Many of New Orleans’ finest songwriters have taken a shot at addressing Hurricane Katrina and the accompanying devastation with mixed results. All were heartfelt, but often the product didn’t work because an overwhelming experience was made to seem smaller and less real as it was fitted into lines that conformed to a rhyme and metric scheme. Some of the most successful music addressing the Katrina experience has come from artists who found that older songs written for other situations still spoke with great eloquence, or in the case of Irma Thomas’ “Another Man Done Gone,” they’ve revised songs to make them more topical.

The situation seems like a natural occasion for a brass band to record a funereal dirge that becomes a raucous second-line—we’ve been to the graveside and we’re coming back—but the Dirty Dozen have produced what might be the great post-Katrina record so far by instead interpreting Marvin Gaye’s 35-year-old classic What’s Going On. Gaye’s words and music seem as appropriate as ever, and the Dozen show the range of their talents as they reimagine the songs.

They let Gaye’s lyrics and raps by Chuck D., G. Love and Guru take care of the words, but the Dirty Dozen speak more profoundly with their instruments than the rappers and singers—Bettye LaVette and Ivan Neville—ever could. That’s saying something considering LaVette and Neville’s contributions. On “What’s Happening Brother,” LaVette sounds like a street smart hustler trying to reconnect to her community with the growing suspicion that more has changed than she realizes. Neville sings “God is Love” with the simple, plain-spoken earnestness of someone who finally found a simple truth that he wants to share not to preach but lend a helping hand.

But the ingeniousness of the album is how the tracks build from the Dirty Dozen’s brass band roots. “What’s Happening Brother” starts with Terence Higgins playing a second line pattern and Roger Lewis’ baritone sax playing what could be the signal to the band to pick up their instruments, and when Kirk Joseph’s sousaphone enters, the track still sounds bound for a parade. Thirty seconds in, though, Jamie MacLean strums a minor chord and the feel changes. Lewis exits, LaVette enters and parade rhythm remains though it’s no longer a call to dance. The track becomes more melancholy, and, as the lyric progresses, more cinematic. When LaVette finishes the lyric, Lewis returns and she starts to vamp along with Kevin Harris’ tenor sax and the parade sensibility returns.

That constant, subtle shifting is a regular part of brass band performances, and even though they’re playing What’s Going On, it’s a central feature of the Dozen’s performance on the album. In some cases such as “Flyin’ High (in the Friendly Sky),” it happens in a very pronounced way as the gently swinging jazz track changes character entirely when Harris plays a 10-note melody half-way through the track that becomes the melody for a unison chant of “Help me somebody.” Once he finds this melody and the vocals are in place, a spirited parade finally erupts with the interplay and counterpoint you’ve come to expect from the band you’ve known for all these years.

The Dozen even stretch into free jazz for much of “Save the Children,” but some version of second line drums is at the heart of almost every song, and the interaction between the horns have never emulated voices in a community more obviously. They capture the confusion, the conflicting points of view and mixed feelings that we’ve experienced here for the last year. Like Gaye’s album, the Dirty Dozen’s What’s Going On doesn’t speak exclusively to the Katrina experience, despite the cover art. It’s sad to realize that Gaye’s larger concerns about the country, the world, love and justice are still real and still need to be addressed. There are a lot of people outside New Orleans who also want to know what’s going on.