Music and people, people and music. You can’t have one without the other. It was tricky separating these two keywords as they are somewhat interchangeable.

Our first full-on musical encounter was in Progreso, Mexico when through the market came a family band. It looked like mom, dad, and three boys. Dad was on clarinet, the two older boys were on drums, the youngest had the donation cup and mom followed along, keeping an eye on her brood. They were really quite good but gone before I could get my camera out after our donation to take a decent picture. The sad part? The boys were working and not in school. We were there in April.

Our main musical encounter was, you guessed it, New Orleans! We were there for their first French Quarter Jazz Festival since Covid.

There were plenty of solo guitar players, some with donation tins and some not.

Definitely some well-worn guitars.

This guy had his karaoke music playing and was singing his heart out for a buck.

And some were just playing for themselves.

Then the parade began and the jazz bands came marching down Bourbon Street.

You can almost hear the music while looking at these images.

The Navy even sent some musicians. The fellow below was FULL of personality. Imagine if THIS is how we went to war and we wound up making music together instead of death and destruction. If only…

On a street corner, we ran into this quintet playing some interesting instruments. There was a standup base and a washboard among the crew.

Raw talent if you ask me, riding a bike with this big drum.

I’m not sure who this is but a painting was made of her and she was selling CDs. She was an amazing clarinet player with a small band on a street corner in NOLA.

We ran into Mai-Mai (My-My?) near some statues in Armstrong Park. He was just hanging out on the park bench, chatting with people and playing his guitar. We listened and talked with him for a while. Such a sweet man.

Dollywood had some great Bluegrass bands playing as well. The South definitely did not disappoint in the music department.