Traveling from one port city to another — New Orleans to Havana — the Preservation Hall Jazz Band found the inspiration for their latest album, So It Is. Now they are bringing their Afro-Cuban inflected sound to their next port of call, Edgartown, where they will play at the Whaling Church on July 23.

In a phone call with the Gazette, director of Preservation Hall, Ben Jaffe, said the band performed at the Havana Jazz Festival in 2015 and discovered exciting cultural and historical connections to their home city of New Orleans.

“Since the 1950s, since the revolution and since the embargo, Cuba exists, but it’s not part of our awareness,” Mr. Jaffe said. “Cuba and New Orleans were trade partners for hundreds of years leading up to embargo.”

The seven-member jazz ensemble ventured past Havana during their trip, also traveling to Santiago, which Mr. Jaffe said is known as the New Orleans of Cuba.

“The people were familiar, the musical traditions were familiar, the interactions we were having, the experiences were... almost as if we were looking in a mirror,” he said.

He described happening upon a parade in the city: “It was coming through the neighborhood and we heard it, and we went and found the conga and it was as if we were kids again in New Orleans, hearing a brass band come down the street and you go running out of your house, you know, looking for the parade.” Their latest release, Mr. Jaffe says, captures the spirit of Cuba. “The album is very rhythmic, and that’s very important to what we do. People respond in New Orleans to rhythm, and that was something we experienced in Cuba as well.”

He continued: “It’s as if you’re going to church and being overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit of music, and the only way to react to it is through movement and through dance; through this thing that’s bigger than us.”

The Whaling Church is a fitting venue, then, for the band’s Vineyard show.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band will play on July 23 at 5 p.m. in Edgartown. Tickets are available at mvconcertseries.com.