Vitality and exuberance are two adjectives that describe the expressive culture of Afro-Americans in New Orleans. While the homogenizing effect of global marketing and telecommunication erodes indigenous folk traditions almost everywhere, Black New Orleans seems to have stemmed the tide, drawn on its own bountiful cultural wellspring and erupted in song, dance, ecstatic religion- and social clubs. The much publicized revival of traditional New Orleans jazz through such efforts as those of the Preservation Hall bands which have toured the United States and traveled extensively abroad is only one fragment of a sweeping revitalization which ...