If New Orleans can be described as a city at once downhome and cosmopolitan, perhaps no performer more embodies this paradox than Charmaine Neville.  This is a woman who travels the world with grits in her suitcase, who loves to read and paint as much as she loves to sing and cook, and whose musical personal fuses a swaggering rhythm & blues diva with a socially conscious, Afro-centric, pop-jazz artist.

           Walk into her modest ...