Musicians' Village — Upper 9th Ward

Katrina took the musicians. The city that built its living culture on second-line funerals and brass bands lost the people who held the music in their hands. Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. responded in 2006 by co-founding Musicians' Village through Habitat for Humanity — 72 affordable homes in the Upper Ninth Ward for the players who got scattered. By February 2007, this was the largest-scale, highest-profile, and biggest-budget rebuilding project to have gotten underway in the city post-Katrina. Keys to the first three houses went to new homeowners on June 1, 2006. Fredy Omar con su Banda and Jerome Deleno "J.D." Hill played for the 300 people who gathered for the dedication.

The centerpiece is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, named for the patriarch of the Marsalis family and the city's most important jazz educator. Ellis Marsalis taught at NOCCA and mentored generations of musicians before his death from COVID-19 in 2020. Connick and Marsalis were heavily involved in the design process. Groundbreaking kicked off on September 13, 2007, with performances from Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Band and Shamarr Allen Combo, with Connick and Marsalis sitting in. The center opened at the end of August 2011 — a two-story building with a 170-seat theater and performance hall, dressing and practice rooms, and a courtyard with a retractable roof between the main hall and a smaller community center. In 2010, the founders received the Honor Award from the National Building Museum for civic innovation and community development.

This is a working neighborhood. The musicians who live here play gigs every night across the city. The Ellis Marsalis Center hosts public performances — check their schedule and go hear what came back.