New Orleans has always been a significant center for music, showcasing its intertwined European, Latin American, and African cultures. The city's unique musical heritage was born in its colonial and early American days from a unique blending of European musical instruments with African rhythms. As the only North American city to have allowed slaves to gather in public and play their native music (largely in Congo Square, now located within Louis Armstrong Park), New Orleans gave birth to an indigenous music: jazz, a truly American art form.  Much like the blues, from whichit is in part built, the music has its roots in folk songs, work chants and music of Southern African American slaves and plantation workers in 1800’s America.  From the legendary piano rolls of Jelly Roll Morton, the highly syncopated New Orleans funeral procession (second line) bands, to the swinging sounds of Louis Armstrong, New Orleans can unquestionably lay claim to being the birthplace of jazz.

For the purposes of this documentary, we will focus on a truly New Orleans rhythmic drum style, the 2nd Line.

New Orleans' unique musical culture is evident even in its traditional funerals. A spin on military brass band funerals, New Orleans traditional funerals feature sad music (mostly dirges and hymns) on the way to the cemetery and happier music (hot jazz) on the way back. Such musical funerals are still held when a local musician, a member of a social club, krewe, or benevolent society, or a noted dignitary has passed. Until the 1990s, most locals preferred to call these "funerals with music", but visitors to the city have long dubbed them "jazz funerals."

“Second line,” refers to the rhythms of a black parading tradition originating in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Since the 1960s, when James Brown essentially invented funk music by building on rhythms introduced to him by two New Orleans-schooled drummers, the relationship between “second line” and “funk” rhythms has been increasingly symbiotic.

The music of New Orleans has profoundly influenced twentieth century music, most profoundly in its approach to rhythm. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, black musicians in New Orleans developed a unique rhythmic syntax which underlies Crescent City jazz, rhythm and blues, and funk music. Taking its name from the black street parading tradition in which it was developed, second line rhythm has spread around the world through the music of jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong and “Godfather of Soul” James Brown, among others. Due in part to their widespread influence, second line rhythms are a foundational component of many international jazz and popular music styles today.

In second line parades, two drummers establish the central rhythm. As with a typical marching band, the bass drummer plays on the one and the three. The snare drummer, however, improvises march-style beats that often depart from the standard accents on the two and the four. Second line drummers vary the sstandard march beat with syncopations, added notes, and shifting patterns of accents, while revelers joining the parade provide additional layers of rhythm with hand percussion, bottles, sticks, and improvised instruments

The rhythms of the second line parade are a composite of native and imported musical traditions that include features of standard marches, African-American church music, Caribbean rhythms like the son and the rumba, and black slave dances both sacred and secular. While many studies have focused on the absorption of second line rhythm into jazz drumming styles, studies of the relationship between second line rhythm and the highly syncopated, groove-centered genre known as funk are a relatively recent development.

In its primary sense, “second line” refers to an African-American processional form codified in New Orleans in the late 1800s. A typical second line parade features brass-and-percussion ensembles playing a syncopated march, accompanied by revelers who add chants, dances, and rhythms of their own.

The “second line” is the mass of people who follow a traditional African-American parade in New Orleans. In common speech, however, when people refer to a “second line,” they imply the whole event—generally a brass band or black Indian parade or a jazz funeral sponsored by any of the city’s large number of traditional black social clubs and civic societies.

Variants of the second line are an essential component of jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indian parades, and various street festival parades throughout the year. Rooted in the Sunday slave dances of Congo Square, second line parades persist to the present day, making up an essential part of the city’s musical and cultural fabric.