Chris Rose

Music has always been the glue, the shared heritage, the defining gesture and common language of this exotic Bible-thumping/Afro-Caribbean/Euro-redneck/Cajun-Creole mix known as Louisiana, the place where all music comes from.

New Orleans had a black mayor named “Dutch”; the white suburb next door to the city had as its sheriff an obese Chinese cowboy; and the governor, a glib, silver-haired Cajun gambler and lothario, had won office after declaring the only way he could lose the election was to be caught in bed “with a dead girl or a live boy.”