Art Neville Memorial

Grief is not an emotion that invites comparisons. it is an overwhelming, supernatural sense of loss that is an essential part of human consciousness, the realization that a part of all of us has passed along with the loved one who is now gone from our immediate lives.

- John Swenson

the litany of losses that shocked New Orleans in the early summer of 2019 may not have culminated with the death of Art Neville— because who knows what might happen next—but it certainly feels like the last lines of a book that is such a great story you don’t want it to end. that story, of course, is the story of how New Orleans musicians took their legacy of jazz, blues and gospel music and transformed it into the ecstatic music of r&B, rock ’n’ roll and funk, elements that are all still with us, but are increasingly being subsumed into the culture of the 21st century Global village.