For many musicians, New Orleans is as close to sacred ground as you can get in these United States.

New Orleans holds Congo Square, the only place in the antebellum South where slaves could and did regularly gather to drum and to dance.

New Orleans produced Louis Armstong, whose use of the backbeat revolutionized popular music worldwide and is the basis for his claim to the title of “Most Influential Musician Of The 20th Century”.

Jazz was born in New Orleans.  (The word “jazz” itself is likely derived from Gaelic.)  As was “The Queen of Gospel”, Mahalia Jackson.

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The internet is a wild and wonder-filled place.  This video comes to us courtesy of the combined talents of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and Msgr. Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Church in Washington, DC.  It’s an uplifting and almost unimaginably eclectic combination of images—marrying Msgr. Pope’s current pastoral work with his previous experiences as a church musician and computer systems analyst.