I worked with the Neville Brothers for 40-some years on the highway, and up and down since I can remember - funk from New Orleans.
Aaron Neville
We used to play football on the levee, with no shirts on in the summer - August in New Orleans - and my skin would turn red. They'd call me Redskin, Red Apache, then it turned around to Apache Red.
It's one of the greatest festivals in the world. New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest is the best all-around... It's an honor to be closing it.
Man, I was scared. I didn't know what to think. All of a sudden, I got a record climbing the charts, and I'm out in the streets. You know, workin' on the docks. And the first week, it sold something like 40,000 in New Orleans.
New Orleans will always be in my heart. New Orleans raised me - it's in my blood.
My brother Art was a doo-wopper. He had a group that sat out on a park bench in New Orleans and sang harmonies at night, and they'd go around and win all the talent shows and get all the girls, you know.
Ain't no place like New Orleans. It's one of kind.
In New Orleans, music is part of the culture. You're raised with it, from the cradle to the grave, and all in-between.
When I was a teenager, I worked in New Orleans for a chef named Paul Prudhomme. That was a very important time in my life as a chef. I developed my palate and learned a lot. And here I am now. I specialize in modern Mexican and contemporary Latin cuisines.
Aaron Sanchez
I have held the following jobs: office temp, ticket seller in movie theatre, cook in restaurant, nanny, and phone installer at the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
Adriana Trigiani
I love New Orleans. I did a movie there right before Katrina.
Aisha Tyler
Watching the scenes out of New Orleans, if you turn down the sound it could be the Sudan or any Third World country. But it's not. it's the United States of America.
Al Roker
New Orleans is New Orleans. It's a great city and fun and great food. It's one of those cities that when you are working hard hours like we work, you have to do as much as possible to stay out of trouble. Not much of a problem for me, but in New Orleans, trouble tries so much to find you.
Aldis Hodge
My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.
Allen Toussaint
To get to New Orleans you don't pass through anywhere else. That geographical location, being aloof, lets it hold onto the ritual of its own pace more than other places that have to keep up with the progress.
I don't feel at home in New Orleans. I don't feel at home in Austin or L.A. And I just felt immediately at home in northern Australia.
Amanda Palmer
Well I went to New Orleans to cover the jazz festival for Trio, it's this new arts channel, it's really great.
Amy Sedaris
Israel is a mishmash of other cultures. It's like New Orleans; it's a meltdown of other cultures.
Anat Cohen
My initial training was on the keyboard - mainly the great American songbook. In junior high, during the day, I was a classical clarinetist, but after school, I played New Orleans jazz and big-band music.
New Orleans reminds me of Romania because New Orleans is very corrupt politically.
Andrei Codrescu
Venture for America operates in communities that could generally use more innovation: Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and other U.S. cities. So I'm obviously a big believer in innovation and progress as key drivers of economic growth and prosperity.
I think New Orleans is such a beautiful city. It looks like a fairytale when you walk through the French Quarter or the Garden District. There is such a lush sense of color, style, architecture - and the people themselves.
My last trip to New Orleans was for the fifth anniversary of Katrina, and I had the awesome opportunity to bring my family down. We all worked on a house together and met some of the families.
I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful days. I have a beautiful house here.
In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful.
There's so much music going on in New Orleans.
In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.
There was this rapper from New Orleans, Mystikal, who when I hear his music, I hear myself. Whenever I wanna get hyped, I put on Mystikal.
New Orleans people love their weekends.
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the entire world.
I'm from downtown New Orleans. Downtown consists of the 7th ward, the 8th ward, the 9th ward.
So while an incredible amount of progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you - and fight alongside you - until the job is done. Until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way.
I'm all into Jazz; I'm into New Orleans type music. There is country, there is southern gospel. I'm a huge southern gospel fan.
My favorite WrestleMania moment would actually be the first WrestleMania I ever went to, and that was at WrestleMania 30 in New Orleans. I've been a fan forever but have never been able to go to an actual WrestleMania until I started working with the company.
New Orleans style is funky - it's just as experimental as the city. There aren't any rules. If you want to wear a polka-dot shirt and some crazy pants, you can get away with it there.
The time after college and before music was really rough. I couldn't afford food. I was eating bread and butter for five months. Living in New Orleans, I couldn't afford to take care of myself. I had no health insurance.
New Orleans in an amazing town.
The history of New Orleans was always a fascination to me - such a blend of light and darkness and plague and pleasure and hedonism and fear and death. It's just a very, very intriguing city. I have this strange love relationship with it.
I had just gotten a job on 'Preacher' on AMC and was in New Orleans starting work on that. My agent called and said 'Are you sitting down?' and I said 'No' and he said 'Scott Rudin wants you to do 'Hello, Dolly!' and all I could say was 'Oh my God, I'll have to call you back.'
I always say New Orleans is my heart. It's where I'm from. I go back, and I have a huge fondness for it.
In 1996 I was working on a play in New Orleans, and they needed a drag queen. I offered to play the role. That led to guest appearances at bars, which led to regular appearances at bars, which led to hosting. I eventually started working six days a week in bars before moving to N.Y.C.
Everybody in the world now wants to twerk. We don't twerk here in New Orleans, we bounce, we wiggle, we wobble, we shake, we bust it open, bend it over, we do it all.
I've worked tremendously hard to make things happen for New Orleans culture.
Twerking is definitely from New Orleans.
It has to do a lot more than just twerking. It's feel good music; it makes people have a good time. It doesn't matter what type of situation they're in, we bounce all around New Orleans. Weddings, birthday parties, funerals. The whole nine yards, and it's a happy music, it turns people from a frown to a happy smile.
Housing vouchers are a vital lifeline for many people I know in New Orleans and around the country, including struggling artists.
Being gay and coming up in New Orleans was not easy. At first I was very terrified and very timid.
Bounce is a primarily call-and-response style of hip-hop over a 'Trigger Man' beat. It's a New Orleans-created hip-hop style that developed in the late '80s, early '90s.
I'm a bounce artist, straight born and raised from New Orleans, Louisiana, and I love what I do.
The first club that reopened in New Orleans was Caesar's, and they called me immediately and said let's do a regular night with you here. So we started FEMA Fridays. It was the only club open in the city, and a lot of people had a lot of money from Katrina, the checks and stuff, so the joy inside that club - I don't think that'll ever come back.