The first Sunday of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was a perfect day for live music. The weather was impeccable down on the fair grounds—sunny without being unbearable, with the occasional breeze to keep things cool—the crowd was characteristically colorful, and as is the spirit in New Orleans, the energy was high. Parades of brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians danced their way through the festival byways as onlookers crowded around to watch the spectacle, while signature Jazz Fest food booths served up a delicious and multifarious menu to the masses.
Walking in the gates around noon, I wandered the grounds a bit before settling down at the Congo Square Stage for my first act of the day: Henry Butler and Jambalaya. With a set full of New Orleans jazz, blues and R&B classics like Allen Toussaint and Lee Dorsey’s “Working in the Coal Mine,” a tribute song for Professor Longhair, and a number of others that would tickle the memory of anyone who’s spent Mardi Gras in the city, Butler’s music set the perfect tone for a sunny festival afternoon. His impressive piano chops were on full display as well, and watching his fingers roll up and down the keys was often as engaging as the music itself. Even among the all-star cast of musicians who followed him, Butler’s set still stands as one of the highlights of the day to me; alternatingly soulful, spiritual, and jovial, his performance was the embodiment of the joie de vivre of New Orleans and its rich musical culture.
Up next on the Congo Square Stage, fresh off of their performance the day prior at Festival International in Lafayette was Martinique’s own Dédé Saint Prix. Dédé and his band were one of the highlights of Festival International, and while the sound engineers at Jazz Fest seemed to be having a hard time balancing the levels of all the instruments on stage, their characteristic energy shone through for a lively performance that had the crowd up and dancing along to their Caribbean rhythms. About halfway through their set I took a detour to the Jazz & Heritage Stage to see another international group, The Garifuna Collective of Belize. Though theirs was a lazier groove than that of Dédé and co., they nonetheless played to an equally captivated audience. And when the pace did pick up in the latter half of the set, the group’s two lead singers erupted into an extended dance-off in an indigenous style, leaving the audience cheering for more.
The next act of the day was the duo of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, perhaps my most anticipated performance of the festival, and while it hurts to say it, I have to admit that I left disappointed. The set simply lacked momentum; the first half was characterized more by silence than music, as Shorter fiddled incessantly with the reed of his saxophone in between the occasional phrase exchanged with Hancock. And when Hancock switched from Steinway to synthesizer, laying down an out-of-place drum machine beat over which he layered sound effects that could have been taken straight out of a sci-fi B-movie, it felt like the death knell of what could have been a great performance. While there were occasional moments of revelation when Hancock and Shorter locked into a groove, playing off of each other expertly and fluidly, these were mostly fleeting and short-lived. The whole thing smacked of a sort of New Age psychedelia, of attempts to mine the depths of inner consciousness through spacey wanderings neither truly adventurous nor very impactful. Fortunately, Terrence Blanchard and the E-Collective redeemed the jazz offerings of the day with an excellent follow-up set at the Jazz Tent. Equally out-there but with a much-needed dose of energy, Blanchard’s sharp, often distorted trumpet screech recalled fusion-era Miles Davis, while his drummer propelled the group forward with what was easily the most athletic performance of the day. Ending with a song in which the rhythm section sounded more like that of a metal band than a jazz quintet, Blanchard’s set was a timely reminder that sonic experimentation need not be a bore.