Next year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will be the fortieth time jazz-lovers have convened at the Fair Grounds Race Course to enjoy jazz as well as music from other genres. The festival takes place on April 24-26 and again on April 30 - May 3. The schedule of performers is starting to fill up and includes some musical giants like The Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, the Neville Brothers, Chicago's Buddy Guy and the legendary Wynton Marsalis.
Marsalis will perform a concert-length piece entitled "Congo Square" that he first premiered in 2006 in the Crescent City. The work was composed with Yacub Addy and will be performed with the Lincoln Center Orchestra as well as Addy's ensemble, Odadaa!. The piece focuses on the influence of the West African roots of jazz and its progression in America.
The festival will also present rock and pop acts like Chicago's Wilco, Dave Matthew's Band, Joe Cocker and James Taylor. Read more »
When Mayor Ray Nagin, the mayor of the City of New Orleans, stepped up to the podium for a hastily-fashioned press conference three days after Hurricane Katrina's passage through the city, he said that the city was, "In a state of devastation."
Being one of the five deadliest storms in America's history, the substance of the Mayor's statement goes without saying, and the economic damage (the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the storm would slow the growth of inflation-adjusted U.S. GDP by up to 1.5%, or keep the country from about $161 billion of purchasing power; according to a later report). It was also estimated by an agency with a similar level of authority, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), that more than 20% of New Orleans' citizenry at the time-- up to 105,300 people at one point-- was left officially unemployed by the storm.
While few are fundamentally unaware of the high cost to both the nation and the city as a result of Katrina, few are also aware of exactly why so many residents lost their jobs and why the economy of New Orleans in particular was so susceptible to the storm's damage.
