GULFPORT, Fla. — Many businesses are still recovering from hurricane damage, and it is affecting local artists who depend on those businesses as places to perform.

What You Need To Know

  • South Arts is a not-for-profit organization aimed at helping those in the arts fields

  • The organization launched the ‘Southern Arts and Recovery Fund’ to help compensate artists for their losses

  • Zeta the Babe was awarded the grant after having several gigs canceled post-hurricanes

To help, South Arts launched a program known as ‘Southern Arts Relief and Recovery Fund’ to compensate for some of those losses.

Charles Phaneuf is the vice president of strategy for South Arts, a not-for-profit organization. He says this grant is a big help for many artists.

“Not just the economic impact, but really they serve their communities, they teach children, they teach adults, they’re doing important work in communities," he said. "And so the better the arts can bounce back, the better we can all bounce back.”

Florida is one of nine states the organization works with to help provide artists with funding help.

Nineteen artists have been awarded the grant so far, and one of those is Zeta the Babe.

You can say music runs in Zeta’s veins. She is a third-generation saxophonist.

“The saxophone is the closest to the human voice, so when I play it, I’m just able to be really soulful,” she says.

She started playing the saxophone at a young age but only recently decided to pursue music as a full-time job.

Zeta the Babe says this time of the year is typically a busy one for a musician, but many of her performances have been canceled as businesses continue to recover from storm damage. That affects her income.

“That, you know, can be how you eat next week or that can be obviously like bills that a lot of people don’t really think about,” she says.

Other performances were postponed until next year. She says those challenges prompted her to apply for the Southern Arts Relief and Recovery Fund.

“That’s just money that I guess I would have had if these gigs didn’t get canceled, so it definitely really helped me out. It was such just such a blessing,” she says.

Many of the places that are still recovering are in the Gulfport area, an area Zeta says was booming with music life before the hurricanes.

“I was going to hit every single business here within the following weeks of the hurricane, but I never got a chance to," she said.

But she’s staying positive, hoping the area will return to the way it was.

For now, she’s preparing for her next gig, to help spread some cheer through music.

The organization says it has received over 100 applications. The grant applications are still open and artists can still apply.