How Sweet the Sound: New Orleans Jazz Fest 2007 Now Happening

New Orleans Jazz Fest 2007 More than Music

4.18.07

The 2007 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival brings big-league entertainment to the Crescent City over the course of two consecutive weekends, April 27-29 and May 4-6. This year's lineup boasts names guaranteed to draw the masses, including John Mayer, Norah Jones, Ludacris, Harry Connick, Jr., Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, and Steely Dan.

But Jazz Fest isn't just about big-name acts. Most of the hundreds of performers at the festival are working Louisiana musicians who spend most of the year touring and playing to small crowds in intimate nightclubs; many are still struggling to put their lives and careers back together 18 months after Hurricane Katrina. Jazz Fest gives these local and regional musicians an opportunity to strut their stuff before a large, international audience.

"It's always a thrill to have so many people looking at you," says New Orleans blues belter Marva Wright, who has a coveted second-Sunday spot at this year's Jazz Fest. "I meet so many different people, and not just musicians. I love the festival. I love the people."

For the uninitiated, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is an annual event that features thousands of musicians on 11 stages scattered throughout the Fair Grounds Race Course, in the city's Gentilly neighborhood. (The festival started, modestly enough, on Congo Square, just outside the French Quarter; an oft-repeated anecdote claims that the number of musicians at that 1970 event, including the hometown gospel great Mahalia Jackson, easily surpassed the number of spectators.)