New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park

This guide to the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park centers on Congo Square, where enslaved New Orleanians gathered on their one free day under French and Spanish rule, and where an 1817 city ordinance fenced that gathering into a single patch of ground. You'll hear an eyewitness account from 1819, when architect Benjamin Latrobe counted hundreds dancing to log drums, banjo-like strings, and gourd rattles, and the rhythms they called the bamboula, the calinda, and the juba. The guide also follows Perseverance Hall, a Masonic lodge built around 1819 that later hosted musicians on its own floor, before harsher laws eventually shut the Sunday gatherings down.