A local's guide to Jazz Fest 2024
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Trombone Shorty performs during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2023. Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage
The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival returns April 25, turning the Fair Grounds Race Course into a city within a city dedicated to live music and local food, arts and crafts.
- The festival expands to 8 days this year thanks to a special performance by the Rolling Stones on May 2.
Why it matters: Jazz Fest is one of New Orleans' largest and most consistent economic drivers.
- Considering the music lineup alone, the festival hires more than 500 local bands and performers.
- It's also just a lot of fun.
The lineup: Besides The Rolling Stones, headliners include The Foo Fighters, Chris Stapleton, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and Vampire Weekend.
- Plus: The Killers, Hozier, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Queen Latifah, Jon Batiste, Widespread Panic, Bonnie Raitt, Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell and Earth, Wind and Fire, Greta Van Fleet, The Revivalists, the Coral Reefer Band celebrating Jimmy Buffett, Fantasia, Irma Thomas, Heart, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, Juvenile with Mannie Fresh, Big Freedia, Samantha Fish, The Beach Boys, and others.
- In short, expect hundreds of acts across all eight days and dozens of genres, which makes attendance a practically customizable experience.
- The full day-by-day schedule — known colloquially as the cubes — dropped March 26.
What's new: In 2024, the Cultural Exchange Pavilion will celebrate Columbia art and music.
What's back: Panorama Foods brings back its crawfish bread, and Marie's Sugar Dumplings, which makes sweet potato pies and turnovers, also returns.
What he's saying: The festival "will be big in every aspect," Davis said Tuesday.
- "It's the most food vendors, the most food items, the most artists and the most bands" Jazz Fest has ever had, he said.
Pro tips: From dancing in the Kids' Tent with elementary school classmates to snagging tickets as working media, I couldn't hazard a guess as to how many days of Jazz Fest I've attended, but all that experience has to be good for something.
Here are my best suggestions:
- Don't wear flip flops. Just don't do it.
- In fact, don't wear anything you're not OK with getting sweaty and dusty.
- Refill your water bottles! It's free at the taps across from the Roman Candy cart.
- Expensive phone cases can keep your phone clean and dry while still usable. But so can Ziploc sandwich bags.
- Need a real bathroom? Get to the Grand Stand. It's especially useful when you want to wash your hands properly.
- Remember: The festival ditched cash payment in 2023, so bring your plastic.
And here are my favorite things to eat:
- I start every day with a trio of Cafe du Monde beignets and an iced coffee. You have to carb up.
- A cochon de lait poboy. And yes, please, to the hot sauce.
- A combo plate with an oyster patty, crawfish sack and crawfish beignets.
- When it's too hot to handle, a mango freeze and/or a cold crawfish salad roll. Grab one near the Lagniappe Stage.
Flashback: Prior to the festival's pandemic-induced cancellation in 2020, Jazz Fest was on a hot streak with five years of record-breaking attendance.
- In 2019 and again in 2022, organizers reported attendance of 475,000 people over the event's two weekends. More than 460,000 attended in 2023, the first full festival offering since the pandemic.
- The festival's 2001 edition still holds the record for highest attendance, with a reported audience of 650,000. (That was the year with Mystikal and Dave Matthews Band.)
The bottom line: As long as the weather holds out — and, sometimes, even if it doesn't — Jazz Fest should be a heck of a good time.
Go deeper: Buy tickets for Jazz Fest.