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| Trombone Shorty, King of Jazz Fest this year, re-inventing New Orleans music with his combining jazz, R and B, soul and funk. Not only a musician extraordinaire and a great bandleader, but a communitarian and ambassador for the city. |
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| Rockin the Gospel Tent with the Zion Harmonizers |
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| Partying with Stevie |
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For some perspective: In the 1970s when the JF first started, tickets were $3. You could drive your car onto the fairgrounds, and performers were mostly local musicians. These days, tickets are $80, Jazz Fest brings in $300 million to the city every year. The fest is rivaled as a tourist attraction in NOLA only by Mardi Gras, and it attracts not only local musicians but the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Snoop Dogg, Tom Petty, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, U2, Jimmy Buffett, Rod Stewart.
Named festival of the year four times, JF offers every kind of music possible. And yet it is more than a music fest; it also features Louisiana culture and history, bringing live demonstrations of cooking and folk craft. It is an arts fest as craft and art vendors bring clothing, jewelry, instruments and art. It is a style fest as photos seen below can attest. It is a festival of food -- wow, crawfish bread and shrimp bread and alligator po-boys, jambalaya and seafood gumbo and pecan catfish meuniere, seafood merliton, mango ice, fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, artichoke casserole, the list goes on and on and on and includes more and more vegan and vegetarian options like spring rolls with tofu, plantains and jama jama (spinach). Seventy vendors in all.
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| Crawfish monica |
As for my own personal history, my first Jazz Fest was in 1973. I remember seeing Bonnie Raitt, skinny as a rail, playing slide guitar. Over the years, after I left New Orleans and began growing my own family, I was able to get to the Jazz Fest only sporadically. During recent years, beginning in 2004, meanwhile, I started making it a mission to come every year. Those first years, I left elaborate handouts for sitters and my husband to make sure my children, 7, 12 and 16 were cared for in my absence. I'd come back heavy laden with spoon rests, Charles Moore CDs and playing cards for all the people who helped. So far since then, I haven’t missed a festival. kow. My children are old enough these days to make their own PB & Js. As of this year, I can say I’ve come 14 years in a row, most of the time both weekends.
We come for the music. We come for the culture. This festival, like I imagine no other, oozes culture and place. Musicians love coming to this city to perform, because this is New Orleans, where jazz was born, and the audience expects a good party, with good music. There is also an international feeling throughout the fest, just like the city itself. Music comes from all over the world, as do vendors and visitors. There is always a nation represented, celebrated and highlighted. This year it was Cuba.
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| Blues Tent with Wanda Rouzan |
Even the weather is signature NOLA. But hold the umbrella, the fest has its own elaborate pumping system for getting water off the grounds when it rains, and believe you me, it rains in New Orleans. This year, on the Wed. before the first day of the second weekend, we got five inches. It was still raining Thursday at 10:30 a.m. just before the gates were to open at 11. Sister Sue and I expected major mud and went to two different places looking for rain boots. But the fest has got this down: By the time we got to the fairgrounds, water that we later heard was knee-deep in places had been pumped into a nearby pond. Straw and sand had been laid. Et voila, there was not nearly the mud we've seen in later years, not nearly the smell of manure like that one year when they made the mistake of spreading hay from the horse barns (note aforementioned). Temperatures and humidity soaring past 90 in both cases cooked the hay, which they didn't think to consider, had horse waste in it. The smell was enough to send some people home rather than stumble around in mud and manure six inches deep and more.
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More Gospel Tent again: One of my favorite places to be. No greater,
collective happier energy anywhere on the planet that I can see.
This year, as aforementioned, I made a few major changes in my festival-going behavior: 1. I did only the 2nd weekend whereas in the past I've done both. 2. I brought only one duffel bag of Jazz Fest outfits instead of the usual two. 3. I bought only one camera instead of the usual two camera and lenses, including my heavy long one. 4. I booked one-way tickets to NOLA and one-way tickets back. 5. My sis and I also paid for primo parking, which means close to the gate, instead of a mile away. The $40 per day, split in half, wasn't all that bad.
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There were disadvantages to this. I barely got my Jazz Fest legs and it was time to go back home. I didn't get to see Leon Bridges and other people I'd like to have seen the first weekend. The most major downside was only having one camera and not my long lens; I didn't get the concert closeups I like to get.
However and still, I found myself happier without so many cameras to carry and with parking so close. It was easier to decide when to come and when to leave with one-way tickets. (Airlines are doing crazy things these days; wasn’t much more expensive or hard to pull off. I booked tickets the night before in both cases for around $210, not counting luggage, each way.) Instead of a backpack full of stuff, I carried a little purse, one camera and a chair.
Everything was so much better. I still took a lot of photos. But I relaxed more. I didn't feel the need to run between stages so much. I also, finally, learned to put on the sunscreen before going in so I don't have to carry it in with me, to hydrate before I even walk in the place, to keep a large rose mint tea going the whole time and to bring toilet paper in my little purse for when the port-a-potties run out, which they inevitably do. (Special side note: I took note of the best way to smuggle in alcohol: breast milk pouches hidden in the unmentionables. See below.)
Meanwhile for now, I'm always, always, always glad I came, and this year, I am especially glad I came the way I did, a little lighter, a little more flush with fluid and a lot less expectant of myself. My legs and feet aren't killing like they usually as I trudge my way through the airport and to home. Less cumbersome, less work, makes more energy for more fun. Party on, greatest city in the U.S.
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Cops and staff were extra happy this year. Weather was nice.Music was good, including Earth, Wind and Fire, where this woman (above) got to dance on a bridge even though the men in green usually keep people off, and where this couple (below) got to fall in love again.  |
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| Love how street parties continue after Jazz Fest each day. This is To Be Continued Brass Band, a group of kids from a local high school who wanted to not be a statistic and began to do music together |
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| Vendor |
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| At Widespread Panic at Acura Stage |
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| Cajun stage, Fais-Do-Do, on that rainy Thursday. You can see a little wet, but not anything like last year when the field was ankle-deep in mud and manure. |
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| Stylin |
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| Post-Stevie after-glow |
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| My traveling companion |
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| Me |
