Preservation Hall Jazz Band April 11, Smith Center.

There are no young men in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. None at heart, anyway. These are old souls tasked with upholding and protecting New Orleans-style jazz. They belong to families that pass down music for generations the way blue-blooded East Coasters pass down family crest signet rings, carrying the secrets, the rudiments and the vocal lilts of their great-greats until they exist as individuals but possess the muscle memory of men and women from the middle of the 19th century and sure can show you how to do a real good goddamn drum roll.

That, the drum roll, is happening before my eyes at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday night in front of a room of people who will probably be asleep by the next show’s 9 p.m. curtain call but can tell you exactly where and when they first saw the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. One guy tells me it was in the 40s, which can’t be true given that the original band formed in the 60s. But I’m not going to piss on his flowers in the middle of his alleged fourth time seeing them since his military salad days, especially while Joseph Lastie Jr. (of the New Orleans gospel Lasties) is maybe 30 seconds into that drum roll—an immaculate, full-bodied, Michelangelo’s “David” of a buzz roll on his snare—with his head cocked to the side like he’s been asleep since the four count but yanking booms and bangs from his guts and hurling them down onto the Stewarts and Shirlys below. As he closes with a thick-fisted cymbal crash, the reprise turns physical. All four wind-players are on their feet, suddenly titanic in size and volume, grabbing the crowd by the scruff and lifting their bells to the ceiling, then finally crashing down with the kind of stinger they don’t make no more to the kind of applause usually saved for Madonna or the Yankees. There’s no “trying to keep up” here. Whether you’re talkin’ the experience of the older guys or the healthy agility of the young cats, this is a band that lives on the same page.

By 7 o’clock they hit the encore: “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It’s perfect. Sonically, sure, but that’s not what we’re talking about. It’s history. It’s everything triumphant and beautiful about New Orleans-style jazz, everything these French Quarter saints wanted to reflect about their come-froms and always-beens, from the big tuba solos to the buh-dup bup BAH lead-ins to the shouts and claps and yes sirs that have been around for centuries and won’t never, ever die. What I’m saying is they blow, man. They f*ckin’ blow.