Birthplace of Jazz
New Orleans
There are great places to hear jazz music all over North America but none so closely associated with jazz as New Orleans.
“New Orleans is known as the birthplace of jazz,” said Lauren Cason, director of marketing and communications for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It has really fed the culture of the city, and it’s in the fabric of our everyday lives.”
Louie Armstrong, one of the most famous jazz trumpeters of all time, was a New Orleans local and the city’s patriarch of jazz. Today, New Orleans honors his place in jazz history with Satchmo Summerfest, a weeklong jazz festival in the French Quarter in August that celebrates his birthday.
Satchmo Summerfest is one of the favorite music events among locals, Cason said, but there are numerous other jazz events that visitors can attend. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is the city’s largest music celebration; it takes place over the last weekend in April and the first weekend in May and features some of the top jazz performers from around the world. Another April event, the French Quarter Festival, features local jazz musicians performing on stages set up throughout the French Quarter.
Groups that visit outside of the festival dates still have plenty of opportunities to immerse themselves in jazz. The Louisiana State Museum at the Old U.S. Mint has an exhibition on the history of jazz that educates visitors on New Orleans’ role in the genre’s development. And numerous venues around town offer jazz performances daily.
“One of the best venues is Preservation Hall,” Cason said. “The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is one of the best known in the city. They do two performances every night, and it’s quite an experience. It’s really authentic. They’re there to play the music that they love and share it with those who want to experience it.”
Red Dirt Music
Stillwater, Oklahoma
One of the latest developments in American roots music took place in Oklahoma during the 1970s when a group of local musicians began playing a new brand of country that they named Red Dirt music.
“It all started at a place called the Farm outside of Stillwater,” said Cristy Morrison, executive director of Visit Stillwater. “In the late ’70s, musicians would go out there and have jam sessions all night long. They would write songs and feed off of each other’s energy.”
The players created a new sound that blended elements of country, rock ’n’ roll, bluegrass and blues music. They named it Red Dirt in honor of the predominant soil color found throughout Oklahoma.
Several of those musicians took the new sound and used it as the basis for successful careers. Artists such as the Red Dirt Rangers, Jason Boland and the Stragglers, Mike McClure, and the Great Divide got their starts in Stillwater and helped to elevate Red Dirt music to national prominence.
Groups that visit Stillwater today can find Red Dirt music performances nightly at venues around the city. Among the most popular is Eskimo Joe’s, a former biker bar now known for its live music and souvenir T-shirts.
The city also celebrates its musical accomplishments each year with an annual event called Gypsy Café.
“It brings numerous Red Dirt musicians back to Stillwater to perform,” Morrison said. “It’s a multi-venue event that brings a lot of the performers together for one-time-only shows. If you attend, you can see performances that you’ll never see again anywhere else.”
