I think it was 2001 when I first started going to Jazz Fest in New Orleans, and it took quite some convincing to get me there. I guess it's the Jazz in the name that turned me off, at first. I like music, but Jazz was never really my thing. But I was told repeatedly that the entire name, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is what I should be paying attention to, and that the music would be varied and interesting, and not just "jazz." So eventually, with much prodding from my friend Andrew, I managed to boondoggle my way into New Orleans on a return flight from San Francisco to London (where I was living at the time) and have been going ever since.
For the first year I was a Jazz Fest duckling, following Andrew around, listening to music and musicians whose names were unfamiliar, and being quoted references to obscure (to me) musicians from the New Orleans scene. Then for next years I occasionally struck out on my own, sampling the variety of music from Cajun to Blues, from Batucada to Zydeco, from traditional New Orleans Jazz to big name stars like Brian Wilson and so on. I would always circle back to find out more stuff I missed, or why this or that name was amazing, why this or that set was "once in a lifetime," and so on. As my education in music grew, I just realized how much more there was to learn, so stopped trying to learn and went back to simply basking in the gloriousness and newness of each musician and set and most of all the music.
Occasionally, as Manolo once said, there is just "too much fucking music" to handle. You are at JazzFest all day, then a quick nap, then out to the Maple Leaf, Tipitina's, Rock and Bowl, and other, more obscure places to catch a lot of the same people you saw at JazzFest again, but without the crowds and sun (or rain) and a lot more intimately. In the old days, staying out till the sun comes up, then catching another nap, then off to JazzFest was routine. These days, I am happy to enjoy what I can then ditch to home and sleep till the call comes the next morning to get up and do it all again. But sometimes there is just too much much music -- and I have only ever done one weekend!
There is this feeling to New Orleans that I have only experienced once before, in Key West. It is hot, humid, and swampy. You feel like you just crawled out of the swamp, and occasionally look that way too. The people drawl. The place feels eternal, and even sometimes a bit creepy and odd. The people are friendly, or not, but it doesn't matter cause you are almost moving in slow motion, underwater. It is not a place for the feint of heart, or if it is, then stay on Bourbon Street, the fraternity basement scene where everything smells like spilled beer but at least the surroundings are understandable. They are not exactly so understandable at 5am at Snake and Jakes, for example, or even at 2am pushed up against a speaker at the Maple Leaf listening to Papa Grows Funk go into some jam session that leaves your both breathless and stupified.
Yeah, I learned something about music. Not a lot, but enough to occassionally get carried away to that place only musicians go when playing, and I don't even have an instrument.
Then there is the food. I could go on in much more detail about the food available at the fairgrounds or even some of the amazing stuff eaten in little unknown holes--in-- the-- wall that I have been taken to. Thank God someone knows where they are going. I have this feeling if you take the food out of New Orleans and transplant it somewhere else it would be good, but not quite AS good, if you know what I mean. There is something about the whole package that is New Orleans that lends itself to the taste of the food. You know what I mean.
But even though I love the food, love the drinks, and love the atmosphere, at the end of the day it is about the music, and going back there every year allows me to have something to look forward to the rest of the year, if that makes any sense. Because every year is the same, but it is wildly different for me, at Jazz Fest.
