The Bluesiana Snake Festival

So starts The Bluesiana Snake Festival as Hidden Dave Crossway, a New Orleans street sweeper, celebrates the city in its pre-Katrina skin. With the night of the "snake moon" as the backdrop, we experience the lives, languages, and rhythms of the French Quarter, an unexpected urban idyll. "Yeah... Way down river, heart of a swamp, she's a city made of music, down soft ground between memory and dream..." Through a blend of voices--Big Jim Bullshit, Shushubaby, and Brooklyn Bob, to name a few--the musical voice of New Orleans is revealed in its varied dialects, grooves reminiscent of ragtime, jazz, and blues. The result is a look into who these folks are, their ways and beliefs, their senses of truth, and of existence itself. A novel about the joy and beauty of life in the depths, the momentum and narrative heart isn't driven by a plot or arc--it's about the trance. "It's all about hearing the music."