The nonprofit activist group Air Traffic Control and the Future of Music Coalition have produced “Dear New Orleans,” a digital benefit compilation for the people of the Gulf. It includes such artists as My Morning Jacket, Indigo Girls, and the Wrens.

But over the past five years, three entertainers have embodied what we think about when we think about the destruction of the levees and the aftermath. They expressed what many were feeling watching footage of people trapped in the New Orleans Superdome - the babies without diapers, the elderly without water. It looked as if an entire population was being written off.