Ten years on

Ten years after Katrina, New Orleans is back - as loud and flamboyant as ever

It's Saturday night and Dr Ike, otherwise known as Dr Ira Padnos, a local anaesthetist is playing old New Orleans R&B vinyl 45s at a club called Siberia in the Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood. Everyone is feeling it. My friend Grace, a New Orleans resident, is up on the pool table dancing. She's trying to hoist her father up to join in but he's otherwise engaged with his own group of friends on the dance floor.

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, the cradle of rhythm and blues, funk, blues, zydeco and a style of hip-hop called bounce. All this music has one thing in common – it promotes dancing and any visitor will know, given any opportunity, New Orleanians love to dance.

"New Orleans music gets your feet moving and your butt shaking," says Dr Ike, who is also the organiser of The Ponderosa Stomp, a New Orleans festival celebrating the legacy of the unsung heroes whose musical influence have shaped American culture for more than 50 years.

After Hurricane Katrina wrought four-fifths of the city underwater when the levee broke in 2005, New Orleans has come slowly and surely back into full swing. Here, as always, music infiltrates every part of life – from birth to the marching brass band and cathartic dancing celebratory jazz funerals.