Arts & Culture

Helen Regis is a cultural anthropologist who has been studying the Jazz and Heritage Festival for 10 years. In some ways, she says, you can think of the Jazz Fest as a city.

“The people who build the festival every year — the construction crew, the electricians — feel like they’re building a city. They do. It’s this physical infrastructure. It has lights. It has plumbing. Sort of.” Regis says, in some ways, it’s kind of a fantasy city. "In some ways it looks like New Orleans, but it’s not."

When the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival first began in 1969, it was radical. Here in the South, still reeling from the Civil Rights movement and race integration, the festivals’ founders — Quint Davis, George Wein, and Allison Miner — created a safe space for New Orleanians to come together, to hear each others’ music and to party — together. Eve Abrams brings us this profile of Allison Miner, a titan in New Orleans music, and the only person with a Jazz Fest stage named for her.