French Quarter Festival

There's something about festivals that bring people together. But make that a MUSIC festival, in the French Quarter, on a sunny day in April, in a post-Katrina world... and it's nearly a religious experience.

There's the guy I see at every Jazz Festival - in his tie dye shirt and crazy hat and sparkly red shoes, dancing with his wife, and any tourist brave enough to get close. There are the old hippies and the young hippies spread out on blankets. There are the families with young children. The mother nursing her infant. There are the college students dancing wildly in front of the stage and couples doing the Cajun two-step. There are musicians standing around with their instruments, coming or going from their turn on stage. There are women in high heels with their perfectly dyed hair and their manicures and expensive dresses. There are the men with no shirts, and many, many people with no shoes. There are children on a field trip eating their bag lunches on the aquarium lawn, listening to a brass band. This diverse mess of humanity stands together, bopping along to the beat, smiling, singing, laughing, clapping, cheering and crying.

Perhaps it's the diversity in the music. Besides the usual guitars and drums I danced to an accordion, a fiddle, a washboard, tin cans, Congo drums, a sousaphone, a trumpet, a trombone and an organ. I heard funk and blues and Cajun and rock and folk and brass bands and Latin.

Perhaps it's the fact that, even 2 1/2 year later, every musician or group sang a song or told a story or made a joke about Hurricane Katrina. Maybe it's the common struggle that binds us together, locals and tourists alike.

Or maybe it's just some really great music.