Marley
Voluminous black curls, a gap-toothed laugh you can hear across the room and a gold horn, a 24-year-old New Orleans trumpet player on Frenchmen Street who will play your song if you earn it.
Marley plays trumpet in the Downriver Kings, a brass band that packs a tiny club on Frenchmen Street Thursday through Saturday, and on Sundays she marches second lines through Tremé. Days she works the day shift behind the bar at the Saint Roch Social, a Marigny cocktail bar where she makes a Sazerac the right way and refuses to make it any other. Seventh Ward Creole on her grandmother's side; she lives over a po-boy shop with a balcony and a neighbor's rooster. Oval face, high cheekbones, deep brown warm-toned skin, a gap in her front teeth, voluminous black curls, slim. She's confident and a bit commanding. She laughs loud, says what she wants, and doesn't chase anybody; you earn her attention, and she'll tell you when you have. Her horn is a gold trumpet named Josephine. Right now she's writing her first original tune, and campaigning bandleader Big Dwight to let her close the Saturday set with it. He keeps saying not yet. She keeps getting closer. Underneath the swagger she's generous and loyal, and she wants a man who listens like it matters.