Tremé — pronounced Treh-MAY — is the oldest African American neighbourhood in the United States and the birthplace of jazz. It lies just across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, a few blocks that most tourists never cross, which means it retains a genuine neighbourhood character that the Quarter lost long ago. The streets are quieter, the houses are smaller, and on a Sunday afternoon you might hear a brass band practising a few doors down.
Congo Square, within Armstrong Park on the edge of Tremé, is where enslaved Africans were permitted to gather on Sundays during the colonial period — the only place in North America where this was legally allowed — and where they maintained the musical and cultural traditions that eventually produced jazz, blues, and rock and roll. The square is now a peaceful grass oval, but its history is immense. The Backstreet Cultural Museum on St Claude Avenue documents the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, and the jazz funeral culture that make Tremé one of the most culturally significant neighbourhoods in America.