There’s also the tradition of voodoo, the Haitian magic arts, in New Orleans. And because New Orleans is below sea level, when they bury people in New Orleans, it’s mostly above ground. So you have this idea that the spirits are more accessible and can access you more easily because they’re not even buried.
I live in New Orleans part of the year, and it’s a really fun eating town. I bought two homes there, one to live in and one as an investment. They love to eat, drink and dress up in costumes. There are so many reasons to dress up – Mardi Gras, Halloween, Southern Decadence.
I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here.
I certainly wanted to write a book that was honest about New Orleans without explaining it to death, so much so that the first draft contained references absolutely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t lived here for several years.
Being in the city of New Orleans, meeting the people, it’s been nothing but hospitality and a lot of love.
New Orleans made me who I am.
I love New Orleans.
‘Treme’ begins after Hurricane Katrina, and it’s a year-by-year account of how everyday people there put their lives back together. It’s sort of a testament to, or an argument for why, a great American city like New Orleans needs to be saved and preserved.
I’m from downtown New Orleans. Downtown consists of the 7th ward, the 8th ward, the 9th ward.
For a long time, New Orleans was the classic-rock station of American cuisine, its reputation for flamboyance belying its playlist conservatism.
Prior to Katrina, the South Bronx and New Orleans’ Ninth Ward had a lot in common. Both were largely populated by poor people of color, both hotbeds of cultural innovation: think hip-hop and jazz. Both are waterfront communities that host both industries and residents in close proximity of one another.
My favorite day was Monday, September the 25th, 2006. New Orleans, Louisiana, site of the Superdome. I watched our people who had suffered so grievously through Hurricane Katrina fill a stadium hours before a game and stay hours after the game.
People from New Orleans are extremely prideful.
It’s one of the greatest festivals in the world. New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest is the best all-around… It’s an honor to be closing it.
Being from North Carolina, it’s kind of slow-paced. There’s not too much going on there, whereas in New Orleans, there’s always something going on. I just love all the people, going out to dinner and enjoying anything I want.
I love it here in New Orleans.
When my dad went to college to get his master’s from Loyola, he was playing Debussy and Chopin and Beethoven. But he played all that New Orleans stuff, too. I would go with my dad to gigs, pick up the piano and the speakers, and I would be like his roadie.
I’ve lived so much life as a young man. New Orleans, we got terms, and one’s like, ‘He jumped off the porch early.’ That’s kind of what happened to me. I had to grow up really quick.
New Orleans has a unique history as a great melting pot of all kinds of cultures, and that manifests itself now through the food, the music, and the kinds of people who live there.
It’s hard to believe President George Bush gave a speech in New Orleans about disaster recovery and failed to mention the word ‘farm’ or the word ‘rural.’
I remember being in New Orleans after Katrina hearing people calling, ‘Help me,’ and wanting to slide down in the seat of my car because it felt like I was invading their suffering. But I also know that our being there gave them a voice.
So the mayor of New Orleans would have used his own buses had the people had been white?
New Orleans just embraces people who love music.
New Orleans has an incredible culture. Everybody brings up food first, but I realized there’s a lot more to that in terms of music and art and people and history.
We moved around so much when I was a kid, the place I call home is New Orleans because at least I can remember the names of some of the streets there.
We’re not really trying to do anything besides represent where we come from, and that’s New Orleans.
My mother worked for a white family that lived in one of the mansions on the beach. The husband in the family was a lawyer; he worked for a firm in New Orleans.
I’ve started to fall for New Orleans recently. There’s real life there, if you know what I mean.
I’m from New Orleans, and we have a Mardi Gras group called the Chewbacchus. It’s celebrating all things geeky: science fiction, fantasy, ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Doctor Who,’ ‘Men in Black,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ everything.
I went to a fairly normal, middle-of-the-road public school in a suburb of New Orleans, but it gave me huge opportunities.
When a lot of people are calling it a night at 2 A.M., New Orleans is coming alive.
I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don’t even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they’re all Jelly Roll style.
New Orleans is great for a lot of the old-school charm and character.
Like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren’t always obvious.
New Orleans in an amazing town.
I’m not from New Orleans, never knew anything about New Orleans.
The Bush administration got a lot of things horribly wrong in its disaster response to the New Orleans flood, and it deserves almost all of the bitter recriminations hurled its way.
I love Louisiana. There’s no place on earth like Louisiana, and there’s no city on earth like New Orleans. I grew up in Baton Rouge.
New Orleans has to learn to live with water rather than in fear of water, and we need a master plan that shows us how to do this. It’s so critical that we send a signal to everyone in the country that we’re serious about rebuilding New Orleans.
My office in New York is overflowing with all kinds of cookbooks, and in New Orleans we have a huge culinary library. So yeah, I guess I’m a little bit obsessed.
Everything changed after Katrina. It’s a new New Orleans now and I think it’s better. It was a wake-up call and it rebuilt and cleaned up the city. It all happened for a reason. I’m now grateful for Katrina.
I just want to spearhead and lead a new style of New Orleans music.
There’s a difference between the blues of the New Orleans guys and anyone else and the difference is in a chord, but I can’t figure the name of it. It’s a different chord, and they all make it.
There could have been more planning in New Orleans, but you look at all the devastation that happened there – have we gotten to 3,000 deaths yet? For that magnitude of a disaster, that’s not all that bad.
I’ve always had an interest in Louisiana, especially New Orleans.
My father’s record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by.
Growing up in New Orleans and just being in a poverty-stricken neighborhood gave me that same fire that Eazy had to separate himself from what could have ended up being such a bad situation.
I make a lot of soups, and I love stews. My mother’s a big foodie. She went to culinary school in New Orleans and has an oyster-artichoke soup recipe that has no cream in it but it tastes so creamy.
I did grow up in New Orleans. I grew up right on the lake, right across the levee.
I know the hustle that is in Louisiana. Knowing where you are from, really where you’re from, helps you to help the community. That’s every city, but New Orleans is just different. We have big hearts, but it’s just a matter of us having the information, having the people to push you along like I had.
New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture – even the local superstitions. It’s a sensory experience on all levels and there’s a story lurking around every corner.
The Madden NFL franchise holds a special place in popular culture and the cover is a coveted position for players all over the league. I’m honored to be the first cover athlete chosen by Madden NFL fans and it’s a great way to cap off an amazing year for the Saints and the city of New Orleans.
In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.
Honestly, I got the best of both worlds: groove of New Orleans meets the intensity of Texas. That’s the best education I could have, the best experiences I could have.
I want to continue to stay plugged into New Orleans and help people who are still struggling with the recovery here, and then, if I can help around the country and around the world, absolutely, I’ll be open to that.
For a long time a lot of people thought New Orleans wasn’t a safe place and that it was very ratchet.
In ’71 or ’72 I returned to New Orleans and stayed there. I started cooking Louisiana food. Of all the things I had cooked, it was the best-and it was my heritage.
Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music – it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I’m really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis – he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn’t impress me.