Ben Jaffe, bass and sousaphone player with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, is a guest on BBC this week. Jaffe has carried on and kept alive his parents’ dream of a venue to showcase New Orleans’ traditional jazz and nurture the musicians who play it. This week he appears on BBC Radio to discuss what it was like taking over his parents’ legendary jazz venue.

In 1961, American couple Allan and Sandra Jaffe, originally from Philadelphia, were on their honeymoon when they stumbled upon some of their favorite jazz musicians playing at a small art gallery in New Orleans. Within days the young couple had been offered the chance to run the place. Over the next 30 years they helped turn it into one of the city’s jazz institutions, Preservation Hall. Ben Jaffe tells BBC Outlook’s Emily Webb about following in the footsteps of his tuba-playing father, both in running the venue and as bandleader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

On the podcast, listeners can hear Jaffe talk about when police entered Preservation Hall for desegregation. “Unlike most people, I have no first of Preservation Hall because it was always there…it’s always been a part of who I am,” says Ben Jaffe to BBC.