"It was a life-changing experience, we would wake up and the first thing we would do is practice. You could play really loud in his studio and his family was cool with it. Its a different kind of culture there where everybody on the block was a master of something. One guy would spend his whole time playing just a calabash shaker. You could walk around the neighborhood and find somebody to show you anything. And the house was great because everybody in the neighborhood would come by and hang out. Nobody speaks English there at all, so I had to learn Portuguese. I didnt know Portuguese, I just knew some Spanish. But by the time I left there, I spoke Portuguese."

Back in the States, he hooked up with old friends from The Handphibians and the recently formed Mama Digdowns Brass Band, a swinging marching ensemble with an ear for authentic parade music infused by Thelonious Monk and other jazz greats. Naturally, they headed for New Orleans. There, they worked Mardi Gras, the French Market and the Jazz and heritage Fest. "I did Mardi Grass for three years," Moses remembers. "And we went deep into where the brass band culture started and they let us in. We were in Treme, the home of parade music. And boy, you got to play it there or they will step up and show you how to do it."

Eventually, Moses and two other musicians from Digdown broke off to form what became the Youngblood Brass Band, a high-energy band fusing Jazz and Hip-Hop ---------Page 3-------->