Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club, in the early morning hours. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

In an art gallery tucked between a Caribbean restaurant and a full service laundry on a quiet street in Mid-City a group of teenagers and adults sat on the edges of their seats, full of anticipation.

“Are you ready for the word?” a man called out.

“Pass it on,” the crowd replied in unison.

A young man dressed in dark clothes and clenching a leather-bound notebook moved to take his place atop a soapbox.

“I have ‘AIDS’ No, I wasn’t raised this way. It’s something I picked up. My condition is different, I’ll explain in a minute,” the teen said, reading on for several minutes, the crowd clinging to his every word. “I have ‘AIDS’ — apparent influential disorder to speak.”

Following the poem’s conclusion, he stepped down from the soap box and, as tradition dictates, he tossed a penny in a jar. The crowd clapped, and the positive vibes carried him back to his seat.

The poet, Raheim Daniels, 16, was one of several to take the stage that night and share their words, their art. These poets, novices and veterans alike, are helping fuel the resurgence of the spoken-word poetry scene in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina emptied the city, many of the established performance poets were scattered throughout the diaspora. Some of the city’s premier poetry venues were shuttered.

“We lost a lot of the greats,” said Shannon Pellet, a veteran of the New Orleans poetry scene who relocated to Chicago after the hurricane. “It’s just like any other family that scattered after the hurricane — we were the same. I lost my brothers and my sisters and poets that I looked to like second mammas and aunts.”

Gian Smith, aka G-Perspective, 31, co-host of Noyo Presents: "Pass It On," expresses the importance of the spoken word. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

But now, as more poets and people who enjoy the art of spoken word are returning home, organizers said new venues that host poetry events are sprouting up all around the city.

“Eventually, people started to come back,” said Gian Smith, 31, whose stage name is G-Perspective. “As people start to come back, there has been more of a demand for poetry. People don’t just want poetry one night; they want it any night of the week that they want to have it.”

Smith, who was displaced after the storm, said he returned to New Orleans with a single purpose in mind.

“I came back to New Orleans after Katrina with the sole intention of doing what I could to help either salvage or restore or build the art that I knew and appreciated and loved,” he said. “Before Katrina, I always took this for granted. It wasn’t anything that I thought for a second, ‘oh, I won’t have this at my disposal,’ so I wasn’t as appreciate as I am of it now.”

Smith is now the co-host of “NOYO Presents: ‘Pass It On’ Open Mic” at the Red Star Galerie, an event that takes place every Saturday night.

The organizers felt it was important to showcase youth performances as well as seasoned adult performers, so they split the show into two parts.

“A lot of people come in early to hear the kids, and once they’ve performed, we’ll take an intermission, have a conversation topic we’ll discuss amongst the crowd, and then we’ll go into the adult portion of the show,” Smith said.

The shows have been particularly popular with teachers, who encourage their peers and students, like Daniels, to participate.

“It’s a great opportunity to be heard, and for other people around you to see what you have to bring to the table,” Daniels said. “With NOYO, I respect the fact they let the high school, younger crowd perform. I respect that a lot.”

Eric Couto, 18, another performer at the gallery that night, said the events following the hurricane inspired him to share his poetry with others.

“After Katrina, I started feeling bad, feeling sad, about what happened to our home,” Couto said. “I’d feel sad, angry, happy — so many emotions — and that’s when I started elaborating on them in my poetry. Spoken word puts me in a great place for those 5 or 10 that I’m performing, and that hour or two hours I’m watching everyone else perform.

“It’s like a safe haven,” he added. “It gives me a chance to breathe from all the stress I’ve been through.”

Local poets hanging out in front of Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club in the early morning hours. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

Across town and a few nights earlier inside Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club on St. Claude Avenue in the Marigny, the lights were dim and the air was thick with smoke. The din from the crowd of dozens that gathered there that night rose and settled in every corner of the place. Not far from the bustling bar, where patrons sipped cocktails under the watchful eye of a bartender, a woman stood on stage with her head bowed.

She lifted her head. Her eyes met the crowd. And she began to speak.

“While everyone wishes the tragedies of 9/11 had never happened, they are dying to see 9 and 11 again, ‘cuz when 10 and 12 struck, that was when 10-year-old Rodney would lose his best friend.”

The piece, performed by Pellet, who goes by the stage name Uncaged Bird, was a memoir about her two cousins, who at ages 10 and 12, witnessed the murder of their mother.

“Poetry is my expression,” she said. “The first time I performed that poem about my aunt, I just went outside and cried. It happened when I was 14, and for seven years I couldn’t even talk about it until finally at 21, I was finally able to get it out through spoken word.”

Pellet has been coming to Sweet Lorraine’s to enjoy spoken word for about six years.

“There’s a lot of history in that place,” she said of the club. “Just being around people who like the same things, who appreciate the same thing, it feels good. There’s not a night I don’t go to a poetry night and learn something or have my interest sparked.”

Shelton “Shakespear” Alexander, 34, has been the host of the weekly spoken word event at Sweet Lorraine’s since 2003.

Alexander also was displaced by the hurricane. He returned to New Orleans in February 2006.

“Once people found out I was back in the city, they started calling the club trying to find out if poetry was going to continue,” he said. “We’re keeping it going. I made sure I came back to New Orleans, and been committed to it.”

Alexander is considered a veteran within the spoken-word community, and said that he supports the next generation of poets filling the void left by those who are no longer on the scene.

“When I came back, a lot of the poets that were around when I started out stayed wherever they had relocated,” Alexander said. “They’ll come to visit, but haven’t come back totally. A lot of new artists are keeping it going. We wouldn’t really have a good spoken word scene if it wasn’t for the younger artists stepping up and getting it going again.”

Back at the Red Star Galerie, night had settled and the poets and most of the audience poured from the gallery and onto the sidewalk for intermission. The group quickly filled the quiet street with loud conversations that had been pent up during the first session.

Amid the greetings and laughter, the people began to gravitate toward one another, forming a circle beneath a streetlamp.

Poets took turns standing inside of the circle, free-styling, each line of prose met with steady cheers.

After about 5 minutes, the co-host of the night’s event appeared in the doorway.

“Are y’all ready for the word or what?” the man called out.

“Pass it on!” the group yelled back in unison before filing back into the gallery.

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.”

Dating to the early 19^th century, brass bands – with their trumpets, tubas, trombones, saxophones and booming bass drums – continue to set the rhythm of the city. But now, they play in two widely different styles.

Older bands, like the Treme Brass Band, carry on a tradition long identified with the jazz clubs of the city, playing slow, non-amplified, but still rollicking numbers, their members dressed alike in black and white with white caps and ties.

A newer kind of band, which started appearing in the 1970s, is more likely to play in a louder, faster, electrified style, performing in whatever outfits suit their style. The Soul Rebels, is one such band their sound  heightens the level energy by adding funk and playing contemporary works.

Benny Jones Sr., leader of the Treme Brass Band, always had music in his life, most directly from his father, who played drums in the Eureka Brass Band. After founding the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Jones founded the Treme Band in 1975, naming it after the community where he has lived all his life. The band’s traditions include singing in Creole.

Lamar LeBlanc, leader of the Soul Rebels, has also been involved in music most of his life. After playing with the Olympia Brass Band, he formed his own band in 1990.

While the Treme band’s bass drummer, Lionel Batiste, 76, beats his drum in a more traditional way, without electronic microphones amplifying sound, the Soul Rebels tuba player, Edward Lee, promotes the newer, louder style, nearly blowing listeners back in their seats. And trumpet players Marcus Hubbard and Tannon Williams play in the highest register of the trumpet.

The newer band’s informal look has its critics, who say it takes away from the professionalism in the business. It seems to also remove the juke-joint feel of traditional jazz.

Jones says that while the newer bands may look, and sound, different, what’s most important is that all generations remember the foundation of brass band music and that the profession should be taken seriously.

A member of the greek band Alpha Omega doesn't miss a note at the 2009 New Orleans Greek Festival on May 23 in New Orleans. (Richard White/NYT Institute)

A baklava sundae is one of the many desserts served at the 2009 New Orleans Greek Festival on May 23. (Richard White/NYT Institute)

Beneath a mildly blazing sun that threatened retreat at any moment, the Holy Trinity Cathedral’s annual Greek Festival returned to New Orleans on Saturday for its 36th year.

Each year of the event, organizers seek to inspire cultural enrichment by packing the Greek experience into a Memorial Day weekend filled with celebration, traditional Greek folk music, dancing, and, of course, delectable Greek cuisine.

“We’re very well known for our food,” said Gina Psilos, a festival co-chairwoman. “That’s what people come here for.”

Psilos said culinary preparation for the three-day festival begins in January, and intense cooking and baking sessions take place during the entire week before the festival. All of the foods are cooked by parishioners of the church.

“Everything we sell here is Greek-oriented from Greece,” she said. “People bring empty coolers and bags so they can buy cheeses and wines and dips.”

A popular treat was Greek calamari with a New Orleans twist.

“We make it with Cajun spices, a little bit on the hot side, fry it in vegetable oil and sprinkle some feta cheese on it,” said Terry Marathonitis, who was in charge of calamari.

Other fan favorites included a baklava sundae (dough baked with nuts, honey and topped with ice-cream), souvlaki (grilled meat and vegetables served on a stick) and pomegranate daiquiris.

Pomegranate, which dates to mythological times, has long symbolized fertility and luck within the Greek community. Other pomegranate-flavored treats included tea and snowballs for children.

Amid the delicacies a sense of community and spirituality prevailed.

“New Orleans is a wonderful melting pot of many cultures, and we are a part of that,” Psilos said. “We have thousands of years of history and culture, but our heritage and our religion go hand in hand.” A popular attraction for visitors was a tour of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Along with its rich history – Holy Trinity was the first Greek Orthodox congregation in the Americas, established 145 years ago – the cathedral boasts unique and intricate iconography on the walls and ceiling.

Toward the back of the festival grounds, merchants could be found in the outdoor marketplace, or the “agora,” with imports from the Greek Islands.

M.K. Semos, a photographer originally from Dallas, was selling Greek-inspired art at the festival. She and her husband began participating in the festival after visiting New Orleans to help rebuild the cathedral after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“We love the food, and people really appreciate the artwork,” she said.

A traditional Greek band provided the soundtrack for the festival. In the center of the action, several groups performed traditional Greek folk dancing and encouraged audience participation.

“The Greek dancers live for this stuff all year long,” said Edwin Fleischman, a lawyer who participates in a local dancing troupe. “It depends on the dance – if it’s a simple dance, you’re going to get up to 30 people out there.”

The Greek festivities draw between 25,000 to 30,000 people every year.

New Orleans native Terry Battle and her husband soaked up the cultural experience.

“They’re nice and they’re open; they’re entertaining and they’re educational,” Terry said. “They don’t mind expressing their culture and talking to us about it. The respect for their culture and even the discipline they have for it is great.”

Ginger Grant, another New Orleans native, has been coming to the festival since 1985. “It was very quaint and primitive back then,” she said. “It’s really expanded over the years.”

Grant says that in the past 15 years, she has missed only a couple of festivals.

“I love the food and learning about the culture,” she said. “I would advise more cultures to attend. It’s a really good experience, and more people need to be exposed to it.”

Irvin Mayfield, cultural ambassador and the artistic director for the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, presented a five-point plan to the City Council that outlined several objectives necessary to reconstruct the “cultural infrastructure” in New Orleans.

Those objectives included rebuilding the city’s talent pool; supporting community-based traditions; the repair and development of cultural facilities; marketing New Orleans as a world-class cultural capital; teaching cultural traditions to youth; and attracting new investment and information resources to the city.

In his “state of culture” address, Mayfield stressed the role culture plays in education, the crime rate, affordable housing for artists, politics and the future of New Orleans.

Mayfield said culture in education allows young people to participate in and “own” something positive, steering youth away from drugs and crime. In addition, he said culture bridges the gap between the government and its citizens.

“There is an opportunity for greatness if we can invest in the core of our city” he said. “By sustaining the organizations, groups and individuals who breathe life into the city every day, culture becomes the No. 1 investment we can make in our community.”

The current draft of the city’s master plan includes a section on preserving the culture of the Big Easy.

The plan, prepared by the New Orleans City Planning Commission, maps out the long-term physical development of the city, and includes a comprehensive zoning plan that gives residents and developers clear direction on the city’s development.

Scheduled for completion by June, the plan expands and integrates post-Katrina recovery and redevelopment plans. It also creates a 20-year policy and strategic outline to guide residents and policymakers in creating a 21^st century New Orleans while “honoring and preserving its unique identity.”

“I think our culture is a very unique part of our character and how we live,” said Yolanda Rodriguez, executive director of the city planning commission.

But Rodriguez believes that the arts and culture section of the draft can and should be strengthened. She added that the culture of New Orleans has helped attract tourists.

“Tourism is connected to the character and economic state of the city,” Rodriguez said.

Advocates say culture is synonymous with the city of New Orleans.

“Culture is New Orleans,” said Valerie McMillan, a musician and spoken-word artist who co-owns an agency with her sister called Wordplay, which works to bring spoken-word events to New Orleans high schools.

“It’s what we eat; it’s in the jambalaya and the architecture,” she said. “You’re not going to find this culture anywhere else. It’s in the people. Everyone has their different stories. It’s in the music, the jazz, everything. That’s why everyone comes to New Orleans to visit.”

Mayfield said there is a gap between the cultural community and other communities in the city.

“Just like you can’t play a great jazz song without knowing what every instrument is going through, we can’t expect folks in the Ninth Ward to understand what folks in Lakeview are going through if they don’t ever go there,” Mayfield said. “It is not only important that each instrument sound good individually but we must invest in their success as a group. For a jazz group to sound good, every member of the band must get to know and trust each other. For our city to succeed, we have to get to know and trust each other.”

Mayfield said his organization will host a series of weekly town-hall meetings at every public library so that the public can contribute to the discussion. The first meeting is from 6 to 8 p.m. on June 3 at the Main Library branch.

“The conversation begins today,” Mayfield said. “But it is far from over.”

The festival, held July 3-5 at the Superdome, is packed with concerts featuring some of the biggest names in music as well as various seminars.

Organizers expect their “party with a purpose” to draw more than 270,000 attendees and add about $100 million to the local economy.

“Given the current state of our economy, we’re trying to give them the best bang for their buck,” said Dawn Baskerville, the executive editor of Essence magazine.  ”We’re always prepared for Essence Music Festival. As soon as we complete one we’re in preparation for the next year.”

Essence magazine is a main organizer (and sponsor) of the festival. Baskerville said that months of planning and logistical work goes into making each year an enjoyable event.

The Superdome will host five simultaneously playing concerts on each day of the festival. The main stage will showcase the feature acts. And other artists will be performing in four separate, smaller club rooms called super lounges. Concert-goers will have access to both the main stage and super lounges.

The festival’s main stage will feature artists such as Beyonce, John Legend, Maxwell, Anita Baker, Robin Thicke, Lionel Ritchie, and Al Green just to name a few.

Some of the artists scheduled to perform in the lounges include Keri Hilson, Solange, Eric Benet, Ryan Leslie, Raphael Saadiq and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Along with the concerts in the Superdome, another vital component of the Music Festival is the “empowerment seminars.” These free seminars, held in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, run the duration of the festival. This year’s seminar hosts include Roland Martin, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Dr. Juanita Bynum, Bill Cosby, Steve Harvey, and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

 ”It’s a multimillion dollar project,” she said.

Mary Beth Romig, the director of communications and public relations for the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Burea, said that this year’s festival has a certain significance.

“It’s an anniversary year. We look to see as many visitors as we’ve had in the past. No matter what has happened people still come to New Orleans,” Romig said. “We certainly believe the Essence festival will have a strong attendance;, we count it as a major event. We always roll out the red carpet for this event. It gives us a good lure to draw visitors to the city.”

To promote the event, the Visitors Bureau did a lot grass-roots marketing, print advertising and plenty of outreach to journalists, Romig said.

The festival has been held in New Orleans in all but one of the last 15 years. In 2006 it was moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina left the Superdome and much of the city in ruins.

Organizers said they were committed to bringing the festival back to New Orleans.

Bill Curl, who has been the spokesperson for the Superdome for 32 years, said he does all he can to make  the event a success.

“The people enjoy the event so much. It’s the biggest thing of the whole week. I love seeing the expressions on people’s faces,” Curl said.” It’s not a normal event. It’s a truly unique event that takes a great deal of preparation.”  

With such a busy weekend of festival related activities, the Superdome needs a big staff to keep up. The Superdome has a pool of part-time staff that works year round, but for the Essence Music Festival an additional 600 to 800 workers are brought on as ushers, ticket takers and parking lot attendants, Curl said.

 ”The festival gets more exciting every year,” Curl said. “The Superdome is a building with tremendous history, and people get that sense of history every time they come to the Superdome.

The New Orleans Police Department is also preparing for the  festivities.

“The Music Festival is like any event in the dome,” said Lt. Andre Menzies, likening it to other major events held at the Superdome, such as the Bayou Classic football game, the Sugar Bowl and Circus.

“People will know that they are safe,” Menzies said, speaking of the police department’s stepped up-efforts during festival weekend.”We’re the best at what we do.”

Baskerville called it a “guaranteed feel-good weekend.”

“We want you to party and have a good time, but we also want you to leave fulfilled,” she said. “If anything, it’s a party with a purpose. We are also uplifting each other, mind, body and spirit. It’s about connecting with your community.”