We're standing among throngs of revelers outside the back entrance to Le Bon Temps Roule, a club in New Orleans' Uptown neighborhood, where the Soul Rebels Brass Band performs every Thursday. It's May 1 around 11:30 p.m. during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the internationally renowned music celebration that runs nearly 24/7 for 10 days straight. The Soul Rebels are scheduled to hit the Le Bon Temps stage in a half-hour; about 200 people already pack the place, with another hundred or so mostly local 20somethings hanging outside, creating a vibrant block-party scene.

Each member of the Soul Rebels — snare drummer Lumar Le Blanc, bassist/percussionist Derrick "Oops" Moss, trumpeter/vocalist Marcus "Red" Hubbard, trumpeter Tannon "Fish" Williams, tenor saxophonist Eron Williams (not related), sousaphonist Edward Lee, trombonist/vocalist Winston Turner and guitarist Norimitsu Hirata — has gathered for a pre-show interview to promote their performance at Tropical Heatwave in Ybor City May 17. "We're gonna play hip-hop funk 'til you drop," says LeBlanc, a large man who arrives at the show in a shiny black Cadillac Escalade.

"It's gonna be a jazz rave," Turner adds, grinning.

The Soul Rebels began their career playing straight New Orleans brass-band jazz in the second line and funeral tradition but eventually incorporated contemporary funk, classic reggae and rap into their repertoire, which largely consists of originals ranging from the socially conscious "Let Your Mind Be Free" to the ass-shaking anthem "We Rock the Party."

On any given night the Soul Rebels might also brass up a Phil Collins or George Michael smash, depending on the audience and the musicians' mood. "We're trying to make our own stand musically," Hubbard says. "We've written about seven albums of our own material. Each night we feed off the crowd. No set lists. The show starts, and it just flows from there."

LeBlanc and Moss founded the Soul Rebels in 1991. Every member of the eight-piece ensemble reads and writes music, which most of them learned as children in neighborhoods like the Katrina-devastated Lower Ninth Ward. They honed their chops at Louisiana colleges. Ten-year Soul Rebel Hubbard, 30, went to Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he earned a degree in music education. When the Soul Rebels perform, though, there's nothing academic about it.

"Y'all ready?" Hubbard announces when the band takes the Le Bon Temps stage, which is at ground level and within inches of the audience. "Let's do it. Party people to the front!"

New Orleans is widely regarded as the cradle of jazz, and over the years has been rife with purists who've often frowned on brass bands like Soul Rebels that refuse to toe the line established by pioneers like Louis Armstrong and sustained by such Crescent City artists as the Marsalis clan and Kermit Ruffins. "We're gonna change history," Moss says. "We do music that's pleasing to our soul. We're technically trained, but we can't keep playing the same music — but what we're doing, there's still that link to Louis Armstrong."

About 12 hours after shutting down Le Bon Temps, the Soul Rebels were the final act to play one of the 10 stages at Jazz Fest. Tropical Heatwave has no plans to approach the grandness of the New Orleans blowout, but the connection between the two events has tightened, with this year's WMNF bash offering attendees a delectable spoonful of what they would have found earlier this month in NOLA.

For starters, the 27th annual Heatwave marks the first time 'MNF has booked a second-line brass band.

The Soul Rebels are currently the toast of New Orleans, in large part because their boisterous, horn-fueled chant, "Fan Up New Orleans," has become the playoff theme song for the NBA's overachieving Hornets. The Rebels will close Heatwave with an 11:50 p.m. performance on the El Pasaje Plaza stage, which has been rechristened this year as the "Louisiana Stage." All five acts on it could be seen playing at various venues in New Orleans earlier this month: In addition to Soul Rebels, the Cajun-Irish Zydepunks, teenage vocalist/fiddle virtuoso Amanda Shaw and slide guitar master Sonny Landreth all performed official Jazz Fest gigs.

In a sense, the Soul Rebels received a Heatwave boost from a hometown friend.

Last year, WMNF took a chance by booking Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, a young NOLA hero barely known in these parts back then. By the time his performance wrapped, though, Shorty's energetic, distinctly Big Easy fusion of jazz, rock, rap and funk had won the crowd over unlike just about any act the community radio station has brought to town in the past.

"I don't think anyone knew who he was," says WMNF Program Director Randy Wynne. "But he was definitely the biggest hit of last year's Heatwave. We do exit surveys and [Trombone Shorty] was the favorite act selected by two-thirds of the people. That's very high. Usually the top act gets maybe 40 percent."

Chances are, the similar-sounding Soul Rebels will have no problem winning over the Heatwave crowd with their jubilant "hip-hop funk 'til you drop."

This article appears in May 14-20, 2008.