Denny Culbert
The first festival former Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne remembers attending was the Marksville sesquicentennial at age six. His love affair with the Louisiana festival has continued ever since. Today, he presides over the Office of Tourism and has adopted the festival mantra: “Festivals are a blend of our many passions. If it walks, crawls, flies or swims, Louisiana has a festival to salute it. Then we put it in a gumbo and eat it.”
Louisiana has four hundred festivals honoring everything from humble crawfish to the proud alligator. Citizens will devote an entire weekend to celebrating the significance of a strawberry, say, or a meat pie. Festival fever runs deep in our veins, and just about every community hosts an event that invites people to celebrate its unique claim to fame.
Hundreds of thousands of revelers arrive each year from around the world to get a taste of Louisiana. But wherever these strangers are from, they don’t remain strangers for long, becoming part of a temporary festival family in search of one thing: the collective magic that happens when lots of happy people gather to celebrate with a common purpose. This is fertile ground for the moments of intense and transformative communion that are the hallmark of Louisiana’s festivals. Some people are transformed to the point that they cannot leave Louisiana, some are compelled to return regularly, and others just give in to the siren call, becoming Louisianans themselves.
The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
Only about 350 people attended the inaugural Jazz Fest in 1970, even though the lineup included Pete Fountain, Fats Domino, and The Meters. Forty-three years later the festival has become a two-week-long international travel destination attended by about 450,000 music lovers. For Louisiana ex-pat Leslie Russell, Jazz Fest is her birthright. She was born on Jazz Fest weekend in 1976. After an early delivery, Russell’s mother looked at her father and said, “If I can’t be there, then you sure as hell should be!” Her dad returned to the fairgrounds, and Russell’s love of the festival was planted that day.
Jazz Fest remained a family tradition: Russell was raised in the Gospel Tent; that was where her mom believed the best religion lived, and she sat on her dad’s shoulders in front of the main stage while he ate a shrimp poboy with one hand. Although she has resided in New York for fifteen years, she flies home every year for her birthday. “I believe Jazz Fest is a rejuvenation for me. I go home because the spirit of the festival reminds me of who I was and where I came from and the magic that the great city of New Orleans holds,” she said.
Festival International de Louisiane
The last full weekend in April, about 375,000 people attend the free festival that takes over the streets of downtown Lafayette, showcasing musicians, performers, and vendors from around the world. This grass roots exchange of French culture is almost solely funded through donations and run by a legion of over 2,000 volunteers.
Denny Culbert has served as the official photographer of Festival International for the past two years. “Being a part of the Festival crew has exposed me to so many amazing performances by amazingly talented musicians from all over the world,” he said. For Culbert, a native of Ohio who has made his home in Lafayette, Festival is five days of great food, music, and performance as well as a chance to meet people from all over the world. “There’s an electricity in the air that always brings a huge crowd for the Wednesday night opening,” he said, “Thousands of people crowd onto Jefferson Street to hear the music and dance in the street.”
Blackpot Festival and Cook-Off
In late October, Lafayette’s quaint Acadian Village provides the stage for one of the most unique festival experiences in the state. Blackpot incorporates camping, a cook-off, and traditional Louisiana music to create an atmosphere that truly pays homage to cooking outdoors in well-seasoned cast iron pots. Many Blackpotters start camping on Thursday, and Friday night has an outstanding musical lineup. But it is early on Saturday that the bands, dancing, and cooking get seriously underway. For the price of a $30 admission fee, attendees can roam the grounds, sampling concoctions from each cook-off participant, and then work off the calories on the dance floor. The cooks who participate in the event range from people who work in the kitchens of some of Acadiana’s most innovative restaurants to local food lovers.
Brett Powers, known to his friends as “Old Timey,” was raised in Washington State; but he has made South Louisiana his home for the past thirteen years. He has attended Blackpot for the past four years and participated in the cook-off for the last three. Although he is a veterinary technician by trade, Powers won second place in the sauces and gravies category in 2011.
Powers starts his preparation for the cook-off early in the Saints football season by conducting trial runs while his friends watch the games. Despite a hefty cash prize and bragging rights for his delectable pork and shrimp gravy, his favorite memory is of the camping. “The music goes really late into the night. People bring all types of instruments. One guy brought an uilleann bagpipe. He jammed with the string band all night,” he said, “It made this haunting sound that was beautiful to hear around the campfire.”
Details. Details. Details.
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
New Orleans
Festival International de Louisiane
Lafayette
Blackpot
Lafayette
Louisiana Tourism
