Everyone’s watching this year’s Jazz Fest in New Orleans for signs of the city’s recovery. “Music in New Orleans has always been entertaining, but never just entertainment. It held on to cultural memories, negotiated between Old and New World aesthetics, and bound together families, neighborhoods and communities. It’s party music, but it’s also a secular ritual. And while the city has spawned far more than its share of gifted musicians, its music was not created from the top down.”