New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, otherwise known as Jazz Fest, is New Orleans’ largest music festival each year. Despite the name, it is not actually all jazz. I’m not sure why, but people think to think that. Dozens of headliners perform at the festival each year from every genre imaginable. Last year I saw the Dave Matthews Band at the festival. The Edge from U2 came out and played with Dave for a song, which was incredible.

Jazz Fest is held at the fair grounds, which is not necessarily the best part of town. I definitely have to recommend public transportation of some type. The city of New Orleans offers a shuttle for festival-goers for about $10 a person. Sounds good, but if you’re in the Garden District or CBD and have a few people you can actually split a cab for about the same price directly from your hotel. The only issue with that plan is the return trip. You can skip the INSANELY LONG taxi line and go a few blocks down the street to hail a cab who is on its way in. I know, the polite thing is to wait in line….

The most difficult part of the festival is deciding on which acts to watch. Last year I had to make the choice between Dave Matthews and Etta James. I chose Dave, who I’d seen before at Memphis in May and have seen since. It was SUCH a mistake. Not that it wasn’t a great show, but that may have been my only opportunity to see Etta. Choose wisely.

Jazz Fest is held each year the last weekend in April and the first weekend in May. If you plan on doing a little business AND attending the festival (which was my plan), keep in mind that the music runs all day and ENDS at 7:00 pm. My Friday ticket went in the trash as I was working until about 4:30. I strongly suggest the St. Charles Tavern for brunch before you head to the show and the FABULOUS Gulftream Steakhouse for dinner after.

I had the opportunity to visit one of the neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Katrina during my visit, which I think is a MUST DO on any trip to New Orleans. If you’re there, you need to make the effort to understand what happened to the people there. Each house has symbols spray painted by the soldiers who were assigned to the area to clean up the bodies. Blunt, I know but that’s how it was. Along with signs indicating dead animals and cleared homes, temporary trailer homes, houses that still had trees through the roofs (keep in mind this was 8 months after the hurricane), thousands of ruined cars under the I-10 bridge and garbage piled up on the sides of the roads, I saw this on the side of a house on the west side. I don’t know what exactly happened here, but I like that I found a little success story in the middle of so much devastation.