Jazzin’ it up in NOLA: New Orleans Lives Again!

Ecotourism is one of those emergent buzzwords that’s slippery in terms of definitions.  Usually understood as a sustainable approach to travel that both respects and protects natural environments, ecotourism is also associated with preserving local cultures – and it’s in that vein that I send this post from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, one of the world’s greatest celebrations of roots music, regional food and unique traditions.

Jazz Fest celebrates its 39th anniversary this year, morphing from an early ‘70s city celebration in Congo Square to an internationally hailed 7-day party that draws hundreds of thousands to the New Orleans Fairgrounds on the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May.  The fact that the festival has continued since Hurricane Katrina drowned this city in 2005 and drove out so many of its native musicians is no small miracle, and a tribute to the tenacity and passion of those who make and love New Orleans music.

For the cost of a $35 ticket I spent eight sun-soaked hours making the rounds of the Fest’s 12 stages, with a few thundershowers tossed in to mud up the infield for a sticky two-step in front of the Fais Do-Do stage.  I grooved to jazz crooners Bobby McFerrin and Diana Krall, gave a standing-O to rising blues chanteuse and guitar scorcher Ruthie Foster, and mellowed out to Jimmy Buffett’s margarita melodies at the end of the day.  While the national acts are a great bargain, despite steady ticket-price hikes in recent years (especially post-Katrina), it’s the homegrown musicians that are the true treasure here. 

This is my fifth Jazz Fest, and I’ve become as avid as Louisianians are about Snooks Eaglin and Sonny Landreth, the Radiators and the Dixie Cups, families Neville and Marsalis, brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians, 17-year-old fiddler phenom Amanda Shaw and 60-something soul queen Irma Thomas, Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters, and Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas. 

Yes, Jazz Fest is so much more than just the best jazz in the world.  Swirled together in a spicy musical gumbo are Dixieland, blues, funk, gospel, Cajun and swamp pop that owe homage to this indomitable city that’s birthed or nurtured them all.  No city in the world can match New Orleans’ fervor for music, or its legacy of local talent.  Or for that matter, its food.  Jazz Fest fare is renowned, with vendors serving up take-away portions of every conceivable culinary concoction from bay and bayou. 

As with the too-rich slate of simultaneous musical offerings, it’s sweet torment to choose among the Cajun and Creole favorites that don’t eschew butter or the frying pan:  Catfish with pecan sauce or trout meuniere?  Crab jambalaya or alligator sausage gumbo?  Shrimp or oyster po-boy– or combo?  Crawfish puff, crawfish purse, crawfish pie, crawfish boudin, or Crawfish Monica?  Oh, and will it be white chocolate bread pudding, pecan pie, or beignets and café au lait?  My only regret is that I don’t have the stomach capacity to try them all.

Jazz Fest embodies all that is unique and fabulous about New Orleans.  And New Orleans is, above all, an emanation of the human spirit. New Orleans captures our capacity for creativity, for community, for pleasure and for pain.  Even if the levees are repaired to withstand another Katrina or worse, New Orleans’ fate is dicey at best.  Global climate change promises bigger storms and higher seas.  New Orleans sits in a sinking bowl.  As a rational person, I wouldn’t bet on the French Quarter balconies cresting the waves in another century.  But as a hopeful, emotional, spiritual person, I can’t imagine a world without New Orleans.  I hope I’m here to see you at the 89th Jazz and Heritage Festival, when I’m just shy of the century mark myself.