What kinds of roles has music played shaping New Orleans?

I don’t know if this is true for most people but when I think New Orleans there is one name that jumps out into my head right away, and that name is Louis Armstrong. He was a singer and songwriter who was popular in the 40’s -60’s, and he was a huge musical influence in New Orleans. With hits such as “What a Wonderful World”, “Hello Dolly”, and “Good Morning, Vietnam” Louis Armstrong was one of the most popular musicians of his time. In fact, in 1964 Louis Armstrong knocked The Beatles off the top of Billboard’s top 100 chart with “Hello Dolly” (at the time Armstrong was 63 years old). Armstrong was extremely famous for his scratchy singing voice which earned him the nick name of Satchmo, which is derived from satchel mouth. More importantly than his unique voice though was his keen sense for improvisation, he practically invented and perfected the art of “scat” singing which is a free form of singing that was the great grandfather to free style rapping and other forms of improvisational singing. Aside from Satchmo, improvisation was huge in New Orleans and still is today and I think that’s a huge part of what makes New Orleans what it is. There so much soul in freestyle singing and it’s just whatever comes out of the singer at the time, there’s no considerations or judging or even a plan behind it, it just flows. New Orleans is famous for it’s blues and jazz scene but most people don’t know that New Orleans is also popular for it’s heavy metal scene. In the 1980’s there was a lot of metal coming out of New Orleans, in fact a band called Exhorder was one of the first bands to combine doom metal with an up beat tempo to make a new genre more commonly known as groove metal. Although metal may seem totally separate from blues, in a lot of ways they are the same. Most people say the blues music directly inspired most rock and metal music today, but the thing I notice about the 2 genres is the intentions. Blues and metal both focus heavily on pessimism and negativity, most blues and metal songs are pretty depressing, but negativity is a huge part of human emotion so I’m glad that musicians aren’t afraid to flaunt it a little bit. So in conclusion if you mix the improvisation of Jazz and funk, the soul of Blues and the expression of metal, it makes for a pretty powerful sound that has been shaping New Orleans for as long as it’s been around.