At Home with Daria and the Hip Drops

The New Orleans calypso funk band performs for the My Spilt Milk cameras in the band's backyard on the eve of French Quarter Festival.

After last year's rain, the French Quarter Festival is enjoying a meteorological mitzvah. The weather is not only not rainy, but it's beautifully comfortable. Today will be another beautiful today to see the broad sweep of New Orleans music that the festival offers, starting at 11 a.m. with Daria and the Hip Drops, who'll kick off a strong day on the WWL Made in the Shade Stage (on the Esplanade side of the U.S. Mint) that also includes The Revealers, Happy Talk Band, Naughty Professor, and two-time My Spilt Milk Award-winners Tank and the Bangas. If you can't make it, their set and all the performances on that stage today will be broadcast live on WWOZ.

The band's signature is its inclusion of calypso and soca elements in its funk, as well as Daria Dzurik's steel drums. You can hear their affection for island sounds in their original forms in the band's sound, as well as an affection for pop interpreters such as No Doubt and Santigold. 

Recently, My Spilt Milk's Lauren Keenan met with the band, which set up in its semi-tropical backyard to talk and perform.