All That Jazz Fest: Weekend 1 Highlights
There are probably other reasons the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (presented by Shell) could use a new name. But this reporter believes it needs to better reflect the soul-healing, stress-relieving, musically invigorating powers that this annual cultural pilgrimage has come to represent.
While we work on a handle that has a better ring to it than the New Orleans Rejuvenative Music Health Spa, let’s consider this year’s 47th edition. To borrow the title of an oft-covered song at last year’s Jazz Fest, here are a few things about the first weekend that made us “Happy.”
The Victory Lap
Can’t get close enough to Pearl Jam or Van Morrison to actually hear what they’re up to? No problem. Wander over to another one of 350-plus acts on 11 stages that perform over the seven days of Fest. Without really trying, this reporter will have listened to at least a song or two of over 100 of those acts by Fest’s end, many on one of these happy discovery strolls around the 1.4 mile-race course where Fest is held. And when those strolls come near the end of a particularly good day like Friday, they become Victory Laps.
First stop on the Victory Lap was the big Acura Stage for Steely Dan, who can seem stiffly exacting on their studio recordings. But at the Fest’s outdoor mega-gathering with a jazzy big band backup, tracks like “Black Cow” and “Asia” blossomed. What was tightly wound took on a swaying breadth.… With his array of wild, self-designed horns – and the aid of double drummers and buzzing guitar and bass – Christian Scott led his ensemble on rhythmic and tonal adventures that seem to be operating on sheer dare… And over in the Blues Tent, soul spitfire Sharon Jones and her Dap Kings were lighting up “When the Saints…” like nobody has in a looong time.
In a heartfelt tribute to her late mentor, singer Janelle Monae finished her evening with Prince’s “Take Me With U” and “Let’s Go Crazy."… And it was more than appropriate to end this great first day of JazzFest 2016 scratching and bumping out manic beats with Dwayne Dopsie & the Zydeco Hellraisers.
First Time in the Land of Oz
It’s a treat when newbie acts “get it” and perform like they know that Jazz Fest isn’t just another stop on the summer festival circuit. The Black Lillies confidently mixed the countrified sugar-roll of their death ballads with roadkill rockers.… Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, acting a bit like the Band reincarnated, stomped nice and hard with their born-again Southern soul.
And there was nothing subtle about the Brothers Osborne and their good-old-boy guitar locomotive of a set. “I’m only guilty of a damn good time,” they sang. And joined by the Kinfolk Brass Band for their finale, a damn good time is exactly what they provided.
It Is Called JAZZ Fest, After All
Japan’s Aya Takazawa filled the Jazz Tent with her sweet trumpet technique and a stage full of special guests including Baton Rouge saxman Wessell Anderson, who led a second-line groove. Takazawa later took her trumpet over to Congo Square where she helped Kermit Ruffins "Hold That Tiger.”… Many of us settled in for pioneering drummer Jack DeJohnette’s broadly textured, deep-space voyage with saxman Ravi Coltrane and bassist Matt Garrison, who provided magnificent throbbing, pulsing swirls that wove through each other’s riffs.
The laid back tete-a-tete between Weather Report co-founders Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter was Sunday’s big draw at the Jazz Tent, a mesmerizing dream of keys and sax… But homegrown trumpeter Terence Blanchard and his young E-Collective were just as adventurous – a lesson in the art of cool – and they opened with a gorgeously animated “Diamonds and Pearls” as their testament to the #genius of @Prince.
Old Becomes New Again
During the New Orleans Experience, a sort of hip-hop variety hour on Saturday, Partners-N-Crime, DJ Jubilee, and Denisia and showed how Crescent City traditions still percolate up from the streets in New Orleans bounce and other fresh stylings. But the Fest is also a great opportunity to hear that the originals can still belt it out.
A day after New Orleans divas the Dixie Cups, Wanda Rouzan and Jean Knight revived “Mr. Big Stuff” and “Tell Mama All About It,” Bobby Cure’s band backed a similar parade of classic R&B men. Sammy Ridgley, Al Johnson, and the 85-year-old Robert Parker, dressed in Prince-ly purple, sang strong on “Stagger Lee,” “Carnival Time,” and “Barefootin’,” reclaiming the decades-young hits as their own. Meanwhile Clarence “Frogman” Henry, from his walker no less, rocked the vocal range that still makes “Ain’t Got No Home” a great sing-along. For a finale, they gathered their old bones on stage one last time to give new meaning to “Shake Rattle and Roll.”
It’s Called Lagniappe, “A Little Something Extra”
Jazz Fest’s sensory overload overflows on many levels. There’s even a Lagniappe Stage, a “Wait, there’s more!” platform devoted to everything from baby bands to big ideas. Other extras include the dozens of second-line parades led around the grounds by the area’s flamboyantly costumed social aid and pleasure clubs. For eats, there are somewhere around 90 (who’s got time to count?) different food offerings, from crawfish Monica to bacon pecan squares. Cooking demonstrations show how to try to make a little of that goodness back home. Juried works at the dozens of exhibits and craft and art booths do their best to relieve you of any dollars left in your pockets… And when Jonny Lang dropped off the Blues tent schedule, no less a blues legend than John Mayall was the surprise replacement.
If that’s not enough “extra” for you, here’s my favorite: The Alison Miner Stage, which offers up-close-and-personal background on Fest performers. There in the air-conditioned grandstand, you can cool off while you listen to Anders Osborne play an acoustic “Louisiana Rain” during an interview, or hear Jack DeJohnette tell how he came to be the first to record a melodic on a jazz album. Or listen to silver-throated Carolina Chocolate Drop Rhiannon Giddens challenge misconceptions about the American banjo and offer insights into how slave stories shape her songs.
Only in New Orleans
You just can’t hear it like this anywhere else. As Belton Richard and the Musical Aces showed us at the Fais Do Do stage, there’s nothing like the sound of the swamp-pop melding of pedal steel guitar, fiddle, and Richard’s classic Cajun accordion.
Similar to Hot 8 Brass Band’s blistering remodel of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” Chubby Carrier (pictured below) & the Bayou Swamp Band demonstrated how zydeco music’s relentless scratch-and-thump can breathe new life into even the most tired of old chestnuts (can you say “Rockin’ Robin”?), turning them into irresistible dance beats in a way that is sometimes lost on outside audiences. Even premier Cajun and zydeco acts like BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet and Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys, whose worldwide fanbase has taken them across the world sound, well, different here, more in tune with their nearby swamp-prairie homes.
Across the track, the Wimberly Family Gospel Singers delivered some of the mightiest, funkiest testifying this side of heaven while they were “getting’ on the good foot” for the Lord… The Young Pinstripe Brass Band absolutely killed it with their version of “All Over Now,” just as piano man Henry Butler banged out the boogie on “Workin’ in a Coal Mine” in tribute to the late, great Allen Toussaint… And after the Fest’s last official notes, the New Breed Brass Band helped take the party spill out onto the surrounding streets, where they played for tips while street merchants hawked artwork and Jell-o shots.
World Party
The lifeblood of New Orleans often reaches into the music of the Caribbean region and slave trade. With Belize as this year’s “guest” country at Fest, there was plenty of breezy drumming in the polyrhythmic tropical parties of Sweet Pain and The Garufina Collective, complete with dancers who tirelessly courted their audience… African reggae bad boy Alpha Blondy & the Solar System and the Columbian pop star Carlos Vives completed the rhythmic cruise of the high seas.
We Come Back in a Few Days for More!
It is sad that the headliners topping off the first weekend are no longer New Orleans giants. But one could do a lot worse than the Red Hot Chili Peppers – like, say, Nick Jonas’s teenybopper nation closing out Sunday at the other end of the track. With the formidably funky bass work of Flea leading the way, the Peppers’ two-hour set was a groove unto itself, sounding as New Orleans as the Neville Brothers in comparison to the Jonas bro. And it provided a nice send-off to bridge the days until we start all over again for weekend two.
(all photos: Getty Images)
