Welcome to Music Redeems.

Marsalis Music invites you to share your stories of how and when music worked as a catalyst for you to experience a moment of personal redemption- a moment when your passions were reinvigorated during a live concert, a pause where hope broke through with a song on the radio, a time of reflection when you found answers to the soundtrack of a particular melody.

Please email us or submit your stories as a wall post on our Facebook page.

Please limit your narratives to 500 words, and be sure to mention the specific music or event that impacted you. We will select submissions for featured posts. Please let us know if you would prefer your post to remain anonymous.

Our inspiration:

"Music Redeems" is the motto of the New Orleans Habitat Musicians’ Village, a community of 72 single family homes and five elder living duplexes built in the Upper Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction, conceived in 2005 by Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. in partnership with New Orleans Habitat for Humanity. The Village is meant to provide a home for many of the city’s musicians and cultural ambassadors who were displaced from their homes after the Hurricane. Despite the damage inflicted by the storm and the recent challenges the city faces in response to damage from the oil spill crisis, the bedrock upon which the culture of New Orleans still lies is its music. The act of teaching, playing, and participating in music has tremendous capacity for healing on an individual level; on a societal level, it helps us reflect on our own humanity. Given its importance as one of the great musical capitals of our nation and the world, New Orleans’ tragedies affect us all. Music, the foundational element of the city’s culture, is crucial in its reconstruction. Who among us has not experienced a personal tragedy and sought out music for meaning and comfort?

Construction of the Ellis Marsalis Center For Music is scheduled to be completed in the late spring of 2011 and will offer the Musicians’ Village and its neighbors a place to study, perform, and record music with practice rooms, an after-school music program, recording spaces, a music library, and a performance hall. The Center will provide an environment for the great musicians and teachers of New Orleans to pass along their traditions to future generations, fostering an appreciation for the past and thus securing a commitment to the future of a unique culture which continues to sustain the city and its citizens in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

The Musicians’ Village and the future Ellis Marsalis Center for Music use the redemptive power of music to help New Orleans and its citizens look beyond immediate troubles with hope and promise for the future. We hope that visitors to MusicRedeems.com will share their individual stories of how the power of music has provided hope and promise for their own futures.

In addition to submitting your story by emailing us, you may also submit your story by clicking one of the below buttons which will redirect you to a form for submitting your story through Tumblr, or on the official Music Redeems Facebook page.

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