2024 Jazz Fest Recap- Part One

A look back on the first Thursday and Friday

This year the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival featured artists from the nation of Colombia in the Cultural Exchange Pavilion and at stages across the Fairgrounds. Seventeen acts were booked and I managed to see almost all of the ones that played on the first weekend. Highlights included Agrupación Chango—pictured above and below. The band featured two musicians on an ancient-looking marimba, three hand drummers and a handheld bass drum The four women singers took turns on lead vocals, while playing shakers, while the rest of the group sang call-and-response style backing vocals on their traditional repertoire.

Rancho Aparte was another Colombian band I was excited to see because their style was comparable to a New Orleans brass band. The singer and bandleader, pictured below, was a force of nature as they tore through an intense set. The trap drummer powered the band, which also featured a tuba player (not a sousaphone as is typical in New Orleans), electric bassist, saxophonist, clarinetist and a brass band style bass drummer.

Though the Jazz Fest focused on music from Colombia this year, numerous other countries were represented as well. Mokoomba from Zimbabwe featured two different African traditions. Their set started with just vocals and percussion. The lead singer (pictured below) was able to contort his voice in a way that would have made the late, great Clarence “Frogman” Henry proud. The other vocalists responded like a South African choir.

After the vocal opening, the background singers picked up electric instruments and Mokoomba transformed into a West African style dance band complete with soukous-style guitar licks and funky bass playing. They were so good in the intimate confines of the Cultural Exchange Pavilion that we saw them later in the day on the Congo Square stage.

For something completely different, seeing the group Kombilesa Mi, hailing from the first free African town in the Americas, was mind-blowing. This group featured two rappers, several percussionists, including a woman on a three-drum rig, and a musician on an ancient looking bass kalimba. I couldn’t understand a word. But when a woman in the crowd who was rapping along caught the rappers’ attention, they brought her up on stage to join them much to her shock and delight.

Oumou Sangaré from Mali (pictured below) put on a great set with a high energy dance band, which included an electrified kora and an electric guitar and bass.

Friday found us checking out more Colombian music, but we also made time for Leyla McCalla, her great band and personality-driven songs as well as some Mardi Gras Indians in the form of Spy Boy J—the grandson of the legendary Monk Boudreaux. His band, Thee Storm featured the TBC Brass Band horns and the Spy Boy from the Creole Apache with his unique crown.