Groove Interrupted: Loss, Renewal, and the Music of New Orleans

This wonderful celebration of the "vibrant, idiosyncratic music community" of New Orleans is a collection of profiles of individual musicians who all had their ability to make music threatened after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Born and raised in New Orleans, Spera has written widely about his hometown's musical culture for the city's daily newspaper, the Times-Picayune, and many of the stories presented here had their origin in Spera's articles written before and after Katrina. All of them show how artists as varied as blues guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard, heavy metal singer Phil Anselmo of Pantera, and New Orleans legends Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint tried "to make sense of the storm through music, comforting themselves and uplifting those around them." Some of the finest profiles%E2%80%94and there is no weak one in the book%E2%80%94detail a combination of sadness and joy, such as Aaron Neville's triumphant return to the city after the death of his wife to close out the 2008 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Neville sums up the feeling of all the musicians as they strive, post-Katrina, to uplift New Orleans through their art: "All of us felt the same way about the love affair we were coming back to, to the city, to the people." (Aug.)