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Soundcheck contributor Jessie Torrisi shares her recent experience in New Orleans

I left Brooklyn on January 1st with my drums in the trunk of a rental car. I was headed for New Orleans, a city I’ve wanted to visit since I turned 14 and first picked up drumsticks. I was going in search of musical paradise – to see if there are tricks to being a great artist you can’t learn in a whirlwind city like New York.

In New Orleans, music is everywhere. It’s the drunk guy singing on a street corner. It’s a brass band marching in a 2nd line parade. It’s strangers singing hymns at a jazz funeral, a kid practicing trombone under the highway overpass.

More than the rhythms or songs or number of bands in New Orleans … It’s the spirit. Here what I learned while I was living there.

Rule #1: MUSIC KNOWS NO RACE

They call New York the melting pot, but when it comes to black and white, there’s a lot more mixing in New Orleans. Since the days when slaves gathered in Congo Square, black people have been adding their rhythms into the music and their spices into rice ‘n beans… until it’s all just gumbo.

I’m not saying that race doesn’t matter. But bands are a lot more integrated, and the dance floor is too. See, combining the best of European and African culture has always been what defines New Orleans. Color don’t mean a thing, so long as you make it swing. White musicians are less self-conscious about playing styles we think of as black, and vice versa. It opens up a world of possibilities. I heard white musicians tearin' up Louis Armstrong songs and black brass bands funk up the Ghostbusters' theme. I learned to play more soulfully than I'd ever dreamed.

Rule #2: LIFE’S HARD, SO SING HARD

New York is a very individualist city, but in New Orleans, especially since Katrina, there’s this sense of a culture that people share. And it's reflected in the songs. People sing about collective suffering. Whether it's a hurricane, having no money, or hittin' hard times in the city, there's a feeling we’re all in this together. So people have more of a sense of humor about it. The music’s less my boyfriend left me & life sucks… and more if I’m going down, I’m gonna sing my heart out with a whiskey in my hand.

Rule #3: ABOVE ALL, HAVE A GOOD TIME

I knew I’d found the New Orleans I came looking for when some friends dragged me to Vaughn’s. Vaughn’s is how I imagine speakeasies in the ‘20s – strangers grabbing eachother and rollicking on the dance floor. Every Thursday for more than 15 years, Kermit Ruffins and his band have played Ellington, Al Green … anything people can get down to.

The night always starts with Kermit barbequing on the sidewalk. And it never ends ‘til 4 a.m. When I heard that laid-back lilt in the trumpet, that sexy swagger in the rhythm, I understood. There’s only one rule in New Orleans. You have to have a good time.

For all the amazing musicians in New Orleans, there isn’t much infrastructure. No big record labels or management companies, not many high-paying gigs. So people play to play. And that playfulness is unmistakable in the music.

In New York – which is all about the money, the recognition, the write-ups in the Sunday Times – music can start to feel very serious. But visit Vaughn’s, and you’ll see Kermit, with his white brim hat and boyish grin, waving a trumpet in one hand, and throwing his free arm around a pretty girl. You can’t fake that kind of good time. It breeds spontaneity and creativity. It brings people together. And it reminds you what music is all about.

Comment: Share your own New Orleans memories.

Check out Jessie's Myspace page for more on her experiences in New Orleans