Crescent City Sounds

Crescent City Sounds

New Orleans Library's new streaming service uplifts local musicians

Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

Imagine a music streaming platform with the ease and functionality of Spotify—except entirely curated by a team of music scholars, with the goal of uplifting New Orleans’s rich collective of artists and providing a listening experience that transmits a tapestry of the city’s one-of-a-kind music scene.

The New Orleans Public Library has done it, launching Crescent City Sounds last fall with a collection of thirty locally-produced albums culled from submissions from New Orleans musicians spanning genres. The curatorial team included Alison Fensterstock, music journalist and WWOZ DJ; David Kunian, Curator of the Jazz Museum; Holly Hobbs, music consultant and ethnomusicology expert; local rapper Alfred Banks; and Tavia Osbey, co-founder of MidCitizen Entertainment.

From brass band anthems by the Grammy-winning New Orleans Nightcrawlers and the moody funk of Sandra Love & the Reason, to rhymes by rising hip hop star Kaye the Beast and vintage blues originals by Sao Paulo-born guitarist T. Guy—Crescent City Sounds emulates the feeling of walking past a collection of this music city’s nightclubs, poking your in head each one, and opting to stay awhile.

Local listeners with an interest in getting to know the music created by their neighbors and further supporting it have found a ready-made landing place; while artists enjoy a new avenue for sharing their work right here at home. Artists featured on the platform enjoy a spot there for at least five years, and are paid an honorarium for non-exclusive licensing rights. On the other hand, listeners can enjoy access to the platform free of charge.

Heather Riley, Circulation and Customer Experience Librarian at the New Orleans Library, said that in addition to the thirty inaugural artists selected for inclusion in 2022, later this year the library plans to add another sixty.

“Crescent City Sounds was the library’s push to sort of start preserving our culture, our current culture,” she said, “as well as our history.”

Stream music by New Orleans artists for free at crescentcitysounds.org.