DEFEND NEW ORLEANS - In The Music Box, New Orleans Residents Hear Hope

January 26, 2012

In The Music Box, New Orleans Residents Hear Hope

Morgan Sasser/New Orleans Airlift

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, it left behind a city full of destroyed homes. Despite ongoing rebuilding efforts, thousands of blighted properties remain. Now, a group of artists is creating a structure that is part home, part musical instrument and part inspiration of what can be made of these damaged properties.

The Music Box is a small village of ramshackle sculptures huddled together on Piety Street in the Bywater section of the once-flooded 9th Ward. The sculptures are outfitted as musical instruments and are made almost entirely of the remains of the 18th-century Creole cottage that used to sit on this lot.

The Heartbeat House is one of these musical sculptures: It’s an A-frame shack with a rotating organ speaker perched on top. The speaker is attached to a stethoscope — which broadcasts the heartbeats of those who stop to engage with the art.

“Unlike a church bell [that] calls people to congregation or an alarm, what we want to have is a heartbeat,” explains curator Delaney Martin. “This primal beat that calls to the people of New Orleans and says: Come out and dance, come out and sing, come out and have fun.”

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