The day the levees broke

New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz and, within its provenance, religion had a central place. Just think of the hymnal tunes and spirituals that became the great anthems of the Crescent City marching bands, from Just a Closer Walk with Thee to Glory Land, from The Old Rugged Cross to Lord, You Sure Been Good to Me. The invocation of Christian myths and symbols were at the core.

Terence Blanchard's requiem for his native city following the appalling tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is called A Tale of God's Will. The listener may or may not detect irony in this title, particularly as he tells in the sleeve notes: "The faulty levees that the federal government had built collapsed, allowing the flood-waters in." A tale of government will, then, or lack of government will to protect the people of New Orleans, in particular the poor and the black, among them the families of the musicians.

Blanchard is a monumental modern New Orleans trumpeter of astonishing abilities. Among the great Delta City horn men, it is Henry "Red" Allen who is his true progenitor.

He has inherited all Red's ability to soar in the higher register and to bend notes around every conceivable corner, as well as blow them with a tender and moving blues lyricism.

His band too are no slouches, with New Orleans tenorist Brice Winston, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Kendrick Scott, all backed up by the 40-member orchestral might of the Northwest Sinfonia.

Blanchard has written the scores for several Spike Lee films, including Mo' Better Blues, The 25th Hour and Malcolm X and, most recently, for Lee's documentary of the New Orleans floods When the Levees Broke - some of which is included within this present album.

The trumpeter's intention is "to show the calm before the storm that you can hear in the string arrangement and the interlude is when the storm comes and the levees break. The second section is when people are on their roofs, poor people, begging for food, dying from lack of water."

The opener Ghost of Congo Square remembers the African-American slave gatherings at the square, where drummers were allowed but where the severed heads of rebel slaves were also exhibited, where an amalgam of joy and cruelty was manifest, where tragedy was rife. Blanchard's simmering notes expose its history.

During a track called Levees is when the trumpeter is at his most superb. The agonised tone, the bent and fractured sound, the notes of extended pain and sustained suffering, the blues of a city and its poor, the destruction of their few and precious possessions. All is here in Blanchard's haunting choruses.

Winston's In Time of Need evokes the sufferings of his own family "as well as the countless people affected by human ineptitude." Not God's agency here, but huge corrupting and authoritarian human agency.

"I was so frustrated and in rage, I wanted the trumpet to scream on every track," said Blanchard. "I had to contain myself."

The album's harrowing climax is Dear Mom, where Blanchard remembers Lee's filming of his mother's first return with her son to her house crushed by the flood. "My mother is crying. I am trying not to. I am telling her that these are just things, things that can be rebuilt or repaired or rebought. I know this is not true. Nothing will be as it was."

And he plays like a miracle, as he does with full orchestral backing in Over There, like a messenger of human pain and renewal with the whole New Orleans tradition and history in his melodious, beautiful breath.