Saturday, January 9, 2027: 1:50 PM
Rhythms Ballroom I (Sheraton New Orleans)
Regis draws on long-term ethnography of the festival to consider what was at stake when the IRL Festival was postponed and then cancelled in April 2020, prompting the creation of “Jazz Festing in Place.” This presentation considers the role of Jazz Fest in the public culture of New Orleans, its distinctive communities, traditions, and forms of sociality, and its wider cultural and economic impacts. What kinds of relationships, networks, and communities are forged at the Festival? How have the stakes of festival economies changed, as the city (and region) become increasingly reliant on tourism? How did the festival become a central node in a calendar of public festivity? Several critical moments in festival history are considered: The desegregation of public accommodations in the late 1960s; the 1978 Black Boycott; the founding of Koindu (later Congo Square); Katrina and climate chaos; and the partnership with Shell.