OffBeat Magazine, the foremost authority on Louisiana music and one of the world’s longest-running jazz and roots music publications, celebrates its 25th anniversary with this issue. Here, we give a pithy history of how the publication grew in tandem with the popularity of the city and state of Louisiana’s music scene as it recaptured the glories of the early 20th century days when jazz was invented on its streets.

New Orleans music was running at ...