This is not John Philip Sousa’s band music.
Don’t get us wrong, Sousa is in the pantheon of them-who-haul-brass-through-the-streets, but we suspect the maestro might be surprised by the music today. Which, if you think about it, is good.
Otherwise, there would only be the old-timey brass band idiom and the genre would have lost touch with the people.
Which is precisely where this music has always lived. With military bands and civic orchestras and parades and funerals and weddings, brass band music has always been popular music.
And in New Orleans, it still is.