Living with music: departures and returns among early New Orleans jazz musicians

In his influential philosophy of place, Edward Casey distinguishes between three ways of experiencing the world that are either passed over or systematically misconstrued. ‘If imagination projects us out beyond ourselves while memory takes us behind ourselves,’ he observes, ‘place subtends and enfolds us, lying perpetually under and around us’ (Casey, 1993: xvii). This article experiments ways of registering the ordinary experiences of place among early New Orleans musicians as they depart the city in search of new opportunities and return home, sometimes permanently, sometimes only briefly. The narrative moves between different times, places, and particular journeys, featuring a range of voices: some local, some not; some well-known, while others have been forgotten