New Orleans is a city defined by its unique and colorful history. It’s for that reason that most tend to view the place as something of a musical museum while ignoring the town’s vibrant and innovative new music. In New Orleans, the hip-hop at the heart of today’s culture emerged from an energetic, highly eroticized and occasionally gender-bending music called “bounce”. And the truth is, all the town’s seemingly disparate styles – jazz, brass bands and funk as well as the newer “bounce” influenced hip hop, are all intrinsically linked. There is a particular inclusiveness about the place which connects both its people and their music. And now, for the first time ever, all these sounds have been combined on one undeniably original record. With YA-KA-MAY, long time NOLA residents, GALACTIC have made an album that reflects the city as they see it – blending all the town’s distinctive sounds in a way no band has before.

YA-KA-MAY features established legends such as the Rebirth Brass Band, Irma Thomas, Big Chief Bo Dollis, Allen Toussaint and Walter “Wolfman” Washington with younger artists like Trombone Shorty and Corey Henry, John Boutté, Josh Cohen and Scully, and Glen David Andrews, as well as groundbreaking new “Bounce” artists like Cheeky Blakk, Big Freedia, Katey Red, and Sissy Nobby. The end result is New Orleans like it’s truly meant to be heard, and pure GALACTIC.

The deal according to Ned Sublette (the liner notes)

THIS IS NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S NEW ORLEANS RECORD. This is some post-flood musical reality from a 291-year-old city that’s had a near-death experience. New Orleans isn’t the same city it was five years ago, and it’s the same city it’s always been. Both these statements are true. One thing’s for sure: these days no one takes New Orleans for granted. And for all its problems – like, when are we going to take care of the wetlands that protect the city? – it’s in a good moment of music. This record shows you how alive New Orleans is, right now. New Orleans music is above all about community. You see your friends, and there’s music there. It’s a social process. Every Sunday you can go on a second line, an ambulatory block party where thousands of people come together to strut down the street, pushed along by a brass band or six. Those parades have been going since the 19th century, and they’re alive and strong today, and to me that means New Orleans is alive and strong. It’s not a big town, but from the start it’s been dense with music. People know each other, and among musicians, stylistic boundaries are as porous as the sinking ground of the city. It’s all related, and all the times and genres are present at once. But there’s a lingua franca that ties it all together: in New Orleans, whatever your ostensible style of music, it’s gonna come out funky. Which brings me to Galactic.

They’re an instrumental band, and they stretch out on live gigs, but they love to collaborate with vocalists. And why limit yourself to just one when the whole damn town is ready to sing? On this album, they offer themselves as a platform for artists from distinct corners of this city where every block is a culture. Ya-Ka-May features all-new material generated by the band in collaboration with a stellar series of guests, who range from iconic figures of the 1960s to the younger veterans to the underground. These invitees appear here outside their normal contexts and away from the sound you might typically associate with them, like putting a picture in a different frame. Guaranteed you know some of their names, but it’s unlikely that you know them all, even if you live in New Orleans, so you’re about to discover scorching talents from the worlds of music you know – jazz, brass bands, r&b, gospel, rock – and one you may not have encountered before: bounce. Let me say a word about that. For years people have been talking about New Orleans music as if it didn’t include hiphop, or about New Orleans hiphop as if none of the rest of it existed. But hiphop, which in New Orleans grows out of a local style called bounce, is part of the New Orleans music family.

To have Rebirth Brass Band, Irma Thomas, Big Chief Bo Dollis, Allen Toussaint, Trombone Shorty and Corey Henry, John Boutté, Josh Cohen and Scully, Glen David Andrews, and Walter “Wolfman” Washington together with Cheeky Blakk, Big Freedia, Katey Red, and Sissy Nobby – now that’s New Orleans. Those last three names, by the way, are part of an energetic local gender-bending music scene where sissy (their word) rappers write and perform bounce music — something new that’s also something old, in a town long known for what used to be called “female impersonators.” For all its variety, the finished composition avoids the special-guests pitfall of a disjointed collection, because 1) it’s all New Orleans, baby, and 2) as strong as the personalities of the guests are, this is Galactic’s album and they tie it all together. It’s an experiment that works. Listening to it from start to finish, it’s one concise piece that’s over before you know it. At which point you might want to play it again, and again. I have been. And the title? We’re in New Orleans, so of course it’s about food. Ya-Ka-May is one of several ways to spell the name of a soup of Chinese origin that’s been an Afro-Orleanian specialty for years. Made with whatever meat you have on hand, plus noodles, green onions and a hard-boiled-egg, it can feed a lot of people cheaply. It’s said to be a hangover cure. —NED SUBLETTE