It was just under four years ago that Jared Zeller was sitting in his mother-in-law’s living room in New York, watching the news, when a feeling of helplessness crept into his stomach. It was 2005 and Hurricane Katrina had just destroyed most of his historic New Orleans neighborhood, Mid-City.

When he saw his neighborhood filled with over five feet of water, his family displaced by the storm and his friends suffering each day, he wanted to do something to make a difference, to make things be the way they used to be.

“Katrina comes along and destroys our neighborhood,” Zeller said. “I’m sitting there keeping up with the information, watching the news, trying to decide what to do. Do we come back to New Orleans and try to help rebuild?”

He decided to do just that, going back to the place that, for months, he had been watching on television from New York.

Zeller set up a nonprofit called the Mothership Foundation, with a mission to be “dedicated to social change by bringing forth a higher quality of life for all Louisiana and New Orleans residents through the promotion of arts, culture and recreation.”

Through the foundation, in 2006 Zeller created a free annual music festival for the local community called the Bayou Boogaloo. The event, held each Memorial Day weekend on the banks of Bayou Saint John at Orleans Avenue in Mid-City, ended Saturday.

“I wanted the festival to have a representation of musical genres from around the world, really which New Orleans has,” Zeller said in an interview on Saturday at the festival. “We have funk, jazz, blues, reggae, a little bit of everything. So it’s a diverse bag of talent.”

Zeller has never shied away from challenges. He spent 10 years as a music producer and an event coordinator. He also works for a local nonprofit radio program in the New Orleans area.

In general, Zeller said his life’s work can best be described as “full-time work for part-time pay.”

“I’ve lost a lot of money over the years on some of my endeavors, I guess you can say,” Zeller said with a grin. “People have said I’m overly ambitious, but I don’t mind. As long as I’m making a difference in this neighborhood, in this community, then I am OK with it.”

Since its first year, Bayou Boogaloo has featured popular artists from Louisiana. This year the list of acts totaled 16 musical performances featuring the likes of the Storyville Stompers, Little Freddie King and Equal Opportunity Employment, and five art shows by Rhino Contemporary Artists, a group of painters from the area.

One musician who represented the festival’s diversity was Charmaine Neville, a Louisiana native who heads an eclectic band whose music ranges from blues to funk.

Neville said the music festival means more than just a good time to the people of Mid-City, because music represents what makes New Orleans and its neighborhoods what they are today.

“Music is everything in New Orleans,” Neville explained. “I mean, without music, what would New Orleans be? It would be just another city in America.”

The post-Katrina recovery for the neighborhood has not been easy, Zeller said. But with the free music festival, he said, the residents now have something to look forward to every year as they continue to rebuild and reshape their neighborhood.

“Bayou Boogaloo gives people a break from the stress of everyday life. I think that was important after Katrina,” Zeller said. “We were completely consumed with rebuilding, preplanning our lives, and we needed a day to say this is why we live here. The people, the culture is worth saving.”