Purists scoffed, while other lovers of New Orleans music rejoiced, when the Dirty Dozen and lesser-known innovators injected funk, R&B and pop influences into traditional brass band music beginning in the late '70s, successfully exporting that rich, party-hearty blend far beyond the confines of the Crescent City.

The Rebirth Brass Band followed suit the next decade, with an approach that was even more brash and closer to the street. The format was reinvented once more in the '90s, with the advent of a movement known as brass-hop. Rap, hip-hop, brassy horns and second-line rhythms - among other elements - mixed and mingled in the sound of such bands as disparate as Coolbone, Soul Rebels and All That, with that last group now split into two warring factions, each laying claim to the use of the name.

The Michael Foster Project, named best new brass of 1999 by influential New Orleans music magazine Offbeat, doesn't exactly throw the genre a millennial curve with "Kick Some Brass," recorded at Donna's, the popular Rampart Street nightspot known as the center of the brass-band universe.

The sextet, formed in Baton Rouge eight years ago by tuba man Michael Foster, a Texas native who has subbed in the D.J. Davis-led incarnation of All That, nods to the old-timers with gritty, reverential versions of several familiarities. "Bourbon Street Parade," "Down by the Riverside" and "When the Saints Go Marching Home" ought to strike a chord even among those whose Big Easy experience has been limited to a Hurricane-bolstered stumble down Bourbon Street.

The more intriguing material is right up front, with the cascading horns (do I hear Blood, Sweat and Tears?) and infectious punch of "Mardi Gras Funk," a showcase for the gutbucket soloing of trombonist Frank Williams, the group's best and most entertaining improviser. A similarly infectious groove is at the center of the title track, a sort of signature tune featuring boisterous unison singing.

A hip-hop thump held down by trap-kit drummer Ronald Moss provides the perfect foil for syncopated horn lines on "Big 'T' Daddy," while "Chicken Grease" slides on a soul vamp and Foster's stair-stepping sousaphone lines lift up "Cat House," which occasionally breaks open to give the drummer some. The slow-grooving "When It All Comes Together," written by Project tenor saxophonist Kier Johnson, may be the most ambitious piece, its bebop-and-beyond textures attached to a tricky, hiccuping riff.

"Kick Some Brass" amounts to a neat update on a brand of New Orleans music that may resonate long into the future, thanks to the forward-thinking ministrations of disciples like Foster and Co. Put on your parade shoes, and crank it up.
- PHILIP BOOTH