Neville Bros. return to New Orleans jazz fest (Reuters)

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The Neville Brothers, one of NewOrleans' most famous musical families, on Wednesday sought tosoothe hurt feelings stirred by their absence since HurricaneKatrina by returning to the city's jazz festival.

The band has not played the New Orleans Jazz and HeritageFestival since the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast in August2005, but the brothers are now slated to take over thetraditional closing set at this year's festival on Sundaynight.

"We were being a part of the recovery, we were doingbenefits all over the world," Aaron Neville, told a newsconference where the band received a key to the city. "I wantedto come back, but my wife had cancer and I had to movesomewhere to survive. It's as simple as that."

The Neville brothers -- Art, 70, Charles, 69, Aaron, 67,and Cyril, 60 -- were forced to settle outside New Orleansafter Hurricane Katrina flooded four-fifths of the city.

The band also sought to highlight how difficult therecovery has been for the tens of thousands of people who weredisplaced by the storm.

"If it's hard for people like us, you can imagine how hardit is for most people," Cyril told Reuters after the event.

Shortly after the storm, Cyril, who relocated to Austin,Texas, enraged many locals by publicly criticizing the NewOrleans music scene, charging officials there with conspiringto keep out many displaced black residents. At the time, healso vowed not to return to the city to live.

Aaron Neville, who first hit the charts as a solo artist in1966 with the song "Tell it Like it Is," lost his New Orleanshome to Katrina's floodwaters and moved to Tennessee. He hassince moved back to the New Orleans area.

Charles Neville lived in Massachusetts before the storm,while Art Neville moved back to New Orleans weeks after thehurricane.

The band has not performed together in the city sinceKatrina.

The jazz festival resumed eight months after the storm,when the city was still largely unpopulated, drawing about300,000 people. This year's two-week festival started on April25.

Reuters/Nielsen