How the Big Easy rocks on

Anyone with more than a casual interest in the city of New Orleans, which is to say almost by definition anyone with an interest in the music of New Orleans, will want to see “New Orleans Music in Exile,” a new documentary airing tonight on Starz InBlack and Saturday on regular old Starz. The subject, generally speaking, is the scattering of the city’s community of musicians in the wake of a hurricane named Katrina, and the possibility of their return, and what that means to the fate of the Big Easy.

If it isn’t the deepest or most thorough or compellingly organized bit of digital video ever assembled, or even the latest report on the subject -- much of it seems to have been shot last fall, although recent reports suggest that things have not changed substantially since -- it is nevertheless heartfelt and often enlightening, and there is some good music in it. It meanders a good bit, and circles around to the same topics as new heads come on to talk so that at times it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but that’s not inappropriate to the community it takes as its subject.

The question, of course, as with all exiles, is whether the condition is permanent or temporary, and it is contained within the bigger question of what makes New Orleans New Orleans. (“You ain’t got no New Orleans without the 9th Ward,” says Cyril Neville, and now, of course, you’ve got no 9th Ward.) It’s a city whose past is its livelihood, and whose traditions are inextricable from its neighborhoods, and that it’s built in a nonsensical location, water-wise, is intrinsic to the kind of nonsense the city makes -- just as its traditional willingness to let the good times roll in the face of uncomfortable realities complicates its recovery, and makes the whole place morally and practically suspect in the eyes of some.

To others, of course, it’s heaven on Earth, and its people angels. “Music in Exile” shows in part how some of the city’s citizens -- that is, some of its better-known musicians -- were welcomed into Memphis and Austin and Houston, cities whose spiritual kinship to New Orleans is close. It’s less concerned, if not unconcerned, with the many more musicians whose livelihood is dependent on the town itself, who have no work waiting outside of it, or tour buses in which to retreat. Indeed, several seen here were not in town when the hurricane hit, but were on the road.

Directed by Robert Mugge, who has made many, mostly blues-and-jazz-themed music documentaries, including “Gospel According to Al Green,” “Saxophone Colossus” (about Sonny Rollins) and “The Return of Ruben Blades,” it’s for the most part a fan’s film, dedicated to the idea that the city can be what it was, and largely uninterested in the games of political hot potato, hide and seek and pin the tail on the donkey that continue there apace. Apart from Neville, who anticipates “a big fight” over who’ll own New Orleans, the overall attitude of the film and its participants is tentatively positive, that mix of optimism and fatalism that seems to define the city.

The film begins with an efficient recap of Katrina and the failing levees, and moves on to various tales of coping and recovery and the first shoots of a music scene springing up again. The story for the most part is told by talking heads and newspaper headlines -- the film tells more, unfortunately, than it shows, though even in the telling there are some moving moments.

The most effective passages are when Mugge tours what’s left of various homes and clubs and offices, including Irma Thomas’ Lion’s Den (the occasion for a replay of footage he shot there for the 1993 “True Believers: The Musical Family of Rounder Records”) and Eddie Bo’s Check Your Bucket cafe. “I know the piano’s gone,” Bo says before entering, “because the water line is higher than the piano.”

Interspersed throughout the film are performances from a wide array of musicians, from Dr. John, the ReBirth Brass Band and the Iguanas, to younger-generation performers such as World Leader Pretend, Beatin Path and Theresa Anderson, whose opening a cappella rendition of “Like a Hurricane” is typical of a heavily thematic song selection. (Even Stephen Assaf’s “All of Me” -- “You took the best / So why not take the rest?” -- seems pointedly topical. Marcia Ball sings Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927,” which you’ve heard about a thousand times if you watched 10 minutes of TV news in the aftermath of Katrina.

New Orleans has probably produced more songs about itself than any city, with the possible exceptions of New York and Paris; but they are for the city’s own use, in a way, and its songwriters are writing new songs for new realities.

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‘New Orleans Music in Exile’

Where: Starz InBlack, tonight; Starz, Saturday

When: 8 tonight; 1 p.m. Saturday

Ratings: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)