Last Saturday, on the third day of the first of two weekends of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a crowd of 50, 60, perhaps 70,000 people was sardined around the big Festival Stage on one end of the Fair Grounds Race Course to see a triumphant Stevie Nicks seemingly bring on the rain, and then send it away. On the other end of the field at the same time, a good 30,000 or so packed the Gentilly Stage area to see twangy Tyler Childers. Between these two, tens of thousands more were taking in Nas’ hard-hitting set on the Congo Square stage, and near that a few thousand were seeing Bruce Hornsby at the Fais Do Do, while elsewhere Rhiannon Giddens in the Blues Tent and Dave Koz in the Jazz Tent had a few thousand fans each too.
Meanwhile, in the Economy Hall tent, named for a center of the city’s black culture from slavery through Jim Crow, just a few dozen people were watching a young ensemble known as Eight Dice Cloth do “Copenhagen,” as recorded by Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong more than a century ago. There were JazzFest veterans, dedicated lovers of old-time jazz, three twenty-somethings shimmying in the aisle, some families with young kids looking for a nice spot to close the day.
And sitting alone there was Adam, 23, visiting from Dallas, on a trip with his sister to mark her 21st birthday. They didn’t even know JazzFest was going on when they got to town, he said, and just came out on a whim. So of all the big-name choices he had at this star-power-packed day, why this?
“I don’t know much about Stevie Nicks,” he confessed. “So, beyond the bells and whistles I wanted to see what else was going on.”
He’d wandered around, heard the trumpet and trombone and guitar and washboard and vocals coming from the tent, and settled in, just as rain that would soon become a heavy, if brief, downpour, started.
“I’m a singer myself,” he said. “And I was taken with the ambience.” It was a perfect, quintessential New Orleans JazzFest moment, a discovery, an epiphany, a lovely bit of serendipity. This, exactly, is why JazzFest exists, this is what makes it what it is, what separates it from all the other big festivals that have come (and some gone), many inspired by this, in the decades this has been going on. This is the heart of the festival, beating since the first one in 1970, when as legend has it, there were at times more people on stage than in the audience. It’s the kind of thing long-timers crave. There are so many choices here — 13 stages, all going at once, from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m., jazz and blues and gospel and rock and soul and Cajun and zydeco and country and African and Latin American and klezmer even, and this year a lot of Jamaican, as that island is being celebrated as the focus of the annual cultural exchange spotlight, with a pavilion hosting performances and another with folk crafts.
All of it? It’s simply too much to take in. But that doesn’t stop some from trying. While many festers contend themselves camping out at one stage to catch a favorite headliner (which this weekend included Rod Stewart, Jon Batiste, David Byrne, Kings of Leon, Stephen Marley, Lorde, Raye, along with those listed at top), many others hop around trying to catch at least a bit of as much as they can. Some call it the smorgasbord approach, but really, it’s more like the shark imperative: Keep moving, keep feeding or perish.
And speaking of feeding, the food! The food! Dozens of choices all calling to you, from cochon de lait po’boys (shredded roasted pork and coleslaw on a French roll), deep-fried soft-shell crab po’boys, rich quail-pheasant-andouille gumbo, buttery trout Baquet, frozen cafe au laits, key lime tarts, syrup-drenched sno-balls… where to even start?
Yes, it’s an obsession. But it’s a rewarding one, one that leads to moments to cherish, experiences that are precious.
Here’s how it goes: You rush on Sunday from Boyfriend — the R-rated gender warrior character of local performer Suzannah Powell — to try to make it to see jazz singer Catherine Russell, only to hear from a distance Powell turning sentimental as she talks about how she’s retiring the Boyfriend persona and then singing a sweet, heartfelt take on Mr. Rogers’ theme “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.” You pause on the track to take it in, then resume the quick pace. But on route you pass by the Children’s Tent, and inside a kids chorus, New Voices New Orleans, is doing Cat Stevens’ Harold and Maude anthem “If You Want to Sing Out.” It’s a segue that couldn’t have been better if it had been planned. You have to stop. You have to hear it.
And you can’t help thinking back to Friday, when hustling from Lorde on one end of the track back to Jon Batiste’s spectacle on the Festival Stage all the way over on the other end (stopping only to grab a tangy key lime tart — mmm, that graham cracker crust), you happened to get there just as he sang a snippet of the Sherman Brothers’ Mary Poppins classic “Chim Chim Che-ree” as prelude to his own funky-swinging “I Need You,” surrounded by a cast of buckjumper dancers. “As lucky as lucky can be?” Indeed, you are. Jungian synchronicity in the Crescent City? Quantum superposition on the fairgrounds, multiple particles spinning as one across vast distances? No, it’s just JazzFest.
Ultimately, it’s exposure therapy for the FOMOmaniac. You can’t see everything. You can’t eat everything. You just do your best, accept that you’ll miss more than you will experience, embrace the moments as they happen and consider the things you can’t do not as lost chances, but opportunities to take in something else, a door to the unknown.
You can’t get in through the crush of people in the grandstands Thursday going to the Alison Miner Heritage Stage to see an interview with Jon Batiste — and you can’t get back down the stairs through the crush of people — so you sit on the balcony overlooking the small Lagniappe Stage and “discover” Yusa, a Havana-born New Orleans resident showcasing her scorching Cuban jazz. You can’t even conceive of getting through the 30-deep crowd outside the packed Gospel Tent where the Blind Boys of Alabama are about the sing, so you head to
Congo Square for another blistering set of Cuban funk, this from Cimafunk. But then you get rewarded by seeing the Blind Boys on Friday in the surprised opening of Batiste’s set with their powerful version of “Amazing Grace,” done to the tune we know as the New Orleans’ lament “House of the Rising Sun.”
You go from local trumpeter/keyboardist Nicholas Payton’s “A Supreme Blue” reinterpretations of Miles Davis and John Coltrane pieces in the Jazz Tent to mark each of their centennials this year to see English singer Raye, perhaps the buzz act of the fest, if not the whole pop music world right now, to be blown away by her talent and earthy charm, especially as she halts a song to signal security to help an audience member in distress, only resuming when people around the stricken person gave thumbs-up that all was okay. And later, after flitting around the grounds to see Texas-soul veteran Shinyribs at the Fais Do Do, then just happening to catch Sporty’s Brass Band doing a second-line take on “The Hokey Pokey” tearing back to Raye in time to see her, on a stage now set up as a quasi-supper club with tables and chairs, sandwich solid versions of “Fly Me To the Moon” and “It’s a Man’s World” around her own bopping testimony to overcoming insecurity, “I Hate the Way I Look Today.”
And you go from the David Bode Big Band in the Jazz Tent with a stunning Beatles medley of “Dear Prudence” and “Don’t Let Me Down,” followed a little later at the Lagniappe Stage by Mahmoud Chouki playing an electric cigar-box oud and leading his Middle Eastern jazz hybrid ensemble through Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” And from New Orleans veteran fusion favorites Astral Project to Louis Michot’s frenetic electric Cajun experiments, but on the way stumble on Los Skarnales, a Texas ska-cumbia-rock outfit closing their set with “Pressure Drop,” evoking the Clash and the song’s originator, the late reggae star Toots Hibbert. And from Jason Isbell to Cajun-rockers the Pine Leaf Boys to soulful jazz singer John Boutté, whose “Tremé” was used as the theme for the David Simon New Orleans-after-the-flood HBO Series in the 2010s.
Further on the international front, Mali’s Vieux Farka Touré was transfixing Thursday in the Blues Tent (which has become a home to West African guitarists, underscoring the origins of American blues), and for some he evoked memories of a 1994 JazzFest performance by his father, the titan Ali Farka Touré, with Ry Cooder. And while there was a lot of reggae, ska, mento, steel drums and other Jamaican sounds around, nothing could top the Rasta mystic power of Burning Spear, now 81, one of the last remaining giants of reggae’s glorious genesis and flowering. And Giddens, whose music has long cast a wide focus on African roots and the diaspora, featured singer-guitarist Niwel Tsumbu from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in her group here.
Sometimes you find the serendipity, sometimes it finds you. New Orleans-based singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz was performing Friday in the cozy Rhythmpourium tent/wine bar with the couple Robert (guitar) and Candace (vocals) Maché. Just as she reached the deep, emotional center of her tender love song, “Like You’re Holding Me Now,” a second-line parade (one of several each day with drums and brass and chanting Mardi Gras Indians) loudly passed by. It’s always that way, she noted. “It’s a JazzFest rule.”
Juxtapositions are just as profound as the connections. Sunday, for example, opened with 16-year-old local piano prodigy River Eckert and closed with not just 81-year-old Rod Stewart on the Festival Stage, but double-bassist Ron Carter — who will turn 89 next week — leading his Foursight Quartet in the Jazz Tent. And that was just shortly after gospel great Shirley Caesar, 87, praised Jesus, paid honors to all mothers and told Satan a thing or two in the Gospel Tent.
Stewart, by various accounts, was a delight, while Byrne and his blue-clad choreographed troupe thrilled as they ended the weekend at the Gentilly Stage on the other end (“Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens,” he sang to start, as ironic a statement as ever at JazzFest). But it was hard to beat Carter, with his six decades of jazz history (including anchoring Miles Davis’ essential ‘60s quintet) to serenade us with his and mastery and spirit as we closed out the four days and exited to Mystery Street. Yes, Mystery Street.
For some of us, all of JazzFest is Mystery Street and more mysteries will certainly manifest in the second weekend running this Thursday through Sunday, with Widespread Panic, Lake Street Dive, Laney Wilson, the Black Keys, Ziggy Marley, Eagles, Alabama Shakes, T-Pain, Herbie Hancock, Mavis Staples, Steve Earle, Tedeschi Trucks Band and Earth, Wind & Fire among the biggest names on tap, and of course the now-traditional closing set by local hero Trombone Shorty (who first appeared on a JazzFest stage in 1990 when he was four and Bo Diddley brought him out and is now 40). Sure, if you’re going, you could spend your time with some of them. But do yourself a favor and let young Adam from Dallas’ spirit guide you and savor wherever it leads.
Steve Hochman went to his first JazzFest in 1991 and has been to every one
since.
