Groove Interrupted: Loss, Renewal, and the Music of New Orleans

"The festival was strong enough to power two weekends; even Mardi Gras was relatively abbreviated, compared to what this was. They say something about what New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has become within the life and culture of New Orleans.
And it's a metaphor for what New Orleans means to America." [Quint Davis]

Randy Newman's "Louisana 1927" has long been a Jazz Fest staple. [...] In Newman's original, President Coolidge comes down in a railroad train to examine "this poor cracker's land". [John] Boutte sang, "Bush flew ovre in his airplane with six fat men with martinis in their hand/Bush said, 'Fat man, great job... look what the river has done to this poor Creole's land.'"
Afterward, a woman informed Boutte that scores of listeners had fled the tent. "I thought I had pissed somebody off, getting on my soapbox," Boutte said. "But they were running out crying. They weren't just crying--they were heaving. They were leaving to get their composure."

To [Quint] Davis, [Jazz Fest] "started out to be the world's greatest back-yard barbecue, an indigenous self-celebration by a culture. Then, at some phase, it was to promote and celebrate the culture annually, and bring it forward. Now, two or three generations later, it is a cultural institution."