On a July afternoon, in a swamp-based urban capital that has just been told not to drink its own water, the white tent swells with human heat. "I was told that this group is a don’t-miss!" chirps the woman behind me. I haven’t seen this woman, because I can’t turn around. The bleachers are so packed I have to tilt sideways so my knees don’t poke the back of the man in front of me. Across, on stage, a professorial fellow is marshaling the crowd to clear a dance floor on a patch of lawn no larger than two Fotomats, covered with straw. Within a few minutes, we are in a revival tent, and the Spirit has a French accent and black winking eyes. And all around, people who seemed to have been randomly plucked from Washington streets are temporary Cajuns. One woman is dancing alone, holding an Old English malt liquor bottle, full of water, on her head. She looks like she just walked here from a K Street saloon, emptying the bottle of its original contents along the way. A balding, sunburned man in madras, maybe a small-town mayor, parades with a much younger, bespangled black woman whose blouse keeps eluding her left shoulder. A redheaded family dances, Dad with Junior on his right hip, the curly-headed toddler crisscrossing through Dad’s legs. A mother yanks her 10-year-old son to her bosom in a sudden, terrifying waltz.

The tempo builds, along with the smell of hay and manure and suntan lotion. The mayor and the showgirl begin a rhumba. Their movements, precise and loose, are neither seduction nor show, but a response to the effervescent music, the odoriferous heat, as effortless as my own toe-tapping, butt-twitching unselfconsciousness.

Even the little kids have the struts and twirls down. Where did this six-year-old with the waterfall ponytail and the pastel miniskirt learn these moves? Is there Cajun music on Nickelodeon now? These people’s teeth gleam. Their faces sweat. Their teeth sweat. Several paragraphs gone, and I’ve hardly mentioned the music. It’s as organic and seamless and sweet as the grass under the straw. In the intoxication of the white tent, I’m hearing Michael Doucet’s notes before his bow makes them. His voice builds, lifts, flies, not always a beauty, but always brave. The longer he plays, the more the twin tufts of hair at the sides of his head lift, like the ears of a lynx on the prowl. Like Einstein: for hair like that, you’ve got to have a hot genius mind or a musical soul.

These musicians, these dancers, they aren’t here to boast or redeem us. They’re just doing the natural thing, in a most unnatural atmosphere: country magic on the National Mall. - Pamela Murray Winters (Arlington, VA)

It was the kind of afternoon that only comes occasionally, a perfect sunny, cool day in Central Park, New York City, that made the perfect vibe for a near perfect concert. Headliner Pharaoh Sanders pulled together one of those quantum bands that you only dream of seeing, the Afro-centric saxman joined by a band that included Indian percussionist Badal Roy, drummer Adam Rudolph and Foday Musa Suso on kora. The normally serene, introspective, almost cosmic Sanders was in a rare mood, energetic, almost lighthearted and he danced this band through a phenomenal set of tunes and improvisations that shook Summerstage. But the focal point of the show came a little earlier, when pianist Monty Alexander and Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin took the stage with Idris Muhammed and Ira Coleman in the rhythm section for a long set of jazzy, breezy reggae/ska/pop tunes that were the virtual definition of summer day. They were cool, they were hot, and the sight of the legendary Ranglin pulling on the strings in the summer sun after so long in the shadows of his own legend was a fine thing indeed. They cruised through chestnuts like "The Theme From Exodus" (one of the tunes that highlighted Alexander’s penchant for clever, borrowed phrases) and by the time they got to the classic Ranglin tune "Surfin’" they owned the city. - Cliff Furnald (New Haven, CT)