Experienced editor Renee Edwards’ first feature as a director examines the plight of various jazz and R&B musicians in New Orleans. Most are coping with the profession’s most common occupational hazard, poverty, but this thoughtful, long-in-the-making documentary quietly unpacks how that problem is entwined with the absurdly byzantine healthcare system in the US, drug and alcohol dependency and the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina.

That said, several interviewees observe, almost with shame, that in some ways there have been positive changes wrought by the disaster, such as a reinvigoration of the jazz scene in the city that has attracted younger musicians. And yet, recent gentrification in the French quarter has ushered in sound pollution laws in a city that prided itself on its ability to party 24 hours a day, so it’s all shifting under their feet. Much screen time is spent in the kindly company of the Bethany and Johann Bultman, the founders of the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic who struggle to provide medical care to artists too well off for Medicaid and too poor to afford Obamacare. Anyone who has ever complained about the tribulations of getting a GP appointment through the NHS in Britain should have a watch and learn to be grateful for what we have.

But the film’s most appealing feature is its abundance of music, ranging from old-time Dixieland brass bands, to R&B jams, rap and more. It comes from the likes of living legend Dr John (an interviewee here); guitarist, amputee and raconteur extraordinaire Paul Pattan; and the late drummer Herman Roscoe Ernest, to whom the film is dedicated. It’s slightly frustrating that time constraints mean only snatches of some songs are heard, but the story moves along at a well-timed lollop, fitting the smooth energy of the city itself.