Come hurricane or high water, you can’t keep a good festival down. Especially a jazz festival in the birthplace of that musical genre, New Orleans.

Without skipping a beat, the 37th annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival runs April 28 - 30 and May 5 - 7, 2006. Over the two weekends, literally hundreds of musicians representing not only jazz but also gospel, Cajun, zydeco, blues, R&B, rock, Latin, Caribbean and folk will take to the festival’s 12 stages.

Included in this year’s line-up are Jimmy Buffet, Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco, Fats Domino, Bob Dylan, Pete Fountain, Herbie Hancock, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Etta James, Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, Keith Urban, Dr. John, Buckwheat Zydeco, the Dukes of Dixieland and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival got its start in 1970, when city leaders hired George Wein to create a unique event that would have both cultural significance and popular appeal. Wein, impresario behind the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival, conceived the combination of a daytime heritage fair and an evening concert series.

The inaugural festival was held in Congo Square, then known as Beauregard Square. It drew only about 350 people, but it was considered a great artistic success, with such names as Fats Domino, Duke Ellington, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Mahalia Jackson and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing.

The following year, crowds were so large that the event was moved to the 145-acre infield of the Fair Grounds Race Course in 1972. By 1975, the festival boasted an attendance of 80,000.

Nineteen seventy-five also was the first year that a limited edition silkscreen poster was created for the event. The annual posters were immediately hot collectors’ items, but their popularity increased even more when Fats Domino appeared on the 20th anniversary edition in 1989. He was the first in a succession of Louisiana music legends featured on the posters.

The 20th anniversary festival saw more than 300,000 people attend the heritage fair, evening concerts and associated workshops. Attendance continued to climb over the next decade, peaking in 2001, when 650,000 people visited the festival in celebration of Louis Armstrong’s centennial.

What sets New Orleans apart from other jazz festivals is its heritage fair, incorporating a wide variety of indigenous music styles, local cuisine, and arts and crafts booths. At its center is the Fair Grounds Race Course grandstand.

The three-floored air-conditioned grandstand houses exhibits spotlighting various aspects of Louisiana culture, as well as three stages. The Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage presents performers, while Zatarain’s Cajun Cabin and Zatarain’s Food Heritage Stage showcase cooking demonstrations.

Food, after all, is an important component of New Orleans’ cultural heritage. Hungry visitors can expect to find more than 100 vendors dishing up everything from Cajun and Creole specialties to such typical southern sweets as pecan pralines and blackberry cobbler.

And for those who simply must shop, the heritage fair offers diverse works by more than 300 regionally and nationally acclaimed artists at the Congo Square African Marketplace, the Native American Village and the Louisiana Marketplace.

Although the fate of the 2006 New Orleans Jazz Festival and Heritage Fair was uncertain in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, once organizers made the decision to carry on, plans came together quickly.

"It is overwhelming how our musical family has rallied to our cause, especially the New Orleans musical mainstays, many scattered throughout the country, all committed to returning to be part of the renewal of our spirit," says Quint Davis, producer and director of the event.

"Anybody who comes to this year’s festival will bear witness to the healing power of music."
 

British Columbia travel writer Toni Dabbs is a regular contributor to The Cultured Traveler.