We take an enormous amount of pride in OffBeat, and we put a lot of time, effort and money into our editorial content, photography, design, distribution and even into our ad design. We are dedicated to our mission of promoting local music and culture, presenting new music and ideas, and also to paying tribute to our forebears, who are, after all the basis of our musical culture and traditions.

New Orleans’ music—and the rest of Louisiana’s, for that matter—represents a unique cultural phenomenon: musical traditions that are decades, centuries, old that are being passed on from generation to generation.

That’s sort of the subject of this issue on brass bands. While we certainly can’t do a comprehensive review of brass bands in this issue, we’ve tried to focus on one of the brass bands who were the first to make the genre “popular” to a more mainstream audience: the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Our feature story is about the younger bands that are carrying on the tradition, are transfiguring it, and modernizing it, while still keeping their roots in the brass band oeuvre.

That’s one of the things that’s so cool about New Orleans music. The creative web that connects all musicians here is strong and deep. But it’s not just their creativity that binds them together; it’s the way they connect with each other through the musical bones of their ancestors. I know I’m sounding real crunchy here, but I believe that music is a spiritual phenomenon that’s incredibly strong in New Orleans.

Whether you play in a brass band, a rock band, a jazz band, a zydeco band or a funk band, you have to admit that you owe what you play to the people who came before you. Music is not only in our blood; it is our blood. It’s that deep.

So, obviously, we at OffBeat have a real passion for music and for the artists who create it. And pride in what we do.

I just wish everyone felt the same way that we do.

Even though more and more people are giving lip service to how important our music is, I’m still longing for that passion for our musical heritage and culture to be personified in the form of support from the local business and educational communities. Music still isn’t considered to be vital to our economy and our tourism sector. If it were, we’d have that music museum I keep hoping for; we’d have a real music office at City Hall; we’d at least have a concerted effort to create a means to educate anyone who’ll listen (and there are lots of tourists and visitors who would listen) about why New Orleans is a real “music town.”

We think it is, and it so galls me when I read in travel magazines that the best two music towns in the U.S. are Austin, Texas and Athens, Georgia. Music should be the new theme of our marketing efforts, not sports, or food or liquor.

Yeah, we feel pride in the Saints. Where’s the pride in our music?