On the Cover: "Tuba Skinny's Shaye Cohn"
Artwork by Dirk Guidry
For Lafayette artist Dirk Guidry’s Festival Musician series, he joins the flowing brushstrokes and color palette of his abstract work with the animated, figurative quality of his live paintings to create a collection that celebrates the region’s most recognizable musicians in action. Here, he captures cornetist Shaye Cohn in her element, performing for the music-worshiping crowds of Festival International de Louisiane last year.
Besides the undeniable draw of Guidry’s visually stunning portrait, Cohn feels like an apt figurehead for this year’s Music Issue, which digs deep into the intricate and enduring legacies of Louisiana’s indigenous music traditions of jazz, swamp blues, Cajun, zydeco, and swamp pop. Cohn herself is part of the legacy of American jazz—the granddaughter of saxophonist and composer Al Cohn, and daughter of jazz guitarist Joe Cohn. Al and Joe found jazz in the New York scene, brought there by touring musicians from New Orleans in the mid-20th century. A part of a new generation revitalizing the traditional jazz sound, Cohn has brought the music back to its cradle, to the Crescent City, to found one of the hottest trad jazz bands on the scene, Tuba Skinny. Read more about the history of New Orleans jazz, and other musics born of Louisiana, in our Features section.