Tripod: New Orleans At 300

TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with a new episode about a Mexican band that rocked the city in the 80s -- the 1880s. Long, long ago, a band in New Orleans swept the city off its feet, but it wasn’t a New Orleans Band. It was Mexican. There's this sort of mythical thing...it's like this band comes to New Orleans from Mexico and they've got military brass instruments and it gets pinpointed as the beginning of something, which is really interesting. Interesting because nearly a hundred and 50 years have gone by, and jazz musicians like my friend Byron Asher, are still talking about this one band. I mean, it's kind of like a legend,” Asher said. It’s 1884, and New Orleans is celebrating an anniversary, not the tricentennial. The one hundredth anniversary of the first shipment of U.S. cotton to Europe which went to London in 1784. Eric Seiferth is a historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection. He says, back then, New Orleans is hosting The World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial