By Bethany Bultman, co-founding director and chair of the New Orleans Musician Assistance Foundation, August 28, 2015
August 26, 2005 was a typical lazy end of summer Friday afternoon at the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic (NOMC). At 4 pm our office administrator locked the file cabinets containing the health records of our 837 active patients, turned out the lights, and rode the elevator down seven flights to street level. It would be the last time any of our staff would enter that office.
Since the musician’s clinic was founded on May 1, 1998, our mission has been to sustain New Orleans’ musicians in mind, body, and spirit. Our musicians are the backbone of New Orleans’ number one industry: tourism. The NOMC proudly serves a culture which was bent by slavery, poverty, disease, and flood and who responded un-broken with the USA’s only indigenous art form, Jazz. Our health care team serves members of brass bands who overcame the violent deaths of some of their members to be nominated for a Grammy, and yet in 2015 continue to live in such poverty that they must rent their horns. We treat iconic Mardi Gras Indians who still live in homes that lack a roof 10 years after the floods of Katrina.
Read Bethany Bultman’s complete article at Next City
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