We used to play football on the levee, with no shirts on in the summer - August in New Orleans - and my skin would turn red. They'd call me Redskin, Red Apache, then it turned around to Apache Red.

If I had grown up in any place but New Orleans, I don't think my career would have taken off. I wouldn't have heard the music that was around this town. There was so much going on when I was a kid.

There's no such thing as 'sissy bounce.' We don't separate it here in New Orleans at all. It's just bounce music. Just because I'm a gay artist, they don't have to put it in a category or label it.

I make a lot of soups, and I love stews. My mother's a big foodie. She went to culinary school in New Orleans and has an oyster-artichoke soup recipe that has no cream in it but it tastes so creamy.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. 'Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

The condition in New Orleans was changing every day. I said, why don't we appropriate another $10 billion, come back and look at the situation, and do another $10 billion every week, or every 10 days?

I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.

Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game.

When I was a kid, I saw Mardi Gras in New Orleans. So to me Party Rock was always wear your animal print, bring your no-lenses glasses, dress up in a bunch of colors and have fun. Animal print is a must.

My brother Art was a doo-wopper. He had a group that sat out on a park bench in New Orleans and sang harmonies at night, and they'd go around and win all the talent shows and get all the girls, you know.

There could have been more planning in New Orleans, but you look at all the devastation that happened there - have we gotten to 3,000 deaths yet? For that magnitude of a disaster, that's not all that bad.

My initial training was on the keyboard - mainly the great American songbook. In junior high, during the day, I was a classical clarinetist, but after school, I played New Orleans jazz and big-band music.

In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.

When you set a play in the French Quarter in New Orleans, it's hard not to acknowledge the whole African-American, French, white mixing of races. That's what the French Quarter is: it's a Creole community.

I think ultimately the goal is to try to bring a Super Bowl to New Orleans and that's the reason I signed that deal, because I have a great chance at winning another Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints.

I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don't even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they're all Jelly Roll style.

I'm from a very violent city. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana, and it's good to see me be able to express my art, have a good opportunity for my life, make history and say something, without being violent.

People don't play music in New Orleans for the reasons they do in Nashville or L.A. - to become stars or to get rich - they play because they've got to. It's in the streets, in their family, in their blood.

When I was growing up, I did not exercise at all. I was raised in the French Quarter in New Orleans. If I saw someone running, I would call the police because I thought they stole something on Royal Street.

Everything changed after Katrina. It's a new New Orleans now and I think it's better. It was a wake-up call and it rebuilt and cleaned up the city. It all happened for a reason. I'm now grateful for Katrina.

Anything back in New Orleans is definitely nostalgic. I really played my first shows of my life and learned to perform here. I learned how to work a stage and how to connect with a crowd. It all started here.

The Meters are, I think, the most influential group in our time to come out of New Orleans, to have changed and introduced us all to a way of playing, and to a groove and a level of feel in playing funk-jazz.

To get to New Orleans you don't pass through anywhere else. That geographical location, being aloof, lets it hold onto the ritual of its own pace more than other places that have to keep up with the progress.

It's important to recognize how special New Orleans is. You play the snare drum or the clarinet in any other city, and you'd be considered a nerd, but here, there's no shame in it, and it's absolutely valued.

I'm from New Orleans, and we have a Mardi Gras group called the Chewbacchus. It's celebrating all things geeky: science fiction, fantasy, 'Star Wars,' 'Doctor Who,' 'Men in Black,' 'Ghostbusters,' everything.

After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the U.S. can and should do better.

It's just the vibe I got when I landed in New Orleans. The culture is absolutely different. It's so dangerous, I tell you, I fly in and I fly out of town. That's how scared I am. And this is where I came from.

No matter what setting I play in, I will always be New Orleans. It's one of the only cities where you can hang out with the Marsalis family, the Neville brothers, whoever it might be, and we all play together.

Growing up in New Orleans as Archie Manning's son, I felt like a target, and I've always known that whatever I'd do, people would hear about it. So I've had my guard up, and maybe that's molded my personality.

When it was clear I couldn't stay in New Orleans, I went out and created what would end up being the best opportunity for myself. I asked my agent to set up a call with the Warriors. I knew they could use a big.

Places I've lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it's roots in New Orleans and went crazy.

My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

I want to continue to stay plugged into New Orleans and help people who are still struggling with the recovery here, and then, if I can help around the country and around the world, absolutely, I'll be open to that.

About fifteen miles above New Orleans the river goes very slowly. It has broadened out there until it is almost a sea and the water is yellow with the mud of half a continent. Where the sun strikes it, it is golden.

I've grown in tremendous ways with enhancing my music, my ability to perform on stage and travel all around to spread bounce music. I've come so far from being that little black boy growing up in New Orleans to now.

What I do is always hard for me to explain, but it's like a mixture of New Orleans jazz and world music, with a little bit of Spanish flavour. I just take all that and mix it with Chilliwack, and something comes out!

Chris Paul is one of the brightest stars in the National Basketball Association, a must-see player with the New Orleans Hornets whose deft ball skills and eye-popping speed have attracted admirers all over the world.

Like Venice, Italy, New Orleans is a cultural treasure. And everyone who lived in the city should be allowed to come back. But that doesn't mean that they all should live in exactly the same spot that they lived before.

The time after college and before music was really rough. I couldn't afford food. I was eating bread and butter for five months. Living in New Orleans, I couldn't afford to take care of myself. I had no health insurance.

I worked as a telemarketer for an SAT-prep company. That was the worst of it, because I had to call people in post-Katrina New Orleans and offer them this very, very expensive SAT class. And I'm not even a good salesman.

Beale Street is a very famous street in the history of America. You know, American music in particular. From the blues to jazz, it's a connecting city from New Orleans that goes all the way up to Buffalo through New York.

If I have to be considered any type of jazz artist, it would be New Orleans jazz because New Orleans jazz never forgot that jazz is dance music and jazz is fun. I'm more influenced by that style of jazz than anything else.

I think New Orleans is such a beautiful city. It looks like a fairytale when you walk through the French Quarter or the Garden District. There is such a lush sense of color, style, architecture - and the people themselves.

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life; it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture.

Everywhere I go around the world, we have fans of New Orleans. Sometimes we go places, and people don't really know who we are, but they know New Orleans, and once we say we are from New Orleans, we have a lot of supporters.

Administration policies seem to tacitly encourage those who live below sea level in New Orleans to relocate permanently, to leave the dangerous water's edge for more prosperous inland cities such as Shreveport or Baton Rouge.

Being from North Carolina, it's kind of slow-paced. There's not too much going on there, whereas in New Orleans, there's always something going on. I just love all the people, going out to dinner and enjoying anything I want.

Man, I was scared. I didn't know what to think. All of a sudden, I got a record climbing the charts, and I'm out in the streets. You know, workin' on the docks. And the first week, it sold something like 40,000 in New Orleans.

When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.

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