Tagged: events

A state bicentennial event planned as Louisiana's largest military parade in a century has been rescheduled to try to live up to that billing.

The parade was scheduled Saturday, the anniversary of the date that Congress accepted the Florida Parishes as part of Louisiana. On Tuesday, officials said it will instead be Saturday, Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day.

It will go through the French Quarter to the National World War II Museum.

The 2012 Essence Music Festival drew 413,000 people to New Orleans for the four-day event held over the Fourth of July weekend.

That's less than the 422,000 who gathered for the 2011 festival. Last year the festival ran for three days.

This was the 18th anniversary of the festival which features nightly concerts at the Superdome and free, daily "empowerment" seminars and community events at the city's convention center.

For the last 18 years, the Essence Music Festival has been the go-to event for African-Americans, especially African-American women. For three days in New Orleans, hundreds of thousands show up for R&B and gospel concerts and panels on politics, financial planning and parenting.

If it's a party, as creator George Wein describes it, it's a party with a purpose.

"New Orleans is a party city and they party," Wein says. "People party here. If you go to the hotels — 40-floor hotels — [there's] like 40 floors of parties."