Music Slowly Revives in New Orleans

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The London Observer has a great audio slide show on music in New Orleans, post-Katrina. (To check it out, click on the photo, which shows the remains of a jukebox after the flood.) You get the basic gist from this paragraph in an accompanying article.

Following the storm it would be hard to say that music is in rude health, even in its rawest form, but look hard enough and the spirit of what everyone here calls ‘the real New Orleans’ is still intact. ‘I defy you to spend a day in this city without hearing live music,’ says Ben Jaffe, whose parents founded the French Quarter jazz venue Preservation Hall in 1961. He now plays bass with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. ‘You can’t walk down the street without hearing live music.’ He’s right. Even with 50 per cent of the population absent, much of the city a ghost town where even the 24-hour diners close at lunchtime because they’ve run out of food or staff and neighbourhoods are mouldering and decaying, music is everywhere, be it hip hop, bounce, brass bands or traditional jazz.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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