NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival wraps up Sunday. The festival is seven days of rock, R&B, jazz, gospel, food, art and lectures across 12 stages. The festival then takes a break until Thursday when performances pick up again. What to look out for Sunday:
– HEADLINERS: The high-profile performances Sunday include the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nick Jonas who will close their respective stages. Rapper J. Cole will close the Congo Square Stage. Cole last week was part of a group of performers at the White House to discuss ways to continue President Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative and criminal justice reform.
– FAMILY ROCK: The New Orleans family rock group, Imagination Movers, kicks things off on the Gentilly Stage. Band member Rich Collins describes the New Orleans band as “Red Hot Chili Peppers meets Blue Man Group – for kids.” The band started a little more than a decade ago and is now working on their 10th album. They’re also working with a production company in Toronto on a new TV show. The band members – all dads – wear blue coveralls when performing and have cannons to shoot toilet paper over the crowds. Collins says the band does not tend to play music where people lean back and tap their feet. The goal is to get people involved through songs like “Jump Up.”
– RETIRING, SORT OF: Reggie Scanlan is quick to note that he’s not retiring altogether from music, just from long van trips with the band he helped found, The New Orleans Suspects. Scanlan, who played bass for The Radiators for 33 years and played with such New Orleans legends as Professor Longhair and James Booker, said for health reasons his days of traveling six or seven hours on road trips are over: “I’ve been on the road for 40 or something years.” But first The New Orleans Suspects will have a series of performances in the city including their Sunday Jazz Fest performance. The Suspects began as a pick-up band at the Maple Leaf bar in New Orleans. The idea was that if a musician was in town and not on tour, the bar would sometimes call them up to play – rounding up the usual suspects, so to speak. Three of the band’s current members played together one night and as Scanlan says: “It’s just kind of taken on a life of its own and a sound of its own.”
– A NEW ORLEANS CELLIST: Leyla McCalla was born in New York, but her songs and music are entwined with southern Louisiana. She sings in French, Haitian Creole and English, and plays cello, tenor banjo and guitar. She moved to New Orleans in 2010. Her first album, “Vari-Colored Songs: Tribute to Langston Hughes,” set the poet’s poems to her music as well as featuring original works and Haitian folk songs. Her third album, “A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey,” is scheduled for release this spring.
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