"Jazz Festing in Place" April 23 – 26 and April 30 – May 3

A BRILLIANT WORK AROUND...NEW ORLEANS FIGURES OUT HOW TO KEEP ITS CROWN JEWEL SHINING IN THE TIME OF A PANDEMIC!

"Jazz Festing in Place" April 23 – 26 and April 30 – May 3

With over 130 festivals a year in New Orleans, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is the colossus of them all - "One of the world's greatest cultural celebrations. The annual springtime event spanning 10 days, with thousands of musicians playing on 12 stages and attracts almost 500,000 culture-crazed fans from around the world."

What does Jazz Fest mean to New Orleans? In 2001, favorite son Louis Armstrong's 100th birthday, 650,000 people packed the 145 acre Fair Grounds Race for one weekend of the celebration of music and culture.

In 2006, the festival was held 6 months after Katrina devastated the city. No Jazz Fest? No way! Tradition holds New Orleans together like a roux holds together gumbo.

A plague in 2020? Jazz Fest was cancelled. But...

WWOZ FM, the umbilical cord to New Orleans music on the air waves, created Jazz Festing In Place, two weekends of curated performances from way back. Put a camp chair in your living room, soak some red beans, boil the rice, put on your dance shoes when the spirit moves you. Jazz Festing In Place happens in the exact hours the two weekend festival would have gone down. Hallelujah.

Friday, April 24 4 PM...at home

After a few hours of counter-balancing the voices of CNN and Fox News, I was worn down.

Chloroquine may or may not be a palliative to treat Covid-19.  But music...oh baby, in a nanosecond, my psyche is on a chariot ride to exuberant cosmic heights. Jazz Festing Online is on the radio runway. Fasten safety belt. In seconds, I'm lifting off, circling the earth in my own Jazzfest skywriter.

I'm flying on Air WWOZ and Jazz Festing In Place...Online!

https://www.wwoz.org/listen/player/

New Orleans' bid to keep the juice of Jazz Fest, the most enduring gift that city gives to its residents and people from all over the world, is alive and well.

This is the lineup that was to be...

https://www.neworleans.com/event/new-orleans-jazz-%26-heritage-festival-(cancelled)/3197/ (lists big name artists; for my money, the scores of local bands/musicians that play are why I came in 2010).

This is the brilliant Plan B, cherry picked rock the house performances from as far back as 1977, online and in the same time slots as they would have been at the Fairgrounds Race Track. New Orleans is arguably the well from which American music was drawn. The set that closed Friday's Festing In Place was Fats Domino's  2001 performance. The Fat Man from the Lower 9th ward was in great form.

https://www.wwoz.org/640011-jazz-festing-place-cubes

Reproducing the energy of Jazz Fest on the radio is a daunting task but these performances taped live, dang, you can hear the crowd's unabashed shouts and cheers to performers on the outdoor stages. The energy came in waves from people in camp chairs, or sprawled on blankets, umbrellas popped up to ward off rain or the beating sun. From the heavens, it must look like a carpet of mushrooms topped with rainbow sprinkles.

Jazz Fest has always been an interactive experience. Now we just recreate it virtually, listening in our living rooms, kitchens and porches as we shelter in place. Interactive with distance!

Today, late Friday, I tuned in to listen to Patricia Boutté, backed by Paul Longstreth, with a funky rolling classic New Orleans take on a traditional song as I write this and boogying along right in my chair in front of my desktop. Boutté follows with the ultra classic "Bourbon Street Parade" written by drummer Paul Barbarin in 1949.  Followed by her cover of  "Going to the Mardi Gras" , originally recorded by Professor Longhair in 1959, a monumental figure in New Orleans history. By the way, here's his recording of "Tipitina," whose rolling rumba style is so totally New Orleans.

NOTE: Reason I love WWOZ: Siri couldn't figure out the name of Patricia Boutée's first song so I shot an email to the station. A few  hours later..."The Tricia Boutte cover song you're looking for was "Dreamland," originally a classic 1966 reggae track by Bunny Wailer, but now given a New Orleans feel.  Her version of the track is on a CD called "Oh New Orleans Here I Come."   It was a great set, wasn't it?" From Dave Ankers, Director of Content, WWOZ 90.7 FM New Orleans and wwoz.org  

How cool was that!

Boutée's rambunctious energy is followed by Kenny Neal's slow groove "How Time Slips Away," recorded at 2018 Jazz Fest. It is so eerily perfect for life in the time of pandemic. Time is indeed slipping away, but not in a way we ever imagined.

Friday's Jazz Festing in Place ends with Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans, 2006 set. It was the first Jazz fest since Katrina ruined New Orleans in August 2005. The city still smelled like mud that day. Irma kicked it off with my favorite, "It's Raining In My Heart." New Orleans audiences, especially at Jazz Fest, take it as an obligation to shout out to the singers. Irma stokes that fire, calls out, "We're still here!" You can imagine the response.

By this time her set closes, I'm dancing in the kitchen, grateful for the gift of music and its power to heal. An odd piece of synchronicity. Katrina's shadow still hovered over New Orleans, bruised and perhaps broken and caked with mud, in 2006.

The Covid-19 virus is killing us in 2020. We're in a mandate to stay home. Unprecedented. A nightmare with a death toll. On that day in April, Irma delivered the sermon, a lesson in survival and resilience and succor. New Orleans needed it then. We can use that same sermon today.

"Put your handkerchiefs in the air," she shouts, a signal she's ending her show and the day at the mandatory 7 PM closing time.

Here comes "Iko Iko." You know damn well the crowd was shakin' what the maker gave 'em and second lining on what is left of the grass on the infield of the New Orleans Fairground and Racetrack. New Orleans survived Katrina. Covid-19 is another order of magnitude.

 

Comments

[Susan M Bennett]

Fun! I am listening now and will definitely tune in to this station for some energy when needed. Thanks for sharing it! Jive on PT, Susan B

[Paul A Tamburello Jr aka pt at large]

I started today with Governor Cuomo's briefing then Herbie Hancock and now Jon Cleary. Oh boy! Required listening for the next three days!
Thanks, Jiving on with you…

[Ann Baker]

Thank the heavens for RADIO…...

[Paul A Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

Amen!

[Bill Ives]

Yes we and the rest of the city have been enjoying it, mostly live stream from my computer, as we are in the car much less these days.

[Rubia Solis]

Brilliant as always. You perfectly capture the mood and flavor. I have a perfect visual of your kitchen dance! Be sure to email Dave Ankers this story. Thank you for sharing your exuberance. * paragraph 6 should be 2006. Love ya, Rubia

[Paul A. Tamburello Jr aka pt at large]

Geez THANKS just corrected it!! And did send copy to
Dave Ankers.
PT rockin' in the kitchen!

[Beth Arroyo Utterbach, General Manager]

I absolutely love your article about WWOZ. So beautifully written and so thoughtful. Thank you so much for supporting us. Happy Jazz Fest to you!

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

Good afternoon, Beth,
It’s cloudy and cold up here but the sun is shining through the airwaves in every speaker I can open in my house,started out with Herbie Hancock, now Jon Cleary loading up with inspired rollicking “Tipitina”…oh my.

I’m in a Jazz Fest groove, virtual, toe tappin’ hip shakin’ spirit rechargin’ and three more days on the horizon. As my friend from Dallas would say “I’m havin’ a glory fit!”.

[Bambi Good]

I can hear your dancin' in your writin'... You've given us many gifts over the years, but in advance I'm going out on an oaken limb in my back woods - but not one on a cypress in a swamp - to say this is the biggest, baddest ever. I have been to New Orleans only once and it sadly wasn't for the Jazz and Heritage Festival. If I have to get a hip replacement after, I hope I won't regret it for I'll take off my dancin' shoes and shake... (I dance barefoot on my daughter's rug which actually helps preserve the hips and knees I hope).
Now to share... and then sit with a dharma teacher for a bit before I start my day... The day can't get any better than this!
always with deep appreciation, Bambi who loves Professor Longhair already!

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr]

Bambi, thanks so much for this. I hear you about replacement parts, a knee for me in the not too distant future.
This very moment,I’m listening to Marcia Ball 2007 singing the Randy Newman song that she’s made her own, 'Louisiana 1927’. If there was ever a song to put to loss, dislocation, and an unspoken sense of of resilience of Louisianans,this is it. “They may be trying to wash us away,” but you know they will get up and survive. Then she kicks out the jambs with a sassy “I Want To Play with Your Poodle”. Whatever sense of loss that "Louisiana 1927" brought up in my mind was sent packing by this mighty charged rock 'n rollin’ hip shaker that her band takes to the stratosphere. I can just picture Long Tall Marcia Ball sitting cross-legged, with one leg wagging out the rhythm, her hands pounding the daylights out of the keys on her electric piano. Damn, I am in orbit!

[Chantelle Trahan]

Wonderful writing! I felt the excitement of heading to the New Orleans Jazz Fest as I read it! What a line-up! What an event!

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr aka pt at large]

Thank you, Chantelle,
Lots of Cajun bands play at the Fais Do Do Stage at Jazz Fest. Horace and The Ossun Express may have played there themselves.
I’ve been listening to the virtual fest all day. Grooving in place is more fun than sheltering in place:)

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

As WWOZ General Manager Beth Arroyo Utterback says, “If you can’t live in New Orleans, let New Orleans live in you.” The S.S. New Orleans has tossed a virtual life ring to all of us bobbing in an ocean of uncertainty. We climbed aboard, for the two weeks of Jazz Festing in Place, honorary members of the urban crucible of American music.

For the past two weekends in pandemic isolation, Jazz Festing in place is to me a gift of communion, rice and beans replace bread and wine. From the choir loft I’m hearing pande-music soaring over us in our pews in living rooms, kitchens and porches across the land.
A host of high rollin’ and slow groovin’ hierarchy from virtual stages on the Fairgrounds is dispensing the sacrament of music, compressed into band width wafers, to absolve the faithful. Healing. Uplifting. Vivifying.

[Chantelle Trahan]

Horace has played the Fais Do Do Stage at Jazz Fest in the past, with the most recent time being in 2013. I was there, and unfortunately, his set was rained out. The festival kept the gates closed until the rain stopped later on. We did get to hang out with everyone scheduled to play, including the Dopsie Brothers (the sons of Rockin’ Dopsie, Sr.). It was pretty cool!

I am with you.....grooving in place wins!😊