Mudfest no deterrent in New Orleans

By Maurice Blisson
BBC News, New Orleans

Stevie Wonder performed songs such as Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing

The old jazz tune Mississippi Mud could not have been more appropriate.

A morass of mud and a deluge of rain greeted visitors to New Orleans Jazzfest 2008. But it didn't deter them.

The 39th New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival closed on Sunday night. It was the first one to run for a full seven nights since Hurricane Katrina destroyed the area.

By the close it had pumped a much-needed $300 million (£152 million) into the local economy and had attracted considerably more than the average 400,000 pre-Katrina attendances.

More than 350 bands and groups performed sets averaging an hour each on 10 stages around the New Orleans Fair Grounds site.

The heavens opened with a vengeance for top-of-the-bill Stevie Wonder, making his first appearance at the festival since 1973.

But huge crowds danced and sang along in the rain, completely saturated despite their supposedly rainproof umbrellas and ponchos.

Ice cream

At least it was warm rain - the temperatures stayed at about 75F to 80F (24C to 26C) throughout - although there was more than two inches (5cm) in an hour.

Fans braved the elements when the New Orleans weather turned nasty

Yet no acts were cancelled or even delayed. From 1100 to 1900 over the seven days, the fun went on, with mountains of Cajun food demolished by a well-mannered crowd.

Traditional New Orleans jazz was the centrepiece but there was music of all kinds from all over the world - Robert Plant, Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, Santana and the Neville Brothers, to name a few, as well as gospel, Cuban, native American and funk.

Many local New Orleans bands took time out from performing in the city's bars and clubs to get the festival's crowds to their feet.

There were special cheers for perhaps New Orleans' most famous traditional group, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

They had everyone dancing in the aisles and when they played the well-known jazz favourite Ice Cream, they cooled down the audience by showering them with tubs of the stuff - and plastic spoons. And very tasty it was, too.

Many of the numbers featured tributes to the jazz greats who lived or played in the city - Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, George Lewis or Sidney Bechet.

Charles Neville and his brothers are celebrating 30 years in the industry

But not all of the bands were homegrown.

There were, for example, Kustbandet of Sweden, the Jazz Band of Norway and the Harlem Band from New York, as well as contributions from many other US states.

Many New Orleans bands include musicians who have settled in the city over the past 20 or 30 years, who are now part of the jazz scene.

And there was a warm stage tribute to one of the UK's top jazz trumpeters, Humphrey Lyttelton, who had died on the opening day of the festival.

"Humph" told me some months ago he had never visited the birthplace of jazz and was hoping to go there one day. Sadly, that will now never be.

It was "Humph" who was once described by Louis Armstrong as "that dude from England who swings his ass off!".

Fans

The Jazzfest fans themselves seemed mainly to be regulars.

Derek and Sylvia Price from Kent said they had been going for 15 years but knew of others who had been to all 39 festivals.

Lori from Vermont had attended for 11 years. She said the festival was now getting back to the way it used to be.

This year's festival lasted for seven days, spread across two weekends

"No-one can forget Katrina," she said, "but now we must try to move on."

But that is easier said than done. On the short coach trip from the hotels district to the festival site, passengers can see hundreds of tents under the motorway flyovers.

Each tent shelters a homeless family, relying mainly on the generosity of local people and churches to survive while the mammoth task of rebuilding goes on around them.

Mississippi Mud was the unwanted theme tune of this year's festival.

But another song, performed on stage by an all-women's swing group, the Pfister Sisters, did not go unnoticed.

It sums up the mood of the city while it collectively crosses its fingers and waits for its levees to be repaired - River Stay Away From My Door.