Event

Soundgarden to headline 2011 Voodoo Experience in New Orleans

On June 2, 2011, In Event, Music, By admin

NEW ORLEANS — Legendary Seattle rock band Soundgarden will headline the 2011 Voodoo Experience, which takes place Halloween weekend in New Orleans.

Festival producer Stephen Rehage says the group’s appearance will be their only U.S. festival performance of the year.

The rest of the lineup will be unveiled later, but Rehage said Wednesday that fans can expect the talent to reflect a variety of musical genres. The alternative music festival last year featured Ozzy Osbourne, Muse, Weezer, Drake and Raphael Saddiq.

This year’s event, scheduled for Oct. 28-30, takes place in New Orleans’ City Park.

From DailyJournal

New Orleans Saints & Sinners Literary Festival kicks off Friday

On May 11, 2011, In Event, By admin

I’m always a little torn when Louisiana’s festival season hits its springtime peak: One part of me wants to get out there and party, the other wants to curl up with a good book.

If you feel the same way, this weekend offers an interesting compromise: the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Friday through Sunday, the festival will present a host of readings, panel discussions and social events for the literary-minded.

Now in its ninth year, Saints and Sinners is a collaborative project of the Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival and the NO/AIDS Task Force. It is the nation’s only literary festival devoted to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community (GLBT) — and, yes, plenty of straight people will attend, too.

Festival director Paul Willis estimates that about 90 percent of the participants come from outside New Orleans.

“It’s not hard to convince writers and readers to come to the French Quarter to hang around with other like-minded people,” Willis said. “For writers, this event is a chance to escape the isolation of their desks. For readers, it’s a chance to meet authors in low-key, small-group settings.”

To convince more locals to attend, the festival is offering half off all tickets for area residents and for all students. The coupon code SAS2011 can be applied to both online and phone purchases.

Continue at the TP

New Orleans’ Jazz Fest thrives, despite competition

On May 3, 2011, In Event, Music, By admin

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – A sea of flowered shirts, colorful tank tops and straw hats sways to an infectious beat under a searing blue sky.

Artists ranging from Bon Jovi to New Orleans jazz singer John Boutte pump tunes on multiple stages as an exuberant crowd delights in the experience of one of the world’s largest music festivals.

Robbie Alves, an audio engineer from Los Angeles, is nearly as comfortable in this setting as he is in his West Coast home.

“It’s maybe a little bit of escapism, but what’s wrong with that?” asked Alves, who has attended the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival almost every spring for the past 20 years. This year’s festival began last weekend and continues this Thursday through Sunday.

Forty-two years after it began, the event known as Jazz Fest has become a 12-stage, seven-day blockbuster that features not only jazz but also blues, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, rock, funk, Latin and other styles.

It continues to draw music fans — 375,000 people paid an average of $40-$60 to spend a day at the fest last year — even as competition from other festivals has dramatically increased.

“A rock festival has a narrow group of kids that go to it. This festival, from the beginning, went out of its way not to do that,” said Quint Davis, producer and director of the event and CEO of Festival Productions Inc.

Continue at Reuters

New Orleans, Haiti share cultural history at fest

On May 2, 2011, In Event, Music, By admin

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It’s no coincidence that the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has taken the earthquake-ravaged country of Haiti under its wing.

The city and the country share more than just a love of music and culture. They share history and are both survivors, said Richard Morse, lead singer and founder of the Haitian mizik rasin band RAM.

“I like to say New Orleans and Haiti are twin sisters separated at birth,” said Morse who recounted a bit of history behind the Louisiana Purchase during an interview.

Morse said both Haiti and New Orleans were once part of the same French Colony, but in 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States after a successful black slave revolt on what is now Haiti caused him to lose the land for his empire. After his defeat, experts say Napoleon saw holding onto Louisiana as a liability and sold the land to the U.S. for $15 million.

Morse’s band is scheduled to play on the second weekend of the festival and is among several featured as part of this year’s event. Wyclef Jean performed on the fest’s opening day, while the reigning queen of Haitian songs, Emeline Michel, took the stage at Congo Square on Saturday. Others scheduled to perform include Tabou Combo, Djakout (hash)1, and Ti-Coca & Wanga-Neges.

Michael Callahan, of Portland, Ore., moved to the rhythms of Boukman Eksperyans on Sunday.

“I’m loving them,” he said of the band. “I love the dancing, the beat, everything. Did you hear what he just said? He said, ‘We have to change the system.’ Man that’s powerful. I love the politics of the music. It’s beautiful.”

On Sunday, the DJA-RaRa (JAH-rah-rah) band paraded through the Fair Grounds Race Course drawing spectators along the route to the festival’s Haitian Pavilion where they put on a show.

“They are contagious aren’t they,” said Sabel Gipson, of New Orleans. “Their spirit and sentiment is so similar to New Orleans’ own second-lines. They so represent the culture and spirit of not only Haitians, but also the African diaspora.”

Gipson, who danced and moved throughout the performance, said the festival’s decision to promote the Haitian culture “is the best thing it’s done in the last few decades.”

Continue at the AP

New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival opens Friday

On April 28, 2011, In Event, Music, By admin

For fans of its distinct mix of music, heritage, food and sheer laid-back atmosphere, the wait is over: The 42nd edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival opens its two-weekend run on Friday, April 29.

As always, the event presents a massive spread of acts playing musical styles distinct to Louisiana, from jazz to funk to zydeco. Jazz Fest also has a tradition of honoring other cultures whose musical traditions have influenced Louisiana’s own, and organizers have said that this year’s festival “will also host the largest celebration of Haitian culture in the U.S.” since a major earthquake devastated portions of that country in January 2010.

As always, the festival tops such offerings with a slate of pop headliners who often have little to do with jazz or heritage, but who draw tens of thousands of listeners to the event’s two main stages.

This year’s top draws include coastal troubadour Jimmy Buffett, who adorns this year’s main official poster. Other major pop acts include Bon Jovi, Kid Rock, Arcade Fire, John Mellencamp, Wilco, Robert Plant, the Strokes, Lauryn Hill, Willie Nelson and the Roots.

Ticket prices have risen by 50 percent since 2006, when single-day passes were $30 in advance and $40 at the gate. But Jazz Fest continues to be what newer events aspire to become: a genuine institution.

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Louisiana’s Zydeco Trail

On April 26, 2011, In Event, Heritage, By admin

I HAD never noticed how closely the syncopated rhythm of zydecomusic echoes the rollicking stumble of horses on rough terrain. But on a September afternoon in the piney woods of Evangeline Parish, in Louisiana’s Cajun country, with hundreds of dusty horseback riders moving down a narrow trail, the kinship was impossible to miss. As the horses followed a tractor towing a D.J. and a zydeco-blaring sound system, they bucked and swayed in a cadence fit for the barroom floors of Lafayette, 70 miles away.

Eventually the riders — young and old, encumbered by cold beers or small children — reached a large clearing in the middle of the woods, which quickly filled with horses, flatbeds, wagons and buggies as the music continued to throb. People sold barbecue sandwiches and turkey legs from the backs of pick-up trucks. A group of women piled out of a wagon and serenely performed a line dance in the dust. Young people sang and flirted and held up their beers with a “Wooo!”

The clearing was the halfway point of the Pineywoods Trail Ride, one of a circuit of zydeco trail rides that take place in the countryside around Lafayette and in many parts of Texas from Mardi Gras through early December. Exuberant, untouched by corporate sponsors and run by a close-knit network of people who price their beer at $2 a can, the rides are a traditional way to celebrate the cowboy culture of rural blacks or Creoles (commonly understood as a mixture of black with French, Spanish and/or Native American ancestry).

Originally small affairs among relatives and neighbors, the rides have evolved over decades into organized events with a dedicated following, though they have remained largely unknown to outsiders. In recent years, trail rides have surged in popularity among rural youth, as zydeco musicians have incorporated strains of R&B and hip-hop, attracting a new generation for whom Creole is suddenly cool.

Continue at NYT

Easter in New Orleans

On April 18, 2011, In Event, By admin

Complete with colorful floats, marching bands, Easter trinkets and beads, the Chris Owens French Quarter Easter Parade will begin at the corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets, continue down Bourbon Street to St. Phillip, roll up to Decatur, and conclude at Canal Street at the Astor Crowne Hotel. The parade will roll at 1 p.m.

See more at the TP

French Quarter Festival serves up a free smorgasboard of New Orleans music

On April 8, 2011, In Event, By admin

From its utilitarian origins as an economic engine, the French Quarter Festival is, 28 years later, that and much more.

The self-described largest free music festival in the South attracts hundreds of thousands of patrons with hundreds of musicians on 17 outdoor stages sprinkled throughout the Quarter and Woldenberg Park along the Mississippi River.

Where it once catered to traditional jazz, the festival now embraces virtually all forms of indigenous music except rap.

For casual and more dedicated music fans, it is a no-cost means to sample the sonic bounty of south Louisiana, all while strolling one of the most picturesque and historic neighborhoods in America.

Continue reading at the TP

(French Quarter Fest begins today)

40th Annual Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival

On April 7, 2011, In Event, By admin

The annual Ponchatoula Strawberry Fest starts tomorrow and this excerpt from the Times-Pic sums it up:

This year’s event, which begins Friday night and runs through Sunday, offers the same big-but-homespun vibe, with attractions that include several music stages, midway rides, eating contests, farmer-run fruit stands, tons of food vendors, a pageant and lots of families relaxing under shade trees in fine spring weather.

Oh, yeah: There will also be strawberry shortcake, chocolate-dipped strawberries, strawberry dumplings, fried strawberries and other treats for sale. More than anything, the festival is a chance to celebrate — and consume — a local crop whose legendary status puts it on a par with such Louisiana delicacies as Creole tomatoes and satsumas from Plaquemines Parish.

World premiere Tennessee Williams one acts at Southern Rep

On April 1, 2011, In Event, By admin

Photo by John Barrois
Lucy Faust and Chris Marroy in The Pretty Trap.

Tennessee Williams is the unrivaled master of the one-act play. Southern Rep’s recent premieres of Williams one-acts from the 1930s gave us a chance to see the young playwright at work. Aimee Hayes directed the diverse pieces with verve and sensitivity. (The one acts continue March 31-April 3)

Continue at Gambit