Jazz Fest A New Orleans Story: A Concert and a Commercial

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-

The annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a.k.a. Jazz Fest — which takes place in late April and early May — is a significant contributor to the tourism economy.

Since its founding in 1970, the festival was a regular event, until the last two years, when it was closed because of the pandemic. This, presumably, is why we have Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story which is, in essence, a 90-minute commercial for the festival, inviting audiences to come down to “the most kickass party in the world’ and “the world’s greatest backyard barbecue.”

Earth, Wind & Fire

The documentary, co-directed by veteran Hollywood producer Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern, offers snippets of performances from a dizzying assortment of acts, mostly filmed during the 50th anniversary festival in 2019.

There’s Earth, Wind and Fire, Jimmy Buffett, Gary Clark Jr, the Marsalis family, the Reverend Al Green, “Soul Queen of New Orleans” Irma Thomas, Aaron Neville, rapper Pitbull and rap-cabaret artist Boyfriend. The latter, who performs with her all-female band wearing her curlers, glasses, and vintage underwear, promises the festival will deliver “something that your computer would never put in your feed.”

Sifted in between the performances are interviews and archival material, which take us back to the city’s history of joy and sorrow, from slaves on Sundays, playing music and dancing on Congo Square (now Louis Armstrong Park) to the jazz funerals in New Orleans.

That history foreshadows a later segment on the devastation of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 which features Bruce Springsteen performing “My City of Ruins” during an emotional moment in the 2006 festival. Says The Boss in retrospect, “There are certain moments when you meet your audience, and that’s when the healing begins.”

Jazz Fest was inspired by the Newport Jazz Festival, founded by pianist and promoter George Wein. Wein, who is interviewed in the film (he died in September 2021) was approached in 1962 by a representative of the “Hotel Corporation of America” looking to promote New Orleans tourism.

But the event was impossible at a time when race laws prevented black and white performers from being on the same stage. Wein eventually founded the festival in 1970, hiring Quint Davis, the ongoing manager of the event and an executive producer of the film, who provides most of the recollections of past festivals.

While not exactly a deep dive, there’s a wide enough variety of performances here to offer something to please almost any taste. The commenters emphasize how the festival is for everyone. “There is no such thing as separation of culture in New Orleans,” says Irma Thomas. “It’s all blended together.”

More than a half century since the South ended legal discrimination, it’s hard not to notice that the audience onscreen is overwhelmingly white, and a disproportionate amount of screen time is spent on high-profile white performers with tenuous ties to New Orleans music. That includes Springsteen and Jimmy Buffett, a festival mainstay, who closes the movie, puzzlingly, with a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

The real fly in the musical gumbo here, to my taste, is onetime gospel singer turned pop star Katy Perry, who uses her onstage time to perform a mash-up of the Edwin Hawkins’ modern spiritual, “O Happy Day” and her own hit “Firework” backed by a Black gospel choir, while she struts about wearing metallic angel wings, high boots, and buttocks-revealing shorts.

If you’ve experienced the solemn joy of Dorothy Combs Morrison’s performance of “O Happy Day” in Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul, this putative homage feels acutely cringey.

Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story. Directed by Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern. With Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen, Irma Thomas, Katy Perry, Pitbull, Al Green, Herbie Hancock, Aaron Neville and many others. Opens in Toronto June 3; in Montreal, Calgary, Winnipeg and Waterloo June 10; in Vancouver and Saskatoon June 19; and throughout the summer in other cities.