Treme in New Orleans, Louisiana

“Won’t bow down. Don’t know how.” A place of pride and refuge for New Orleans’ free people of color who could buy property here, the Faubourg Treme – as far back as its founding in the 18th Century – served as cultural rendezvous between the worlds of white and black while its back streets birthed a music that conquered the world. Bulldozed but not forgotten, the infamous Storyville red-light district flourished in the Treme’s upper stretches while St. Augustine Church remains the centerpiece for the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the country. Jazz today is honored by Armstrong Park, named in tribute to Louis Armstrong and Congo Square – where slaves once gathered to make music. Similar beats are heard today seeping from tiny clubs, booming out in a joyous second line or in the eerie drumming of the skeleton krewe emerging from the Backstreet Museum at dawn Mardi Gras Day to wake the sleeping. “Live!” is their command. And that’s exactly what the Treme always does.