In addition to the loss of life and millions of dollars in damages that resulted from Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, a rich cultural scene was destroyed as well.

Whether the city would rebuild at all was in question, and it seemed unlikely that the city which gave us Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino and countless others would be the setting for musical innovation ever again. Fortunately, the Hot 8 Brass Band, which will perform at the University’s Performing Arts Center Sunday, is doing its part to return the city’s culture, and New Orleans itself, to its former glory.

The Hot 8 Brass Band formed in 1995, and has had a unique journey since then. The band regularly performs at New Orleans’ weekly Second Line parades, a unique musical tradition in the city.

“It’s like being at a concert with a large crowd of people, but take that same setting, put it outside, and then march it through the streets of your community for hours,” said Bennie Pete, who plays tuba and serves as a band leader for Hot 8.

“At first they only had jazz funerals for musicians and people who were part of the benevolent societies of New Orleans,” Pete said. “Back then it was more about helping each other in the community. if you needed a bill paid or food, they would all chip in and help each other. Now it’s more of a social thing.. The Second Line is actually the people behind the band, and that will be all the family and friends that are invited out to the parade.”

Hurricane Katrina, however, temporarily ended Second Line parades, and dispersed the Second Line to many cities and states throughout the country. After Katrina, Hot 8 began to understand that their music was both a way to escape from and to remember the pain of the past.

“At the Second Line parade, it’s more like a party atmosphere, which is cool,” Pete said. “But it has a lot of meaning.. They’re all out there on Sundays and the band is playing and everybody’s having a good time, but really it’s about the pain and whatever they had to go through Monday through Saturday.”

The band gained a heightened profile after Katrina, being featured most notably in Spike Lee’s documentary “When the Levees Broke.” Their new stature allowed the band to speak to audiences and classrooms on the musical culture of New Orleans before Katrina.

“I think they’ve done an admirable job of letting people know not what was happening after Katrina, but what was happening before,” band manager Lee Arnold said. “They showed how valuable the city was, and how valuable the music and the culture [were].”

The band also worked with two significant relief projects post-Katrina, called Find our Folk and Save our Brass! The latter focused on getting instruments to musicians whose equipment was destroyed or damaged, and the former, while similar, focused less on musicians, but both had remedy through music as their central goal.

“It brought a lot of people together, just through the music, and it soothed a lot of people during a time when they were really down,” Pete said. “It did for us while we were playing, and we saw it [soothing] people while we were playing. It was a powerful thing.”

Hot 8 is currently working on two albums, both of which are a response to the lessons learned from Katrina. The first album, which has a contemporary sound similar to their earlier albums, will be a tribute to the musicians who have died since the storm. The album includes a single by former drummer Dinerral Shavers, who was murdered in 2006.

“It’s great to hear the voices of the guys that died come out through them,” Arnold said. “[Shavers] will always be alive through that song.”

Hot 8′s second new album represents a second lesson learned from Katrina: as the band recognized the importance of their heritage, they started to work on a more traditional album.

“I grew up in a church so I was a part of the traditional music but I never performed it,” Pete said. “We feel that we owe it to the musicians before us to pay homage to the traditional music.”

In some ways, performing at the University represents a dream come true for the Hot 8 Brass Band. “I never thought I would be travelling and stuff like that,” Pete said. “Marching bands are real popular in New Orleans. but I never thought I would be in a marching band and turn into a professional musician that would be able to travel and speak to people.”

The University’s Performing Arts department, too, is excited about the performance, which will open the 14th season of performances at the University.

“These musicians bring a lot of energy and passion to their performance, and we are confident that the audience will thoroughly enjoy the show,” said Bobby Tyler, media relations director for the University’s Office of Performing Arts.