that are manifested somewhat differently in the neoliberal era. Jazz has for about a century been an often exploitative business that is reflective of broader racial, class, gender, and geographic inequalities. Yet it has also been a visible signifier of the possibilities of multiracial democracy in the United States and of black achievement and distinction. Jazz histories, of course, often begin in New Orleans, which, as a port city in a succession of empires and an important crossroads in the southern United States, provided the multicultural milieu that musicians, most notably black and Creole musicians, drew upon as they created a variety of urban and urbane musical styles that they eventually synthesized into something called jazz near the beginning of the twentieth century. New Orleans has since been seen as the “cradle” of a music that was uniquely “American” because of its hybrid composition and also because of the heroism of musicians, such as Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, and Sidney Bechet, who created great art despite, and in the face of, white supremacy. Such perspectives have been voiced both from liberal and radical perspectives, by musicians and others. For some, jazz history and culture affirm the nation's success in overcoming its racist legacy. For others, the jazz world betrays many of the racial contradictions of the nation, while illustrating the need for further struggle.11
Jazz Fest's own history reproduces this story while making visible the late twentieth-century institutionalization of “culture as resource” at the local level. The establishment of Jazz Fest, the expansion of Mardi Gras, and the appearance of other high-profile, tourist-friendly urban spectacles that developed in New Orleans after 1970 betrayed a rapidly expanding tourism infrastructure, strategically developed in response to deindustrialization, a declining tax base, and cuts to public infrastructures. As such, these festivals have been “contested terrain,” representing at their core the interests of economic and political elites while also providing opportunities to challenge the status quo from below at the levels of meaning making and the distribution of resources.12
The first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where Ellington's suite premiered, was held from April 22 to 26, 1970. Musicians appeared at several venues in the city, but the main site, where a “Heritage Fair” consisting of crafts, food, and local music was held, was Beauregard Square, alongside Rampart Street in the Faubourg Tremé. This site, of course, was previously known as Congo Square, the legendary place of Sunday marketplaces during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where slaves and free blacks gathered to market, drum, and dance. In other words, Jazz Fest's original site represented, at least potentially, and among New Orleanians who did not identify with General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard and the Confederacy, the possibilities of Afro-diasporic music for enacting social change.
The story goes that the roughly 350 performers, staff, and volunteers outnumbered the audience members at the daytime performances in the square at the first Jazz Fest (although more attended evening concerts at other venues), but the event quickly grew. The festival moved to the New Orleans Fair Grounds Race Course in 1972, in order to accommodate an audience that reached 50,000 over the course of four days. In 1976 the schedule was expanded to include two weekends. At its apex, in 2001, before a post-9/11 decline in tourism, 664,000 people attended Jazz Fest, pumping $300 million into the local economy. Although the scope of what has become an internationally famous and massive music, arts and crafts, and culinary festival has changed dramatically since 1970, the original gatherings can be seen as a product of a number of forces that continue to define Jazz Fest's programming, the festival's economic role in and around New Orleans, its racial politics, and the celebratory narratives that surround the event.
The 1970 event came together after pianist and impresario George Wein, who was performing in the city in late 1969, was asked by local businessman Durel Black to take over the city's jazz festival, which had run for two seasons. Wein, of course, was one of the most prominent live music promoters in the world, having established the Newport Jazz and Newport Folk Festivals as well as other ventures. According to Wein, the emergence of such a jazz festival in New Orleans was only possible because of the changes wrought by the civil rights movement. Wein had been approached by local boosters in 1962 about organizing a major jazz festival in the city, but they eventually came to the shared conclusion that a big-time jazz festival would not work in an unreconstructed, segregationist city whose hotels would exclude black guests, whose audiences might well be segregated, and whose cultural gatekeepers would frown upon mixed groups on the bandstand. A second attempt to mount a major festival with Wein at the helm was canceled after American Football League athletes, no doubt buoyed by the recent passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, organized a boycott of New Orleans in early 1965, after African American players arriving for the league's all-star game were refused service by taxi drivers, hotels, and other businesses. A smaller event did go forward but received little attention within or outside of the city. The New Orleans International Jazz Festival finally did get off the ground in 1968, although the invitation for Wein to produce it was rescinded. The job instead went to Tommy Walker's Entertainment Attractions. In Wein's view, the issue was that he was married to an African American woman. Others claimed that Wein had demanded too much compensation. Willis Conover produced the 1969 festival, before Wein was brought on board the following year, in his own account at least, because of Conover's disagreements with festival board members and because the racial climate loosened up to the point where his mixed marriage was less of an issue.13
According to various origin stories, Wein brought to the festival not only years of promotional experience but also the ethos of eclecticism and the commitment to blurring generic and aesthetic boundaries that had defined his Newport projects. In large part because of the influence of Allison Miner and Quint Davis, the young local producers Wein's company hired to help run the festival, The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit organization that owns Jazz Fest, was from the beginning invested in highlighting the local and “giving back” to the community, even as it sought to create a festival with popular appeal. The foundation's articles of incorporation defined a mission of promoting New Orleans jazz, folk, blues, gospel, Cajun, and soul music; employing musicians from Louisiana to perform at the festival; promoting New Orleans as a tourist destination; bringing favorable attention to the city generally while helping the business community; and working with business and civic organizations for the “economic betterment” and “cultural advancement” of the city.14
The initial presentation of high-profile traditional and modern jazz artists, black and nonblack popular musicians, gospel and blues artists, brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians, Cajun performers, and other musicians, alongside local culinary delights and crafts, served a somewhat contradictory but ultimately synergistic function. The festival was designed to appeal to jazz aficionados and a cosmopolitan consuming public interested in broadening experience and working against aesthetic as well as social boundaries. However, its organizers were invested in presenting and preserving “authentic” local cultures in ways that mirrored various countercultural folk and youth pop festivals of the moment. Such festivals positioned “roots” (and ideally black roots) musical expressions as anodynes against commercialization, mass production, and other restrictive and alienating aspects of modernity.15
Jazz Fest principals and many fans believed it was precisely this fusion of genres, orientations, and goals that made the ongoing event successful. Many point to New Orleans–born gospel star Mahalia Jackson's impromptu 1970 performance of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” on a Eureka Brass Band–led second line on the festival grounds, as embodying and initiating the event's dedication to spontaneity, collaboration, mixing of musical styles, celebration of place and history, and simultaneous commitments to “jazz and heritage.”16
Wein, Miner, and others associated with the festival have claimed that the festival's emergence and its genre-blending ethos represented an active, albeit challenging, attempt to ameliorate racial divides. According to Miner's recollection of the first Jazz Fest, “It was just the beginning of an opportunity for people to party together, to hear each other. . . . So celebrating their culture with everyone there, black and white, became an opportunity for people to say ‘Hey, this is spectacular! I've never heard anything like this because my parents didn't allow me to go out and hear it, but now I'm really gonna party, and I'm really gonna enjoy it, and I'm going to forget all of my prejudices from childhood and I'm gonna see things differently.’ “17