Overture to Gustav, Mauler

Three articles in which I tried to explain why New Orleans is important and, later, why its recovery is so precarious.

• From 2005, five months before Katrina, a column about the complex interaction of race and music in New Orleans.

• From later that year, a week after Katrina’s landfall, a column about the joy, not just the suffering, that is due to the city’s location.

• From the first anniversary of Katrina in 2006, a longer look at a movie debut, a banjo player, and the shaky state of the reconstruction.