New Orleans, Louisiana is a city of grave importance in the scope of Black American History, and few musicians understand that notion better than Troy Andrews, the trombone player and bandleader known professionally as Trombone Shorty. “I was born and raised in the Tremé neighborhood, which is right in the Congo Square, the oldest free Black neighborhood in America,” Andrews tells Ebro during another Black History Month-focused episode of The Message. “And the music, the Africans, the enslaved people there, they would gather, and the slave masters—or whatever you want to call them—allowed them to keep their traditions from Africa. They talked their language, they played their drums, and that went into what we do today with the second line music, the gathering. If we’re marching through a neighborhood, you have people coming outside with robes on, or if they were cooking—whatever they were doing—coming out banging on pots. That just shows you how powerful Black music is here in New Orleans. Everything that we do grows from that.” Andrews, who once served as a featured member of Lenny Kravitz’s horn section and whose Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue band has supported acts like Jeff Beck, Dave Mathews Band, and Hall & Oates, to name a few, sat down with Ebro on the heels of Super Bowl LIX to talk about what it means to be of New Orleans music culture. “Older musicians—especially my brother James Andrews—have given back so much to me, and without them I wouldn’t be who I am,” he says. “When I was about seven years old I was already giving back. I was teaching the kids that was across the street. It’s not about being a star [or] becoming rich, it’s just a part of what we do.” For his The Message playlist, Shorty includes artists like Louis Armstrong, Master P, Drake, Dave Matthews Band, and Bob Marley—a diverse array of personal all-time greats from whom he took inspiration, if not education. “Some of these people I’ve worked with and been influenced by them on stage,” Andrews says. “If I’m traveling to different places, I try to take a little bit from each thing and put it into my music or be influenced by it in some type of way.”