New Orleans musicians share Christmas through jazz, blues, and bounce

In New Orleans, Christmas doesn't mean you have to abandon what makes the city sound like itself. The musicians who've shaped the city's sonic identity — from jazz singers to bounce pioneers — have deep roots in church. When December arrives, they don't switch genres. They just go deeper into what they already know.

John Boutte learned early what it means to have a signature sound. Stevie Wonder told him so after a chance encounter: "You sound like you — nobody else." Boutte grew up in Treme, where music was as ordinary as breathing, and sang "O Come All Ye Faithful" during Christmas Eve Mass. But it's Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" that captures what the season means to him — the aspiration, the incomplete hope. "One of these days, we'll get it straight and we will have a really beautiful Christmas," Boutte says. "I don't know if it'll be this year."

Big Freedia came up in a Baptist church choir and never compartmentalized her faith from her art. She's posted booty-shaking videos and prayer-hand emojis with equal conviction. "Being that I'm a Black, gay artist, I'm not afraid to let people know that I believe in God," she said. Her family didn't have much growing up, but they made Christmas happen anyway. Now Freedia records her own Christmas songs — strictly Big Freedia — including "Santa is a Gay Man." What her parents taught her was simple: make joy where you can.

Tarriona "Tank" Ball, whose grandfather preached at her Baptist church, carries that moral compass into everything she does. She blends genres the way she blends influences: Eartha Kitt, Donny Hathaway, The Temptations. When she sings "Silent Night," she hopes the audience feels what she feels in church — that closeness to something larger than themselves. "I hope people feel closer to God. I hope they feel comforted."

Leroy Jones, part of the Preservation Hall collective in the French Quarter, recorded an album of Christmas hymns in three-part trumpet harmony. "Away in a Manger" is his favorite — a song that reconstructs the night Christ was born. "The lyrics really paint the picture for that whole scene," he said.

Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes grew up in a house where music never stopped, especially at Christmas. His family played blues all night long. His parents were sharecroppers, and the holiday meant temporary relief from daily hardship. Through music, they made "magic and medicine and healing." The blues Barnes still plays — like Freddie King's "Christmas Tears" — weren't about sentimentality. They were about remembering those still struggling, asking God to bless soldiers, the wounded, people on welfare, people everywhere.

At 84, Irma Thomas still sings in her church choir. She's been a mainstay at Jazz Fest's gospel tent for decades, and she calls gospel music a form of prayer when words aren't enough. She's recorded "O Holy Night" twice, hoping it gives people solace no matter what they're carrying. "All I want to do is bring joy to folk," she said. That's the New Orleans Christmas tradition: not escape from the world as it is, but music that meets you where you stand.