The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival continues its second weekend today. There is no rain expected, but there will be mud. When the weather is not so friendly, more folks head under the tents.
And that’s where you find most cultural displays at Jazz Fest.
Rachel Ornelas directs the folklife village at the festival. All year she vets artisans around the state, with the help of folklorists and anthropologists.
Little Freddie King at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, 2013, photographed by Skip Bolen.
Credit Courtesy of Skip Bolen
Little Freddie King at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, 2013.
Credit Courtesy of Skip Bolen
Skip Bolen says B.B. King is one of this year's most photogenic performers at the festival: "He has such great expressions."
Credit Courtesy of Skip Bolen
Trombone Shorty at Jazz Fest in 2011.
Credit Courtesy of Skip Bolen
Dave Matthews' rain-soaked set at Jazz Fest 2013.
Credit Eve Troeh for NPR
Skip Bolen has attended the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival for years, competing with other photographers for the best shots — and forming relationships with performers in the process.
Credit Courtesy of Skip Bolen
Bolen shot one of Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews' earliest public performances at the 2001 Jazz Fest. Andrews' teacher Clyde Kerr can be seen at the far right.
The 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival wraps up Monday. This weekend and last, 12 stages have mixed such marquee names as Fleetwood Mac, Phoenix and Los Lobos with dozens of local bluesmen, soul belters and Cajun fiddle players.
A little rain couldn't keep tens of thousands of people from descending on the New Orleans Fair Grounds for the second weekend of Jazz Fest, 2013. We captured a slice of life at the Fest this past Thursday.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival continues its 44th year of music today at the Fair Grounds. This morning a new music education center was dedicated to one of the festival’s founders, George Wein, and his wife Joyce.
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."
