Standing in Congo Square, I felt the pulse of history beneath my feet.
This sacred space (now nestled within Louis Armstrong Park) was once the only place in colonial North America where enslaved Africans were permitted to gather publicly on Sundays. From the early 18th century, these gatherings became a cultural crucible, fusing West African drumming, French quadrilles, and Caribbean ritual into the syncopated rhythms that would birth jazz, funk, R\&B, and hip-hop. Scholars such as Freddi Williams Evans describe Congo Square as the “spiritual epicentre” of New Orleans’ musical soul.
This city’s musical DNA also includes a fascinating parallel with latency — the very issue Telemidi seeks to overcome in networked performance. In the 19th century, New Orleans marching bands faced time-delay challenges when coordinating sound over distance during parades and funerals. Their solution? Rely on strong, cyclic pulses, precisely the technique Telemidi has revived for synchronising geographically dispersed musicians in our modern digital.
Thanks to Dr Christophe E. Jackson, my visit to New Orleans became a powerful intersection of past, present, and future. I met with luminaries in music performance, production, health, and innovation; including gospel-jazz virtuoso Davell Crawford, industry pioneers from the Marsalis family, Tom Bensen from Multipoint.pro and numerous key figures at the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. Their commitment to creative excellence reminded me that musical innovation has always gone hand-in-hand with social and technological change.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2025 reinforced this lesson in full colour. Seeing Lil Wayne and The Roots ignite audiences showed how the legacy of Congo Square continues to evolve, shaping global culture through the beat. These artists channel history not through nostalgia, but through reinterpretation and innovation, the core values at the heart of Telemidi.
This journey marked a turning point in my own personal evolution as CEO, academic, and performer. It reaffirmed the cultural urgency of what Telemidi offers: a way to maintain connection, synchrony, and expressiveness in a world increasingly shaped by distance and data. As I’ve shared through previous LinkedIn reflections, Telemidi is now more than a technology. It’s become a movement, one rooted in human connection through rhythm.
Looking ahead, our vision is to connect New Orleans to Alice Springs via the Health, Arts & Technology (HAT) initiative. We are building pilot programs that bring musicians, medical practitioners, and educators together using Telemidi’s remote collaboration protocols. We’re also developing a Back-to-Back DJ (B2B) application to expand global access to rhythm-first network performance. As with Congo Square centuries ago, our work is about creating space for cultural convergence, innovation, and spiritual resonance.
To stand in New Orleans is to understand that rhythm is not just music, it’s memory, resistance, and imagination. Telemidi is proud to carry that tradition forward. The future is now.
