New Orleans musicians play in dimly lit clubs and out on French Quarter sidewalks, and this film follows the ones who see that playing as a form of preservation. Local educators and working musicians take young players under their wing, passing down Dixieland phrasing and brass-band arrangements the way earlier generations passed them down to today's teachers. The camera moves between the Quarter and the banks of the Mississippi, watching street performers draw crowds with impromptu sets and watching rehearsal rooms where the same tunes get taught note by note to teenagers. The film treats the city's claim to be the birthplace of jazz as a living practice rather than a historical footnote, arguing that the music survives only because someone keeps choosing to hand it down in person. There's no single hero or expert narrator here; the case is made through musicians talking about their own mentors and demonstrating, instrument in hand, what they're trying to keep alive. It's a modest, close-up portrait of a city's music culture staying intact through direct transmission from one generation to the next.