Partnering with Expedia, Dazed travels to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival to discover the traditional music and culture of Louisiana
In the 1980s, a Japanese psychiatrist coined the term ‘Paris syndrome’ to describe the severe culture shock which some tourists – primarily from East Asia – suffer upon visiting the French capital. Having built up a romanticised idea of Paris in their heads, the reality of the city – its litter-strewn streets, its surly waiters, the absence of people cycling around in black-and-white shirts and berets – came as such a bitter disappointment that these tourists experience a temporary break from reality. New Orleans, for me, inspires the opposite phenomenon: it is so much like how I imagined it, it corresponds so exactly to its depiction in popular culture, that actually being there is a surreal, slightly disorientating experience – like walking through a film set or a distant dream.
You probably have an idea of what New Orleans looks like: the colourful townhouses, the oak trees, the streetcars, the wrought-iron balconies draped with hanging plants. Before I went, I assumed this aesthetic would be limited to a specific district in the city centre, and the rest of it would look like any other American metropolis, all barren strips of standalone car dealerships and branches of Starbucks. But no: while the architectures varies between neighbourhoods, the entire city really does look exactly as you’d expect, and in some ways even more so. As I stood between two blocks, one named “Piety” and other “Desire”, and heard the melancholy wail of a freight train in the distance, the New Orleans-ness of New Orleans felt a little on the nose. It is without a doubt one of the most charismatic and beautiful cities I’ve been lucky enough to visit.
I was in the city, at the end of April, to visit the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, sponsored by Expedia. Since its launch in 1970, Jazz Fest (as it’s referred to by locals) has grown from a ramshackle event in Congo Square to something much larger and more expansive. The festival’s primary mission is still to showcase the traditional culture of Louisiana: jazz, gospel, blues, and other forms of music that have roots in America’s African diaspora, along with regionally-specific genres like Cajun folk and zydeco (a style of rhythm-and-blues with roots in the the state’s Creole community). But the festival today encompasses contemporary hip-hop, R&B, pop, and rock – this year featured headline sets by huge rock acts like the Rolling Stones, the Foo Fighters, and Neil Young, along with stars like Juvenile, Anderson .Paak and Jon Batiste.
Spanning two weekends, the festival is held in one of the oldest race tracks in the US, located to the north of the city centre. When I attended the first weekend, I made a point of seeking out music with which I wasn’t already familiar. Admittedly, I enjoyed The Killers’ headline set, and have never felt more British than when singing along to “Mr Brightside” at a jazz festival in New Orleans: this was my cultural heritage. But having come all the way to Louisiana, I wanted something more: I wanted to commune with the spirit of New Orleans; I wanted to dance a hearty jig to some Cajun folk music; I wanted to figure out – once and for all – how much I actually like jazz.
The atmosphere at the festival was closer to a county fair than the likes of Reading or Leeds, which I mean as a compliment. It was friendly, multigenerational and easy to navigate; there were pop-up museum exhibitions about Louisianan history, arts and crafts stalls, and an incredible selection of local cuisine, including classic Cajun dishes like gumbo, catfish po-boys and crawfish pies. No-one was throwing up, passed out or otherwise engaging in boorish behaviour (other than myself when The Killers dropped “Mr Brightside”) – but that’s not to say that having a wild time was out of the equation. The festival finished early, at 7pm, at which point the party continued in the surrounding streets, neighbourhood houses or back in the venues of the French Quarter. When I walked down Bourbon Street the night I arrived, I was met with a joyously chaotic scene. We have our fair share of rowdy nightlife in the UK, but what makes New Orleans so distinct is the prevalence of live music: at one point, stopping to buy a frozen daiquiri, I could simultaneously hear: a traditional brass band collective, a club blasting trap, a busker playing a set of tin drums, and a bar band launching into a spirited rendition of Smash Mouth’s “All Star”.
At the festival itself, I mostly stuck to the more traditional stages. I particularly liked the ‘Economy Hall’, a tent named after an association formed by free people of colour in New Orleans in 1836, which subsequently played a formative role in the development of jazz. As Jonathan Solari, development director at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation – a non-profit which organises the festival – told me, the music performed here is about as authentic a representation of what you would have heard 100 years ago as it’s possible to get. The stage mostly featured bass brands and its aesthetic qualities were as charming as the music: the tent itself had an elegant vintage design and many of the performers I saw were decked out in crisp white shirts, ties and matching sailor hats. The Economy Hall had a timeless quality, but because the culture it represents is still very much alive in New Orleans, it didn’t just feel like an exercise in retro nostalgia.
One of the highlights of the festival, for me, was the gospel tent, which was so joyous I had what felt like a religious experience. Gospel is primarily a Christian form of music, but it wasn’t just about the lyrical content: the music keeps building up, with crescendo after crescendo, even after the point where you think it can’t possibly get any more ecstatic. As I was listening to it I thought, ‘so this is what it feels like to be moved by God!’ If I had grown up attending a church with music like this – instead of being forced to endure dusty old hymns like “All Things Bright and Beautiful” – maybe I would be a less spiritually deprived person today. The gospel tent displayed how intertwined the Jazz Fest is with the local area, which was another thing I loved about it. Some of the singers on stage were young children, some of them elderly (and everything in between), and most of them were just normal people who perform with their churches, but they were all extraordinarily talented. This is true for the rest of the festival too: around 85 per cent of performers are from Louisiana and not all of them are full-time professionals, which is testament to how deeply music is ingrained within the culture of the region.
While it welcomes hundreds of thousands visitors from around the world, the people of Louisiana remain at the heart of what The Jazz and Heritage Foundation is trying to do. “What sets us apart from other organisations is we understand that in order to take care of a culture, you have to take care of the people that make it. At any point in a person’s life, whether they’re an artist or an audience member, there’s a programme which is designed to meet them where they are,” Solari said. The foundation provides children with free instruments, teaches them the core tenets of jazz at its Heritage School of Music, and gives them opportunities to perform at the various free festivals it runs throughout the year. Some of these children will go onto become professional musicians, touring internationally and playing main stages, while others won’t, but Solari believes that the experience will benefit them either way. “I think the discipline that they get here, and the idea of improvisation they learn, is going to influence who they are, just as humans in the world,” he said.
Going beyond youth outreach, the foundation aims to provide its community with lifelong support, from organising healthcare-related programmes to helping people with funeral costs, to collecting archival material which will preserve their memories. It also aims to be as accessible as possible for the residents of New Orleans, handing out 10,000 complimentary tickets each year to community organisations, most of which are serving populations which otherwise might not be able to afford to attend. The profits from the festival are put towards year-round programming which supports culture in the city.
While there are plenty of opportunities in New Orleans to step back in time, jazz is not a static or historically-fixed genre, but one that is constantly evolving and building on its lineage. Over the last ten years, jazz’s long-standing relationship with hip-hop has experienced a resurgence: Kendrick Lamar – who has worked with cutting-edge jazz musicians like Kamasi Washington and Thundercat – is one obvious example, as is Ali Shaheeed Muhammad, a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, who is now at the forefront of progressive jazz. According to a Pinterest trend report for 2024, jazz is experiencing a revival among young audiences, spearheaded by new artists like Laufey, and Domi and JD Beck. At the Jazz Fest, many of the artists performing are taking elements of traditional jazz and incorporating them with lyricism, hip-hop, and the sounds of Mardis Gras Indian tradition. “It becomes a gumbo of all these different flavours coming together to make something that's entirely unique,” Solari said.
To support its mission, the foundation has recently launched a partnership with Expedia, which is now one of the main sponsors of the festival. “It’s a game changer for us,” says Solari. “They’re such good partners, because they know that it is not about just putting their name on a stage or extracting the culture that’s here. They’re trying to figure out ways to open doors for our students into experiences that they wouldn’t have otherwise.” On the first Saturday of the festival, Expedia arranged for 20 young participants in the foundation’s Brass Band programme to have a private meet-and-greet with Anderson .Paak, the Grammy-nominated hip-hop and R&B star who was headlining the festival that weekend. “That’s a life changing experience,” says Solari. “If you’re a kid who’s learning how to play the drums and this man who has become an international star is able to reach out to you and you can see yourself in that person, your whole world opens up.” This meeting took place during the rehearsals for Expedia’s ‘Global Jam’ afterparty, a night of music which featured live performances from .Paak himself, Tank and the Bangas, and a host of other musicians, all coming together to celebrate the music of New Orleans in its many forms.
As much as it’s concerned with the residents of its local area, the Jazz Fest has an international outlook, hosting artists from all over the world and every year platforming a specific country. This time round, the Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion focused on Colombia: over 200 Colombian musicians performed, from traditional salsa acts to major break-out stars like Bomba Estéreo; there were stalls selling Colombian food and an art installation designed by artist Jeisson Castillo, whose work is informed by the practices of indigenous Colombian culture. In the months leading up to the event, Expedia launched a Jazz Fest Travel Hub, which provided festival goers with travel resources and information to help them make the most of their stay in New Orleans, which included a section dedicated to the music and culture of Colombia. In order to ensure that the cultural exchange lasts beyond the festival itself, Expedia is also sponsoring four musicians from Louisiana to visit the Colombian Pacific this summer. “It was amazing to have Colombia as a guest in a festival,” Liliania Saumet, the lead vocalist of Bomba Estéreo, told me. “When I started to travel around 17 years ago, whenever I said I was from Colombia, people would mention Pablo Escabar or drugs. But thanks to music, that reputation has started to change,” she said. “Colombia has one of the best music scenes in the world, and to see that represented at the Jazz Fest is so important.”
With the Exchange Pavilion, the festival celebrates both the specificity of musical forms around the world and the similarities which unite them. While Bomba Estéreo make music which spans a range of genres, from psychedelic pop to cumbia, Liliana sees a commonality between what they do and the kinds of Black American culture showcased at Jazz Fest. “Blues is one of my favourite genres,” she says. “When the people here start to jam, to improvise, to sing and play instruments without any line, that is really valuable to me, because I don’t like structure. That’s the way I learned to play, not by taking lessons,” she said. Despite the differences between these genres, and between Louisiana and Colombia, she sees them all as a form of folk music. “For me, that’s what music is about. I take inspiration from grandmothers and grandfathers singing about their cultures, singing about their pains, what happens in their lives and in their towns. It’s all connected.”
The kinds of music which Jazz Fest celebrates have always been communal affairs, and that spirit is still evident today. Everywhere you looked, there were people taking an active role in the proceedings, rather just attending as spectators. There was a constant stream of brass bands parading through the grounds, followed by a “second line” of dancers – a centuries-old New Orleans tradition which has been described as a “jazz funeral without a body”. These are community affairs, and many of the musicians taking part in these parades are friends and neighbours who have played alongside each other for decades.
The festival also represents another unique tradition which dates back to the 1800s: the Mardi Gras Indians are Black New Orleans residents who wear hand-crafted costumes inspired by ceremonial attire of Indigenous Americans. These outfits are spectacular, featuring colorful headdresses made with dyed-ostrich feathers, and suits adorned with intricate embroidery and beadwork. While they are primarily associated with Mardi Gras, they appear at events throughout the year, where they march through the crowds, singing, dancing and chanting. Their presence, along with the brass bands, has the effect of dissolving the distance between performance and participation. What feels so special about Jazz Fest – and New Orleans in general – is that the music doesn’t just stop at the stage: it’s happening all around you.