A Few More Thoughts About the Big Easy and the Jazz Fest

My wife and I got back home from New Orleans late Saturday night/Sunday morning after a wonderful visit that included the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, eating stupendous food, walking around the French Quarter, eating more stupendous food, enjoying the view of the Mississippi River from our hotel room and eating more stupendous food.

If you'll indulge me, I 'm going to skip Soundtrack Sunday so I can sum up some of the highlights from the visit. I'm sorry I didn't post more during our visit, but Internet access was iffy at times and I was busy most of the time. Which is the point of any trip to New Orleans.

• Please don't even begin to compare the NO Jazz Fest with any similar event. The event is that enormous and that ambitious in its scope. Elephant ears and corn dogs? Try Oyster Po'Boys and some of the best Jambalaya you'll ever eat in your life. And that's just the beginning of what you can taste. You will also never hear such a large variety of music. At one point Friday, if you were positioned in precisely the right location on the enormous infield of the racetrack where the festival took place, you could hear a New Orleans Ninth Ward rapper on the Congo Square stage and the strains of a traditional Dixieland jazz band from the Economy Hall tent. Aside from the music and the food, there was a full-fledged art fair, traditional Louisiana craftsman demonstrating their work and even cooking demonstrations underneath the racetrack stands. I've been to the festival about a half dozen times, but it remains mindboggling. You can never hope to capture it all. Just soak in what you can.
• Despite all of the devastation brought about by Katrina, there remains no city in the United States – perhaps even the world – quite like New Orleans. The architecture, the nightlife and the cuisine remain one of a kind. And the city itself is gradually getting back on its feet, as I stated in my last post. But there remains some deep scars. My parents, who have been down for each of the 39 festivals, say the people in the city aren't as friendly as they once were – perhaps because of the deep psychic wounds not only from the hurricane but from the government's treatment of them. People just aren't getting along the way they once were. A classic example: One of the newspaper articles while we were there was about police stopping some jazz funerals. That never would have happened a few years ago.
• I usually wander from stage to stage during the festival, rarely catching a full set. Two exceptions this time around: I saw Randy Newman's show on Thursday afternoon and Stevie Wonder's performance on Friday. Randy was his usual irrascible self, doing a mixture of familiar tunes between on-stage patter. He would play "Birmingham" from Good Ol' Boys(1974) and then launch into "You've Got A Friend In Me" from Toy Story (1995), a song that Newman introduced by saying that he had estimated he had contributed $4,000-plus to the total gross of the blockbuster Pixar film. As for Wonder, on the whole, I really got a kick out of his show. Sure, he was a little self-indulgent by allowing his thirty-something daughter Aisha Morris (The memorable subject of "Isn't She Lovely" in 1976) to solo on a piece and talking about his mother's death in relation to Katrina. The song "Ribbon in the Sky" went on much too long. But I came to the Jazz Fest expecting Old School Stevie and that's what I got – complete with a tight-as-hell band. Forget about "I Just Called to Say I Love You," "Part-Time Lover" or (gulp) "Ebony and Ivory" We heard "Superstition," "Sir Duke," "Living for the City" and "Don't You Worry About A Thing." It was 1976 all over again on the Acura Stage. And for once, I didn't mind it at all.

Play "Political Science" by Randy Newman

Play "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" by Stevie Wonder (Live in New York 1973)

Walking Through New Orleans

Last night, at the conclusion of our excellent meal at The Upperline Restaurant in New Orleans' Garden district, we had a conversation with JoAnn Clevenger, the restaurant's proprietor about the city.

"New Orleans these days is like an eight bedroom house undergoing renovations," she said. "Three of the rooms still need major, major work. But the other five rooms are more beautiful than ever and are ready to be enjoyed."

This is my fifth or sixth visit to New Orleans, but my first since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Big Easy in 2005. And I'd have to say that Clevenger's assessment is pretty accurate.

If you look around, there are signs everywhere that this is a city finally getting back on its feet. Yesterday's two-mile ride on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar took us past all kinds of renovation and construction projects underway – including a major Borders book store in the heart of the Garden District. The five bedrooms are indeed ready for guests.

As for the other three bedrooms, we drove around the almost completely decimated Ninth Ward, formerly the city's poorest and most densely populated neighborhood. What was once an area teeming with people has been reduced to acres and acres of overgrown fields with the occasional badly damaged house – or, more hopefully, a newly constructed residence erected by groups such as Habitat for Humanity. Like I Am Legend (2007), you can keep on waiting for a lioness and her cubs to appear in this wasteland.

Even outside of the Ninth Ward, on every other block in residential neighborhoods, there is at least one house with a pile of flood-related debris still sitting on the sidewalk. On some of these houses, as well as others, you can still even see the lines to which the floodwaters rose.

Most Americans still have the image of flooding and a destroyed city in their head when it comes to New Orleans. And that is a big part of the problem for an area trying to get back on its feet.

With New Orleans' population dropping to 200,000 from what had been about 500,000 prior to the flood, the city is more reliant than ever on the tourist trade to support its businesses. And those tourists just aren't visiting at anywhere close to pre-Katrina levels.

On Tuesday night, after my wife and I arrived from Detroit, we walked through the French Quarter. Granted, it was the middle of the week, but less than a mile away, the New Orleans Hornets had just closed out their first-round playoff series with the Dallas Mavericks. We figured the Quarter would be crowded with celebrating fans.

No way. Almost all the streets were empty. Bourbon Street was more active, but nowhere near the levels I've seen in the past. All around the Quarter, which was mostly spared from the flooding, you hear of business owners barely scraping by. Or having trouble hiring busboys, dishwashers and other unskilled help because the city's poorest residents have been all but exiled to places such as Houston, Atlanta and Nashville.

Another sign of the city's struggles: We are staying on the 29th floor of the Hilton New Orleans Riverside in a beautiful room overlooking the Mississippi River. The waterway, prior to the hurricane, was almost always like a crowded interstate. These day, you're lucky to see more than one boat on the river at a time.

It's quite sad. In many ways, New Orleans is more beautiful than ever. But not enough people are around to enjoy it. Not the tourists. And certainly not the former residents who may never be able to come home again. I really am crossing my fingers for this beautiful city, but it may take more than houses and flood prevention efforts to cure its ills. (Speaking of which, the headline in today's New Orleans Times-Piscayune focused on the inadequacy of two of the supposedly improved floodwalls)

On a happier note, I'm about to go out to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival today, where I hope to watch Randy Newman perform. Newman is actually a Louisiana native, as you can hear in this autobiographical song from his 1988 album, Land of Dreams. I've also included an mp3 from one of my favorite New Orleans bands, Cowboy Mouth, which I hope to make the subject of a longer post at a future date.

Play "Dixie Flyer" by Randy Newman

Play "Hurricane Party" by Cowboy Mouth