iBlues for New Orleansi is a generous study of Mardi Gras, but it is also a creative intervention, a passionate explanation and defense of creolization, a cultural rescue operation. It is a furious, blues-tinged, erudite hymn to our greatest vernacular city. Read it and weep read it and rejoice!--Edward Hirsch, President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation There is no more powerful celebration of the happy gumbo of life in New Orleans than Mardi Gras. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as the citizens of New Orleans regroup and some put down roots elsewhere, many people wonder what will become of one of the nation's most complex creole cultures. New Orleans emerged like Atlantis from under the sea, as the city in which some of the most important American vernacular arts took shape. Creativity fostered jazz music, made of old parts and put together in utterly new ways architecture that commingled Norman rooflines, West African floor plans, and native materials of mud and moss