In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago, many wondered whether the city’s unique culture, especially its food and music, would survive.
New Orleans – I recently took off to Louis Armstrong International Airport and immediately reminded me of how radically the city has changed over 20 years since Hurricane Katrina.
Getting off the plane, a sparkling $1.3 billion terminal was beckoned with Creole offerings from Leah’s Kitchen and Café Du Monde. There is a stunning two-storey Cypress Swamp mural. The curves and technology of a world-class facility are far from an aging terminal.
Then I went to get my rental car back.
After 15 minutes of waiting in the dazzling rain, the shuttle bus arrived. It took me 25 minutes to patrol the airport grounds before I could get me and other passengers to the car rental facility.
The charm of dysfunction. Some things in New Orleans may be different, but others remain stubbornly the same.
Musicians and unity will heal New Orleans 20 years after Katrina
The New Orleans musician will celebrate the 20th anniversary of rebuilding through Hurricane Katrina, civil rights, music and community.
I lived in New Orleans from 2007 to 2013 and at the time I report on the destruction that Katrina was born and the reconstruction from the failure of the federal levee. It is one of the most special places my wife and I have ever lived in and one of the most important stories I have ever featured.
Katrina cried out for athletics and field on the morning of August 29, 2005 as a Category 3 hurricane. It killed over 1,300 people. Many of them have adjusted for inflation in the lower 9th district of New Orleans, causing about $220 billion in damage. At the time, federal estimates showed that it was the most expensive hurricane of all time and one of the third highest deaths from recorded hurricanes in US history.
One pressing question early in the recovery was whether the city would retain its tradition and charm during the reconstruction. Will New Orleans hurry to spend billions of dollars on federal recovery money in its unique culture (about the very unique culture that visitors travel from all over the world)?
When I returned to town to report 20th Hurricane Katrina anniversary was one of the important questions I wanted to answer.
“Always room for another great restaurant”
To understand how the city’s food scene has evolved, I met Dickie Brennan, a third-generation restaurant that includes stable eateries, including some of New Orleans’ most iconic restaurants, including Bourbon House, The Comessary and Pascale Manar.
In the late afternoon, we sat in a rocking chair on the porch of his river-bearing house, watching the cargo ship slowly down the Mississippi River. Brennan spoke about his time at Katrina. He fled to Baton Rouge after the storm, but returned to the city five weeks later to reopen Bourbon House in the French quarter.
It was one of the first restaurants to open in town after Katrina. While New Orleans sat in the muddy ruins, Brennan and his crew provided journalists and first responders with half shells and redfish to wild catfish.
“We were there,” Brennan said. “Our instinct was, ‘Let’s just get there and do it.’ ”
Since then, 20 years have presented numerous challenges to the city’s restaurant scene, from visitor figures to shortages of infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, to the coronavirus pandemic, which has further smashed the bottom of restaurants. But through this, the city’s restaurant scene somehow thrived. It is estimated that the number of restaurants in New Orleans jumped to more than 1,200 from 800 before Katrina to 2018.
One challenge to the nature of urban culinary traits is neighbourhood gentrification. Entrepreneurs across the United States have descended to New Orleans after Katrina. However, the influx threatened to distill a distinctive Creole dish.
Brennan said he was a fake to the newcomer.
He was referring to Magazine Street, a retail corridor in the Garden District, which welcomed quality restaurants after Katrina (Shaya, Dacarnola). He said that independent restaurants bringing new ideas and flavours are good for cities built on a constantly evolving culture and taste.
“If I see Red Lobster on Magazine Street, I’m pissed,” he said. “We’re not competing with each other. We’re competing with the rest of the world. This is a great restaurant town. There’s always space for another great restaurant.”
In many ways, this is a superpower in New Orleans. It absorbs newcomers and their culture and strums unique sounds and flavors.
The strong hit Bamboolas By enslaved people in the 19 cities of Congo Squareth The century may have leaked into the surrounding area and influenced early jazz. Spanish soldiers occupying colonial New Orleans used local ingredients for their beloved paella to produce jambalaya (although some culinary scholars place their culinary origins in West Africa). And refugees from the slave rebellion in Sandoming (now Haiti) clearly infused Caribbean talent and tradition, including voodoo.
However, Katrina led the city’s heritage to the ultimate test, and took charge of its culture, scattering chefs, artists, Mardi Greindians and musicians around the country.
Without musicians, New Orleans won’t survive.
Ben Jaffe knew that the increased alarms in the aftermath of Katrina had caused the musicians to escape from flooded cities without resources to rebuild or return.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Jaffe manages the conservation hall, a well-known French Quarter venue dedicated to preserving the original New Orleans Jazz and co-founding by parents Alan and Sandra Jaffe.
I was raised at 19th– Jaffey, 54 years old, next door, the carriage house of the next century grew up around musicians, and many of them knew it would be difficult to return after Katrina.
One day, I met Jaffe in the back room of the legendary venue over the summer. Behind him was a framed photo of drummer Shannon Powell on top of the grand piano, and Jaffe was wearing a t-shirt decorated with a photo of 93-year-old saxophonist Charlie Gabriel.
Jaffe got into his car in his apartment just outside the French quarter, then reached his car, went to Baton Rouge and Lafayette, stayed on his friend’s couch and checked in the refugees. He eventually headed to New York City where he began to think about how to bring the musician back to New Orleans.
Jaffe is Kermit Ruffins, Irma Thomas, and Dr. I realized that New Orleans wouldn’t survive without artists like John and Allen Toussaint.
“All these people become symbols of the reconstruction process,” he said. “I realised very early on. Once we get the musicians back, everyone comes back with them.”
Exclusive Book: How Katrina Changed All of us
Jaffe created the Hurricane Relief Fund, a New Orleans musician. This raised money to help local artists return and rebuild through profit concerts. Slowly, the musician returned to town.
The preservation hall reopened and tourists were soon returning. Live music once again filled the music halls from River Bend to Bywater.
But the day passes without considering the floods that Jaffe has engulfed his city.
“A lot of people didn’t get through the storm,” he said. “A lot of people haven’t returned to town. It’s those people who get me out of bed every day. It’s those people’s memories that do what I do every day.
“There’s something like this wound. It’s not soothing at all. It’s like a reminder of all that pain.”
“It’s from New Orleans.”
Jaffe walked me next to a 3-storey 19th century house. There, the construction crew carefully pioneered the dry walls and hammer. Through the success of Preservation Hall and its band of the same name (where Jaffe plays a Sousaphone playing a tuba-like instrument worn over the torso), Jaffe has developed a 10,000-square-foot structure, developing it into a community center where young musicians can learn and execute traditional New Orleans sounds.
He admits this idea to Katrina.
“I wouldn’t have thought about this unless it was for Katrina,” Jaffe said. “I probably didn’t think of this extensively.”
Later that night, I went back to the preservation hall and watched standards like “St. Louis Blues,” “Li’l Liza Jane,” and “His Eye Is The Sparrow.” Many tourists watched with awe.
After the show I drove around the dark city. I went back to the French Quarter with a fern-setting live oaks column, passing by by Water and Marigny neighborhoods, after Katrina, Hypestar’s brunch spot and art gallery that sprouted over Esplanade Avenue.
As I did, Allen Toussaint’s “It’s New Orleans” has come second to be a community-supported radio station that helps keep the city’s music culture alive.
“There’s a bit of Tipitina wherever I’m…
Everyone in New Orleans knows exactly what I mean. ”
I drove slowly along Royal Street. A man in his twenties, wearing a gorgeous wrought iron Spanish-style balcony and a white short-sleeved shirt and black tie, passing me on his bike, a glittering trombone balanced by the handlebars.
“That’s New Orleans…
Just because you leave town won’t leave you…”
Everything is different. And everything is still the same.
Jervis is a national correspondent for USA Today, based in Austin, Texas. He lived in New Orleans from 2007 to 2013, covering the area’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina. He is the author of “The Devil Behind: The Fearful 12 Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer.”
