's shadow only a part of a much longer shadow of travail. But somehow through these dark mills has sprung the defiant note of trumpet, trombone and ivory'd key. We have been privy to the clarion call of New Orleans' silky wee hours magic, sitting next to foot tappers from across the globe, revelling in husky crooners and the charms of ancient men behind drums, keys and reed. It is common knowledge here that one day ole Mistah St. Peter will revise his instrument of choice and welcome the glad throng of happy Saints marching in.

And then the food- gumbo, jambalaya, green tomatoes, shrimp, crawdad, crab and catfish po'boy fighting for the attention of my coronaries. Mere flailing on the hotel's treadmill in the gym upstairs to fight off slavery's most subtle revenge. Our trip also included a visit to a Creole sugar cane plantation, which not free from the 3 AM ring of the slave bell, was refreshingly different to the grand visions of the white columned facade of the English American plantation homes. Bright colours and a dark matriarch yelling at the Union battleship that cruised up the Mississippi lobbing shells at all the riverside mansions, "We fought with you against the English!". And a swamp cruise with a skipper who called gators out of the ooze like his children. And an evening of Zydeco dancing, merry men drawing us into the throng of Arcadian ritual and fun.


We eked out our last hours at the Preservation Hall, a humble room of only a few benches and standing room with walls carrying the rubbings of countless pilgrims to this shrine of syncopation and souls that soar.