Seven year old Dinerral Shavers walks onto the stage of the Sound Café with a snare drum strapped to his chest. It’s past 6:30 on a Wednesday evening, the hour of the café’s weekly Youth Music Clinic. Neva Joseph, a music education major at Loyola University, instructs Shavers to “listen to the song and try [...]
Al “Carnival Time” Johnson bought his house on Tennessee Street in the Lower Ninth Ward in 1969. It wasn’t in the best shape, but he could afford it, and he figured, “When I meet Mrs. Right, we’d buy the house of our dreams.” Johnson spent the next 36 or so years working on the house—changing [...]
