I have a TL;DR at the bottom. Anyways, I'm a musician by trade so I'm biased but may be able to give some detail on how badass Louisiana is. Musically, if you embrace the traditions and carry them authentically, there is no better place to be from -- it's been my calling card everywhere I've worked as a professional. When I show up to a recording session and people find out I'm from New Orleans and I can play in that style authentically, their eyes light up and they get stoked. New Orleans is the only city in the US, maybe even the world, that you get that reaction. NO OTHER CITY HAS THAT EFFECT IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. None. Not New York, not L.A., not Miami, Chicago, or anywhere else in the south.

Musically, Louisiana has more variety and history than any place. This is a cultural thing.

-Cajun music is special and uniquely Louisiana.
-Delta blues was mostly Mississippi, but Louisiana is in second place.
-NOLA blues (Professor Longhair, Dr. John, James Booker, etc), is also unique. If you didn't grow up playing it, you don't know how to play it. It's very difficult to sound authentic.
-New Orleans and dixieland jazz I'll lump together. Kid Ory, King Oliver, the "hot 5" concept. Collective improvisation (also in bluegrass) was a revolutionary thing and NOLA put a swampy feel on it
-People never talk about it as the birthplace of rock, but Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, and Little Richard are all Louisiana and easily top 10 rock pioneers
-The forgotten Louisiana Hayride that would've been the Grand Ole Opry had Louisiana not fricked it up.

Nowadays the "culture" aspect is kind of lost. It's become a "everything in NOLA is because of black people" bastardized version of our history.

You guys already covered the food, architecture, etc.

The problem is keeping traditions alive and having them grow with the times while not straying completely from them. NOLA never adjusted to modern jazz, Bourbon Street is just a strip of drunken bar music (Don't Stop Believin, Mustang Sally type BS), and Frenchmen is overrated and a tiny, tiny arse street.

So that much is enough for me. But, you have to also factor in all the shitty aspects of it. Which is why 95% of the good musicians leave. There's no good work anymore, there's like 2 studios remotely worth a shite, locals don't go to Preservation Hall. Outside of music, I didn't notice until I moved, that it's poor, it's dirty, it's dangerous, corrupt, backwards, uneducated, more expensive than what it has to offer, just overall run down.

TL;DR - Louisiana is very, very significant as far as history in America. I speak from a musician's standpoint, but it's the richest state, by far, in that field. However it is a shithole state that has gotten even shittier the last 30 years when you compare it to other places.

This post was edited on 5/18/24 at 1:08 pm