Bouki Fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel [Whitney Plantation]

Learning to play by ear is a unique part of becoming a musician in New Orleans. This life history and photography project explores the traditional methods of teaching brass band music in the city that gave birth to jazz. Through in-depth interviews, the bands, social and pleasure clubs, schools, churches, and other neighborhood institutions that have supported the music, and the spirit embodied in it, come to life.

Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a veteran park ranger at New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, a musician, and photographer. Rachel Breunlin is the co-director of the Neighborhood Story Project, a collaborative ethnography organization at the University of New Orleans