Entertainment
FESTIVAL REVIEW: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival – April 27-29
Thu, May 03, 2007 11:37 am
By Steve Bloom
New Orleans is the kind of place where you can hear quality jazz and eat fresh oysters in the airport. It’s America’s jazz city.
New Orleans is also, due to Hurricane Katrina, America’s most depressed city. But that hasn’t stopped it from hosting the sprawling 38-year-old Jazz & Heritage Festival (a.k.a. Jazzfest). Despite abandoned houses and stores virtually everywhere (except for perhaps in the French Quarter, the tourist zone that was relatively spared by the storm), the show continues to go on.
A drive to the Racetrack Fair Grounds where the festival takes place in the Gentilly neighborhood reminds out-of-towners that New Orleans is in dire need of assistance. During a press conference at the festival, which commenced on Friday, April 27, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu called for a Marshall Plan to rebuild New Orleans and termed the current effort “dysfunctional.”
Still, more than 300,000 music aficionados jammed into the Fair Grounds for the first of Jazzfest’s two weekends. Though its multi-stage approach has been copied by other festivals such as Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits, Jazzfest remains America’s greatest music festival. Founder Quint Davis humbly noted this at his press interview, observing that, “we don’t have funnel cake” like at other fests. Beignets yes, funnel cake no.
His point is well taken. In addition to 11 stages featuring the best of Louisiana’s jazz, blues, rock, Cajun, zydeco and gospel music, Jazzfest is a culinary treat with Creole dishes (no hot dogs, burgers or pizza) sating people’s appetites. Craft booths, Native American pow-wows and kids’ activities add to the novel setting.
"I'm tired of hearing Austin and Nashville are the music capitols of America," Lt. Gov. Landrieu stated. "New Orleans is. The sense of place here is very strong. This is our home. We're not going anywhere."
However, when Katrina hit in 2005, half of the city's population dispersed and they have yet to come back in significant numbers, mostly due to the shortage of housing and city services. Commenting on the lack of African Americans in attendance at Jazzfest (besides the many African-American performers), singer Irma Thomas delicately stated: "People that would put some black pepper in that salt are just not here."
Thomas was among the more than 1,000 musicians and nearly 300 bands that performed on the opening weekend, which saw blue skies and 85-degree weather, requiring fans to load up on sunscreen and make sure they wore wide-brimmed hats. Jazzfesters are an unusual lot. They refer to the musicians by their first names (Fats, Irma, Snooks), wear odd outfits, and carry around Mardi Gras poles and flags. And they love to dance – from country-style two-steps to wild, unabashed shimmying.
For many, Jazzfest is an ecstatic experience bordering on the religious. Headliners like Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Ludacris, Norah Jones and Brad Paisley may draw the biggest crowds, but it’s the local acts – the brass bands and Mardi Indians, Cajun fiddlers and zydeco stompers, blues and jazz legends – that truly inspire.
First weekend highlights included Jean Knight belting out her 1971 hit “Mr. Big Stuff”; the Rebirth and Hot 8 Brass Bands merging swing jazz and P-Funk; various tribes of Mardi Gras Indians in their colorful outfits chanting and drumming; the ever soulful Morrison barking lyrics when he wasn't playing saxophone, guitar or harmonica; Jerry Lee Lewis’s renditions of his 50-year old classics, “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” and “Great Balls of Fire”; the three-times daily parades that snaked through the crowd; former Doobie Award winner Shannon McNally holding her own during an 11:30 am set; red-hot zydeco performances by C. J. Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie and Rosie Ledet; George Thorogood’s ba-ba-ba-ba-ba “Bad to the Bone”; Dr. John’s guest appearances with Morrison and during the Bobby Charles tribute that also featured McNally and Marcia Ball; Galactic saxman Ben Ellman and his high-energy New Orleans Klezmer Allstars; Ludacris’ gift of gab; and virtually all of the music in the always packed Jazz tent (Pharoah Sanders, Mose Allison, Irvin Mayfield).
If children are indeed our future, this was abundantly clear at Jazzfest where many teens and youngsters joined their elders on stage during brass band and Mardi Gras Indian sets. In the Kids' tent, Sunpie Barnes (he heads the zydeco band Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots) conducted an all-kid marching brass band. As they poured out of the tent playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," New Orleans' rich tradition of music was in the right hands.
Jazzfest resumes this weekend, May 3-5. Tickets ($45 for adults, $5 for children) are still available.
www.nojazzfest.com
New Orleans is the kind of place where you can hear quality jazz and eat fresh oysters in the airport. It’s America’s jazz city.
New Orleans is also, due to Hurricane Katrina, America’s most depressed city. But that hasn’t stopped it from hosting the sprawling 38-year-old Jazz & Heritage Festival (a.k.a. Jazzfest). Despite abandoned houses and stores virtually everywhere (except for perhaps in the French Quarter, the tourist zone that was relatively spared by the storm), the show continues to go on.
A drive to the Racetrack Fair Grounds where the festival takes place in the Gentilly neighborhood reminds out-of-towners that New Orleans is in dire need of assistance. During a press conference at the festival, which commenced on Friday, April 27, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu called for a Marshall Plan to rebuild New Orleans and termed the current effort “dysfunctional.”
Still, more than 300,000 music aficionados jammed into the Fair Grounds for the first of Jazzfest’s two weekends. Though its multi-stage approach has been copied by other festivals such as Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits, Jazzfest remains America’s greatest music festival. Founder Quint Davis humbly noted this at his press interview, observing that, “we don’t have funnel cake” like at other fests. Beignets yes, funnel cake no.
His point is well taken. In addition to 11 stages featuring the best of Louisiana’s jazz, blues, rock, Cajun, zydeco and gospel music, Jazzfest is a culinary treat with Creole dishes (no hot dogs, burgers or pizza) sating people’s appetites. Craft booths, Native American pow-wows and kids’ activities add to the novel setting.
"I'm tired of hearing Austin and Nashville are the music capitols of America," Lt. Gov. Landrieu stated. "New Orleans is. The sense of place here is very strong. This is our home. We're not going anywhere."
However, when Katrina hit in 2005, half of the city's population dispersed and they have yet to come back in significant numbers, mostly due to the shortage of housing and city services. Commenting on the lack of African Americans in attendance at Jazzfest (besides the many African-American performers), singer Irma Thomas delicately stated: "People that would put some black pepper in that salt are just not here."
Thomas was among the more than 1,000 musicians and nearly 300 bands that performed on the opening weekend, which saw blue skies and 85-degree weather, requiring fans to load up on sunscreen and make sure they wore wide-brimmed hats. Jazzfesters are an unusual lot. They refer to the musicians by their first names (Fats, Irma, Snooks), wear odd outfits, and carry around Mardi Gras poles and flags. And they love to dance – from country-style two-steps to wild, unabashed shimmying.
For many, Jazzfest is an ecstatic experience bordering on the religious. Headliners like Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Ludacris, Norah Jones and Brad Paisley may draw the biggest crowds, but it’s the local acts – the brass bands and Mardi Indians, Cajun fiddlers and zydeco stompers, blues and jazz legends – that truly inspire.
First weekend highlights included Jean Knight belting out her 1971 hit “Mr. Big Stuff”; the Rebirth and Hot 8 Brass Bands merging swing jazz and P-Funk; various tribes of Mardi Gras Indians in their colorful outfits chanting and drumming; the ever soulful Morrison barking lyrics when he wasn't playing saxophone, guitar or harmonica; Jerry Lee Lewis’s renditions of his 50-year old classics, “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On” and “Great Balls of Fire”; the three-times daily parades that snaked through the crowd; former Doobie Award winner Shannon McNally holding her own during an 11:30 am set; red-hot zydeco performances by C. J. Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie and Rosie Ledet; George Thorogood’s ba-ba-ba-ba-ba “Bad to the Bone”; Dr. John’s guest appearances with Morrison and during the Bobby Charles tribute that also featured McNally and Marcia Ball; Galactic saxman Ben Ellman and his high-energy New Orleans Klezmer Allstars; Ludacris’ gift of gab; and virtually all of the music in the always packed Jazz tent (Pharoah Sanders, Mose Allison, Irvin Mayfield).
If children are indeed our future, this was abundantly clear at Jazzfest where many teens and youngsters joined their elders on stage during brass band and Mardi Gras Indian sets. In the Kids' tent, Sunpie Barnes (he heads the zydeco band Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots) conducted an all-kid marching brass band. As they poured out of the tent playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," New Orleans' rich tradition of music was in the right hands.
Jazzfest resumes this weekend, May 3-5. Tickets ($45 for adults, $5 for children) are still available.
www.nojazzfest.com
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mh
Oct 4 2011, 4:48 pm
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