Katrina e New Orleans - O Fim do Berço do Jazz?

"The destruction of New Orleans, from a cultural point of view, is too awful to contemplate. And at the same time, everyone had contemplated it. Anyone who came to have dinner last year at my house in New Orleans heard me describe pretty much what happened, in advance. Not because I'm clairvoyant, but because it was well-known what would happen.
The hurricane was not preventable, but the flooding that occurred was preventable. That levee break was preventable, the destruction of the marshland was preventable. And even if the flooding were not preventable, there was another failure, which was the complete failure of civil defense.
It's very simple: the plan was - and everybody knew it - the plan was that the poor would be left behind to drown. "
...

"You cannot abandon New Orleans. You can say that New Orleans has no viability as a business or industrial city. But if our history and culture as a nation mean anything, New Orleans is central to it. And if we can save New Orleans - if we haven't lost it already - it has to be put back and saved right. If we can somehow turn around the hateful direction this country is going in, and really save and fortify New Orleans, and really show the world that we as a nation can save our own cities, that our concept of homeland security means something, then we can be proud of ourselves. Right now we can't.
We're not only watching history disappear. History is watching us disappear."

Palavras do musicologista Ned Sublette, musicólogo, autor de vários estudos sobre o jazz e a história da música americana.