ABSTRACT
New Orleans has always been simultaneously the most African and most European of American cities. The cultural links with Africa were maintained more strongly than anywhere else in the South by slaves in New Orleans, and the fusion of cultures that is at the essence of America was perfected in the crescent city. Alliances of a communal and personal nature were to be a hallmark of Indian and African American relationships in the New Orleans area. The tension generated by abolitionism and sectional differences in the build-up to the Civil War reverberated adversely for free black people and slaves with almost equal intensity. Contemporary scholarship stresses that intermarriage between Native Americans and black Louisianians was prevalent during Louisiana's early history. Wanda Rouzan is equally adventurous, and creates a fresh fusion of all the musical influences she absorbed as a Creole who 'grew up second lining in the Seventh Ward'.
