The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
The 39th annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival opens today, continues tomorrow and Sunday, and then finishes out May 1-4.
Source: www.nojazzfest.com
We here in Massachusetts have a local connection to Jazzfest in the person of Nan Parati, who is also the proprietor of Elmer's Store in Ashfield MA, mentioned in a previous post.
for the 2008 New Orleans Jazzfest
Source: WWOZ Street Talk
You can listen to an interview with Nan here.
Among the many highlights anticipated at this year's Jazzfest is the Neville Brothers' performance that will close the festival on May 4. One of the songs they are expected to perform — perhaps with updated lyrics — is Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927," which commemorates the devastation New Orleans experienced during the great Mississippi flood of 1927, when the levees protecting the city were illegally breached.1 The video below is Aaron Neville's performance of the song during the Concert for Hurricane Relief aired on TV on September 2, 2005. Randy Newman's lyrics are below the video.
The river rose all day, the river rose all night.
Some people got lost in the flood,
some people got away alright.
The river has busted through clear down to Plaquemines.
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.
Oh Louisiana, oh Louisiana,
they're trying to wash us away,
they're trying to wash us away.
Oh Louisiana, oh Louisiana,
they're trying to wash us away,
they're trying to wash us away.
President Coolidge come down, in a railroad train,
Little fat man with a note pad in his hand.
President say little fat man, oh isn't it a shame,
What the river has done to this poor people's land.
Oh Louisiana, oh Louisiana,
they're trying to wash us away,
you're trying to wash us away.
Oh Louisiana, Louisiana,
they're trying to wash us away,
they're trying to wash us away,
they're trying to wash us away,
they're trying to wash us away.
– Randy Newman
An alternate performance of "Louisiana 1927" by John Boutté, with Paul Sanchez, John Thomas Griffith, and Sonia Tetlow, from July 24, 2006 is here.
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a See "A Flood of Emotion in a Song," by Geoffrey Himes (New York Times, April 27, 2008, Arts & Leisure, p. 30).
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:27 PM
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