JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
New Orleans is known as the birthplace of jazz. Take a walk through the French quarter, and you'll likely hear a band playing. But how do the culture-bearers there keep the genre alive? Matt Bloom with member station WWNO visited an iconic venue that introduces kids to the beat.
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MATT BLOOM, BYLINE: Inside a 60-seat theater just off of Bourbon Street, a jazz band grooves for an audience of excited second graders on a field trip.
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BLOOM: This place is called Preservation Hall. It's one of the oldest jazz venues in the Big Easy. And increasingly, it's a place for kids to learn about the tradition directly from artists.
BRANDEN LEWIS: All right. Now, you guys, does anybody have any questions for the band?
BLOOM: In a break from the music, trumpet player Branden Lewis lifts a metal mute out from a crate.
LEWIS: Anybody know what this is?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: No.
LEWIS: What if I put it like this?
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BLOOM: The venue opened in the '60s and welcomed a few kids back then. Since then, it's grown into a formal program called Kids in the Hall. It hosts over 8,000 students a year from schools in Louisiana and across the country to learn about New Orleans jazz.
LEWIS: (Singing) Mama don't want no hands, and y'all say?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing) No, no, no.
BLOOM: Band members encourage students to get up and dance and sing along.
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BLOOM: For many, it's their first time learning about jazz.
MICAH VENABLE: I usually listen to, like, pop and country music.
BLOOM: Eight-year-old Micah Venable (ph) says this is her first big jazz show, and now she wants to hear more.
MICAH: I like all of the things that they sang and stuff. And I'm surprised that I saw all of the instruments that I thought that I would never see.
BLOOM: That sense of wonder is exactly what leaders here want. Wendell Brunious is the hall's musical director and a lifelong jazz musician.
WENDELL BRUNIOUS: To keep the music going, perpetuate the music, you have to give it to the young people. They're the future.
BLOOM: Brunious, who's 79, grew up coming to play at Preservation Hall with his father in the '70s, learning from local legends like clarinetist George Lewis. He wants other kids to have the same experience.
BRUNIOUS: To really realize that they've been entertained rather than either taught a lesson or, you know, just spewed some stuff. Just that they've been entertained and that they feel happy, that's very important to us.
BLOOM: Soon, even more students can take part in the tradition of making jazz. The hall's foundation recently leased a three-story building next door. They plan to renovate it into more rehearsal spaces, artist apartments and an archive of local jazz history.
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BLOOM: Back in the theater, that tradition of music is on full display. This time, it's a group of young adults with special needs.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.
BLOOM: One of the students, Andrew Hennington (ph), gets up to play trumpet alongside the band.
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BLOOM: Hennington is 25 and has autism. He started taking lessons from the musicians at Preservation Hall as a teenager, now he plays with them in parades and festivals all around the city.
ANDREW HENNINGTON: I like the music - makes me feel good.
BLOOM: His mother, Susan (ph), who's with him today, says it's been life-changing.
SUSAN: We'll walk through the quarter, and there are people that I don't know that are saying hello to Andrew because they've seen him in here. I think he'll have a good future, you know, ahead of him, and it'll be something that'll bring him pleasure.
BLOOM: She says her family owes a lot to Preservation Hall, and her son Andrew is fulfilling the promise of its founders to keep jazz alive in the city.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) Oh, when the saints, oh, when the saints, go marching in, go marching in.
BLOOM: For NPR News, I'm Matt Bloom in New Orleans.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE REBIRTH MARCHING JAZZ BAND'S "WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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