Take me to the New Orleans Mardi Gras

Music and the Mississippi River are the two key draws
in the Deep South, writes MARK GRAHAM.

Doo-wop flows from a trio sashaying on a street corner; a fingerpicking bluesman, beer by his side, sets up in the middle of the street; five veteran jazzmen fingersnap into action on the main city square; a solo saxophonist blows a wistful tune by the river bank.

Like it or not - and most people do - the music flows forcefully from every direction in New Orleans, pulsating through streets and wafting from alleys. In Los Angeles, would-be actors flow to the city in search of work and fame; in New Orleans musicians gravitate to the city simply to follow their muse, and, perhaps, to pick up enough for meals and rent along the way.

Like the Japanese banjo player who has teamed up with five black jazz musicians for regular afternoons of traditional Dixieland swing.

Dwarfed beneath the 100kg girth of the tuba player, he looks like a man who has found his own holy grail, playing to live and living to play. The busking money is not too shabby either: few bystanders baulk at throwing a dollar or two into the hat for the kind of musical performance usually heard at club or concert level.

As a reminder, the skinniest and most talkative member of the band gives a quick speech.

"Here is a hat, his name is Filit, a good friend of ours. As in fill-it-up, our tuba player has a big, big appetite."

The joke is awful but everyone laughs heartily, perhaps cognisant of the big guy's hulking presence and dietary requirements.

New Orleans is the kind of place which would bring a flickering grin to the most determined grouch: it takes effort to be glum when the music is world class, the beer well-priced and available and unencumbered by the prissy laws which throttle spontaneous street life in so many American downtown areas.

In parts of the United States, notably California and New York, drinking in the street is discouraged with tough legal penalties. Glug down a single cold beer on a hot day in New York and expect to pay a chunk of change for your troubles.

In the south, notably in the Louisiana city of New Orleans, drinking and partying are part of life. Bourbon St, the sassy nightclub thoroughfare, has a bar about every 10m of its 1km length. And that's not counting the cubby holes which dish out daiquiris and tumblers of amber fluid for people in desperate need of a pit-stop drink between bars.

The street's mainstay is jazz, traditional and free-flowing, but New Orleans in its live-and-let-live manner allows allcomers to set up shop along the alley, hence the presence of discos, country music clubs and the odd outlet pumping out techno-garage-grunge sounds. The jazzmen - and they are all men, with women either excluded or uninterested - appear to feel no threat from the sounds of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

The trad jazz outlets shoehorn in the largest crowds every night, blasting out songs that were written perhaps 50 years or more ago, the composers in the grave long before royalties started to trickle in.

First stop on the tourist, as opposed to the purist, route is Preservation Hall, where baffled multinational crowds obediently shuffle into the venerable building, drop a dollar in a hat, and hear out a song or two, showing little or no emotion or appreciation.

Around the corner and down the road there are bands which stand on their own, relying on the strength of the music, not a building's reputation, to lasso customers.

Bourbon St is the artery road of the French Quarter, the centre of fun for the area and, arguably, the whole of the United States. The courtyard-style buildings have been spared the attentions of deranged architects and destructive planners, making for a direct contrast between the New Orleans of then and now.

By the river is the modern part, featuring a hideous concrete shopping mall which has piped muzak oozing nauseatingly from the walkway walls. The complex is clean, orderly and stultifyingly dull: adjoining hotel chains look like corporate prison camps, which indeed they are when the conventions hit town.

The minute the day's business is finished, Corporate America says no way to lobby cocktail hour and sprints down to the French Quarter for earthier entertainment, music on the hoof instead of from a can.

The French Quarter surroundings are in keeping with the antique music: once-dandy buildings have peeling paint and rusting wrought iron railings. In the past, they were home to madams and hookers, slave traders, plantation owners and voodoo queens.

Tours of the area highlight buildings where black magic and devious deeds were carried out during the murkier days of the 19th century. There have been plenty in recent years, too, most noticeably by the police department which is being investigated for running sidelines in murder, drug-trafficking and racketeering. Recently, a policewoman was condemned to death, convicted of staging a hold-up and murdering two people, including a colleague.

Close to the French Quarter, there are slums of sickening decay, including the notoriously decrepit suburb of Desire, as in the play and movie A Streetcar Named Desire.

Drug addiction and random killing, the twin evils of inner-city America, are rife. Around 300 people a year meet violent deaths in the New Orleans area, usually from a hand-gun bullet.

Most visitors neither know, nor possibly care too much, about the city's festering underbelly of crime and despair. For most, the twin pulls of Bourbon St and the Mississippi River, within spitting distance of each other, are the reasons to head south for a holiday, or a party.

The river continues to inspire modern-day songwriters, convinced that they can bring a new spin to the scenario of lazy brown river, pretty paddleboat steamer and honky-tonk jazz musicians. The most recent to stoke the legend was Sting with his haunting Moon Over Bourbon Street.

Local author Anne Rice has contributed her much-hoopla-ed, slightly skewed, vision of the city and her best-selling book Interview with the Vampire was made into a mega-grossing Tom Cruise movie.

The recent Lolita, starring Jeremy Irons, was partially shot in New Orleans. The movie's theme, of an older man smitten by a young girl, seems appropriate for a port city with a reputation for vice and hedonism of all persuasions - legal and prohibited.

Casenotes

GETTING AROUND: Flights arrive at New Orleans International Airport, about 35km (or a 30-minute drive) from downtown. One-way cab fare to downtown is $US21 for one or two people; shuttle vans cost $US10 each, one-way; the city bus costs $US1.50 one way from the airport. If you plan to stay mostly in the French Quarter, don't bother with a rental car - parking is scarce and expensive, and you can walk or take a cab to most tourist attractions.

STAYING THERE: The city has more than 30,000 hotel rooms plus a growing number of bed-and-breakfast inns. Expect to pay at least $US100 a night for a room in the French Quarter or in the neighbouring Central Business District or Garden District, though you may find specials or a budget room for as low as $US60, particularly during the summer.