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New Orleans, LA April 24-26 & April 30-May 3, 2009 |
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For forty years, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has celebrated “the culture of Louisiana with the combined fervor of a gospel hymn and the joy of a jazz parade.” The festival’s impact on Louisiana’s musicians cannot be overstated. Great musicians have been rediscovered and new careers have been born at Jazz Fest, which has experienced good times and survived bad times. There is so much music on offer that you are bound to find something that you like as well as make at least one new musical discovery. The greatest discovery for me was the city’s brass bands. Non music buffs can spend entire days rummaging through all the clothing, instruments, paintings, sculptures, jewelry, and pottery that the more than 150 arts and crafts vendors have to offer and sampling the savory flavors from more than 50 food vendors. Everything about this festival is enormous. It takes place at a 145-acre race course, attracts 400,000 people in attendance, and has 12 stages for the numerous artists to perform their music. Jazz Fest is so huge it’s like having several festivals going on all at the same time. Beware, there is no shade to be found onsite, so if it’s a sunny day, then sunscreen, a hat, and lots of water are essential. If you are looking to beat the heat and the port-a-potties, air conditioning and real toilets can be found inside the Grandstand. Just like going to a Disney theme park, you walk for miles and won’t realize it. Jazz Fest truly is the Disney World of roots music festivals. It can’t be easy to sort out all the logistics for an event of this magnitude. The production team – it too is colossal in size – needs to be commended for how extremely well Jazz Fest is organized. Each stage is unique in its layout and each carries its own ambience. There are two gigantic main stages. Each attracts a crowd in the 25-35,000 range. Being at these stages is like attending an outdoor rock concert and the entertainment on them tends to be big name rock acts like Bon Jovi and Neil Young. Our focus was on the smaller stages, where the entertainment was pure roots music such as gospel, Cajun, zydeco, blues, R&B, funk, and African. Our experience began on the Friday of the festival’s second weekend. For the next three days, the weather was fabulous. Temperatures were in the high 80s and there was almost no humidity. Although they are called tents, the Gospel Tent and Blues Tent are large enough to be considered auditoriums. Harmonica brandishing J. Monque’D played Please Send Me Someone To Love with his New Orleans barroom blues band, which featured Lil’ Ray Neal on guitar. While walking to the various stages, you could participate in numerous second line parades. The Congo Square stage was completely packed for the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth Brass Band reunion. These two extremely popular New Orleans bands re-invented and modernized the sound of brass bands by incorporating R&B, soul, and funk into the music. This traditionally and unique NOLA music practically petered out during the disco era of the ’70s. These two insightful bands, in particular, saved the genre. Experiencing them performing at the same time was like experiencing fourth of July fireworks set to the joyous sounds of tuba, congas, trumpet, and trombone. It was an extra funky experience with massive power coming from all the horns. In particular, young sensation, Trombone Shorty, was wicked on trumpet. Geno Delafose, known as The Creole Cowboy, is the best Cajun and zydeco artist on the scene today. He is equally proficient in performing push button and piano keyboard accordion. Each of his songs, e.g., Tell It Like It Is was danceable. Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington and his new Roadmasters sounded rather sleepy for the first half of their set. The second half contained many funky improvisations that featured a three piece horn section. As a former guitarist for Lee Dorsey and Johnny Adams, Washington is a New Orleans music pioneer. While devouring fresh beignets (square pieces of dough that are fried and covered with powered sugar) on Saturday morning, The Rocks of Harmony sounded like a blues band except their lyrics were about redemption and going to live with Jesus. They were sharply dressed in gray suits. Two of the group’s singers came down into the photo pit and transformed a few souls. The traditional Pin Stripe Brass Band excelled at second lining at the Jazz and Heritage Stage. While dressed in a black leather vest, Sherman Robertson, who was raised in Houston, Texas, was backed by Canada’s Shawn Kellerman Band. Kellerman is a guitar sorcerer, who has performed and recorded with Bobby Rush. Together, they delved into a heavy guitar set of fierce Texas electric blues where Robertson demonstrated his potent singing and sizzling guitar. Overall, the crowd reacted more to Kellerman’s arsenal especially when he performed Ted’s Jam. The Treme Brass Band created a wild environment, which evolved into the party of the afternoon. It was a wonderful auditory and visual experience that seemed to be spontaneous, but those who had experienced it before may have felt it was a bit contrived. When they performed Amazing Grace and I’ll Fly Away in a traditional jazz funeral style, it brought tears to many eyes as thoughts of departed loved ones came to mind. Then without warning the veteran band enabled a mood swing from somber to joyful. Their set became a celebration of past lives and those still living. During their performance, there was a constant parade of parasol dancers. One of them had been attending the festival for almost 40 years. Special guests included a singer of approximately 14-years-old, a young blind sax player, and a young trumpet player. This multigenerational band is helping to hand the tradition down and to encourage youth to carry on the brass band tradition. Treme provided some of the best New Orleans music of the entire second weekend. This horny bunch had the fans strut-dancing in the aisles of the Economy Hall Tent, where security didn’t make people move, clear, or sit in the aisles. The blues tent was bursting at the seams by the time debonair guitarist Chris Thomas King took the stage on the busiest day of the festival. By this point in the afternoon, it was estimated that 90,000 were trekking around the Fair Grounds Race Course. His band was just a trio but they weren’t a rockin’ power trio. They played more like an urbane ensemble of several members. Their renditions of What Would Jesus Do and St. James Infirmary were the main attractions. On the final day, the blues tent was the place to be. Kenny Neal was a triple threat with flamboyant guitar, full-throttle harp, and charismatic vocals. He is renewed and refreshed after a battle with hepatitis C and sounded as good as ever. The highlights were Let Life Flow, Blues Falling Down Like Rain, and Since I Meet You Baby. His short 50-minute set went by in a flash and proved that he could easily be a headliner. Drummer Cedric Burnside is the grandson of the legendary bluesman R.L. Burnside. Guitarist Lightnin’ Malcolm, originally from Missouri, is the grittiest white guitarist to have developed his skills in the deep south. Together, this dynamic Mississippi duo performed hill country blues with a rock edge. Their authentic, backwoods sound made everyone feel like we where at a Mississippi juke joint. When Eric Lindell bursts into a hearty smile, he looks like a young Robert DeNiro. His hip, swamp pop music appealed to all the age ranges in the audience. He currently lives in the Florida panhandle, but his hook-laden melodies music reflects the ten years he spent living and gigging in New Orleans. His wah-wah guitar simmered atop the heat of a gumbo of urban Americana. Former Blood, Sweat, & Tears singer Luther Kent had an amazing horn section and a very large band called Trick Bag. His Bobby Bland tribute fell flat because he couldn’t sing the songs like Bland. Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy, who is originally from Lettsworth, Louisiana, hit the stage with a ton of energy and played wildly speedy guitar. He struggled to maintain the energy through his well received set. Just prior to his performance a massive downpour of rain resulted in several hundred more people cramming into the tent. Now, the tent was past the point of capacity. Luckily the fire Marshall didn’t stop the show, which was loaded with Guy’s usual shtick along with pleasant surprises from his latest CD like Who Is Gonna Fill Them Shoes and Skin Deep. The food was as equally fantastic as the music. Jazz Fest proved festival food does not have to be the mediocre crap that we have come to expect and that we put up with at other festivals. The food and drink lines move very fast given the amount of people who are waiting in queue. Local specialties included alligator pie, jambalaya, muffalettas, crawfish etoufee, red beans and rice, gumbo, and fried catfish. Crowd favorites included crawfish bread, soft shell crab po-boys, and crawfish Monica. No matter how many hours you plan putting together your strategy to see all the acts on your list, there is no way you will end up seeing all of them. The stages are too far apart and it’s too crowded to make good time moving from one stage to another. Plus there are too many schedule conflicts. On any average day, there are more than 60 artists/groups scheduled to perform. Many of them appear at the same time on different stages. This year who could choose between Buckwheat Zydeco, Bonerama, and Deacon John? How about having to pick between the Neville Brothers, The Radiators, and Buddy Guy? As one of the city’s largest events, Jazz Fest features more than 400 acts over the course of seven days. It has grown exponentially from its humble roots in April 1970 at Congo Square (then known as Beauregard Square) in Louis Armstrong Park, where only about 350 people attended. In its third year of operation, the event moved to the infield of the Fair Grounds, the third-oldest racetrack in America (open since 1872). In 2001, Jazz Fest celebrated Louis Armstrong’s centennial and attracted more than 600,000 people. Since then, they fell on troubled times. However, attendance has been on the increase since 2007 and big name acts like Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen have been the headliners since 2005. Love it or hate it, this mammoth festival still offers an excellent line-up of roots music. Just be prepared to contend with huge crowds, to walk for miles to get to the stages that offer the best music, and to spend a lot of dough on tickets and accommodations. Jazz Fest is owned by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit organization that uses the proceeds to fund year-round community development activities in the areas of education, economic development and cultural programming. For more information, visit www.nojazzfest.com . It and the NOLA website www.nola.com were used as a source for some of the information provided in this review. Special thanks to Mandy Decker and Kim Strother for making this a happy Jazz Fest.
All material (text and photos) copyright © by Tim Holek, all rights reserved. Copy, duplication or download prohibited without written permission. For permission to use any material, please send Tim an e-mail by filling out the form on his E-mail page |
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