A Years Long Pull Towards New Orleans
For years, I dreamed of going to the New Orleans Jazz Fest—but somehow, it never happened. The eclectic sounds of New Orleans. Jazz, blues, Cajun, Zydeco, and the musical mishmash of the Deep South have been a fixture in my life. Every morning, my radio wakes me with the sounds of WWOZ 90.7, the local New Orleans station. That music plays throughout our home. My vinyl collection and Tidal playlists speak volumes about the influence of NOLA on my musical taste.
It’s said that jazz emerged from the voodoo and drumming rituals that once filled Congo Square before the Civil War. The melting pot of African, Caribbean, and European slaves and settlers found common ground in rhythm, song, and soul. That cultural alchemy gave rise to a sound—and a city—like no other.
I’ve visited New Orleans five times over the years, each time drawn in by the music’s variety, passion, and accessibility. Walking through Congo Square, drifting down Frenchmen Street, or pausing on an average street corner, you hear a rich blend of styles: a contemporary brass band playing Al Green, Zydeco pouring from a bar, and trad jazz pulsing from the sidewalk. Live music is everywhere—vibrant, chaotic, colourful, and rooted in deep history.
The quality is astonishing. One of the things I love most is how accessible the musicians are. You don’t need a stadium ticket to see greatness. You can stand five feet from world-class artists, performing multiple times a day not for fame, but for the sheer love of the music and the city that feeds it. I find myself worrying about the artists. I’m told many of them don’t like to leave the city and tour. It has to be a tough living, and it’s common to see musicians play three and four times a day, leading their band or popping up in support of another New Orleans stalwart. But I guess the city’s addictive musical undercurrent pulls them in and carries them along.
Why Jazz Fest? Why Now?
For years, I’d said I wanted to attend the full eight-day Jazz Fest—but I always found a reason not to. Why now? Why this year?
In late 2023, I stepped away from full-time work after 50 years—almost to the month. Like most major life events, the reasons weren’t black and white. I had fallen out of love with work—and, truthfully, work had fallen out of love with me. I was also recovering from a serious cycling accident that had come uncomfortably close to being fatal. My mental health had been worn down over a few years. I felt a growing sense that there was more to life than I had so far discovered.
But it’s not as simple as finishing work one day and stepping smoothly into a new life the next. Disorientation hit hard. At times, I felt like I was working through the five stages of grief. I had wanted this change—had worked toward it—but the process of saying goodbye to one identity and stepping into another was far from straightforward.
I leaned heavily on the mental health tools I’ve gathered over the years—journaling, meditation—and ramped up my exercise to support my mood and focus. I knew I didn’t want to stop working altogether; I still craved intellectual challenge and purpose. That led me to build a more flexible life of coaching and advisory roles. I have been very conscious to not simply recreate a diluted version of my work life, and as such, I have satisfied a long-term craving by learning to play a musical instrument. I have been taking electric bass guitar lessons for some months now, and play every day; it opens up so many possibilities in my psyche.
Still, the shift from decades of 60- and 70-hour weeks felt like a brick to the head. How do you fill all those hours? The sudden vacuum left me confronting fears of irrelevance, of slowly fading into an anonymous old age—a pinprick of life, quietly extinguished. But others around me reminded me of the value I still offered—to them, and the wider game of life.
Jazz Fest happened, finally. Because it’s time for me to explore new ways of being. Not to aimlessly fill the days, but in recognition that my life may have more layers to it than the grinding train track of making progress in business. What can I learn from diverse music history and the rich cultural heritage and legend that surrounds the art form? Humans use music to communicate some of their deepest challenges and joys; what can I discover?
The Soundtrack Of Reinvention
We humans fall into routines that can become self-made prisons. We lose the key somewhere in the recesses of our minds. But if we pay attention, life will whisper: There’s more to be had. A different pace. A less focused, less monomaniacal existence. One with more uncertainty—and more possibility.
And that’s what I’m starting to see unfold. Unfurling slowly, millimeter by millimeter; there is no big reveal. Indeed, it’s a journey most likely to occupy my remaining years.
The last week of April saw us on the 10-hour flight from London Heathrow to Louis Armstrong International Airport. Truth be told, I was somewhat nervous about entry into the country, having seen a few press stories about hapless tourists being detained and sent home. But the border guard complimented us on our choice to visit the Jazz Fest, and ten minutes after walking off the plane we were in a humungous Chevrolet, cutting through the soupy night air to our hotel in the Warehouse District of New Orleans.
The next morning was soon with us, assisted by a bleary, jet-lagged early wake-up.
The Joy Of Connection
I read a fascinating New York Times article summarising 100 years of research into happiness. I’m not sure if it was coincidence it appeared while I was contemplating my place in the world. The link is here; you may find it behind a paywall, or be lucky and it be one of your free articles. It’s worth 15 minutes of your time. The quote below summarises one of the key findings:
“Talking to strangers — on trains, in a coffee shop, at the playground, online at the D.M.V., in the waiting room at the doctor’s office — could be dismissed as an exercise that simply makes the time pass. But it could also be seen as a moving reflection of how eager we all are, every day, to connect with other humans whose interiority would otherwise be a mystery… Talking to strangers guarantees novelty, possibly even learning. It holds the promise, each time, of unexpected insight, as well as the warmth of human connection.”
I have been an introvert throughout my life, although I could—and can—role-play more extroverted styles to survive in business. Part of my transition to this new life is learning to talk to people I randomly meet. And to listen to them, too. You could be reading this and thinking this is so basic. But we all come from a place, and my place was the quiet kid who was told to shut up.
I mention the New York Times article here because I find in New Orleans that everyone will talk to you—and do it with real attention and care. Sure, the music is next level, but some of the conversations are memorable. Even the passing pleasantries lift the mood, which doesn’t need much lifting after a few hours of sublime music.
But I digress.
Immersed In The Music
More than 400,000 people attend the festival, which runs over two weekends, with a four-day break between the two intense tranches of music, colour, and noise. As well as music, there are hundreds of craft stalls from around the Americas, and the busy avenues between the eight stages feature Second Line bands, Indian Chiefs, and Mexican marching bands. The food is incredibly alien to a Brit like me—alligators, crawfish, gumbo, Po Boys, and on and on. All senses were assaulted from morning to night, for eight days straight
Day one of the festival started and we were full-on soaking in the plethora of musical choices around the vast concert grounds at the race course. We kicked off with Bonerama and then saw the blues legend Little Freddie King, still sharp at the age of 82. Over and again we saw musicians in their late seventies, and eighties, and even one of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band lineup leading from the front at 92. I guess music is a calling rather than a job, and artists play until they drop. The first day rounded out with John Fogerty blasting through his Creedence Clearwater Revival catalogue of music, coming hard out of the gate with Bad Moon Rising and rounding out the set two hours later with Proud Mary. And so it went for four days; quality music from 11:30 until 7 each evening.
It met my expectations, and I found myself immersed in the music and surroundings, very deeply. An almost other worldly feeling to the few days. Jet lag came and went very quickly, which was a plus.
A City Of Contradictions
Between the weekends, we went to an unusual Cuban gig in an obscure corner of the city, a few nights into our visit. Afro-Cuban drumming and rhythm with an electronic overlay. It sounds odd, but it was a cracking gig, played inside the artist’s studio to a very small audience. We chatted to some locals while waiting, and a guy who had moved from Portland, Oregon a few years ago talked eloquently about the contradictions of New Orleans. It resonated with me, and I thought of my contradictions and how they inform my life view and future.
It’s true that New Orleans is a place with mystique, contradictions, and layered truths. The city has a deeply pluralistic culture, with history, identity, and politics that are complex and paradoxical. It has a diverse legacy, and that is a source of both pain and pride. New Orleans is known for its music, food, and celebration—but also for deep poverty, systemic inequality going back hundreds of years, and high crime. We walked to a pizza restaurant slightly north of the usual tourist areas and were quickly told we had drifted off “The Strip”—a kindly warning to me, an out-of-place tall, white tourist.
The city holds the tension between tradition and reinvention, too and customs like Second Lines—those jubilant parades of brass bands and dancers that spill through the streets—are fiercely protected, while simultaneously being reshaped by gentrification, climate threats, and tourism. I hadn’t logged it until this visit, but outside the French Quarter, most of the city is six to eight feet below sea level, protected by levees. The scars of Hurricane Katrina are still visible and deeply etched into the psyche of its residents.
Multiple Narratives Of Identity
It’s a deeply Democratic place, with progressive ideals but institutional dysfunction. Many residents advocate for social justice and reform, yet the city’s major institutions have long been criticised for corruption and inefficiency. This liberal stronghold within a conservative state creates friction—invigorating and unstable in equal measure. It is resilient, but many residents, especially post-Katrina, carry the scars of abandonment, displacement, and the knowledge that the recovery was never quite finished.
There are multiple narratives of identity. It is African American—founded by the French in the early eighteenth century, it saw a huge influx of enslaved Africans to underpin plantation agriculture. It’s still shocking to see the small monument on the Mississippi bank close to Jackson Square, noting where slaves came ashore after their brutal Atlantic journey. By the early to mid-nineteenth century, it was the largest slave market in the American South. But it is also Creole, Cajun, Catholic, French, European, Caribbean, Southern, and American. This is the foundation of a rich culture—but one in tension with the idea that no single version of the city can contain its reality.
Here are a few images of locals, taken by my wife Mish Aminoff – link to her website.
From Music To Meaning
Soon the second weekend came around, and another four days of world-class music unfurled before us. The highlight of the first day was seeing the legendary Carlos Santana. I find him unique. If you close your eyes and Santana plays a single note, you immediately identify it’s him. Something about the resonance of the note and how it hangs in the ether. He and the band opened with a strong Soul Survivor, with Cindy Blackman – aka Mrs Santana – driving the whole outfit on forcefully. Brilliant set. But as with the first weekend, we found some gems earlier in each day, on the smaller stages. The talent is deep at Jazz Fest. Saturday afternoon had the festival packed to the rafters for a two hour set by Pearl Jam – a brilliant set which had the place on fire. I hadn’t considered Eddie Vedder and his band in my life’s soundtrack, but this set brought home the power and spiritual connection that life music brings.
A good friend once told me that one of my distinguishing features is my comfort with ambiguity—he even said I thrive in it. Perhaps that’s why I have an affinity with the dangerous appeal of New Orleans. The place has flawed beauty and great depth, but there’s something unsettling about it. I believe ambiguity is not just tolerated in New Orleans—it’s essential to its soul. That’s why I’m drawn to it. And it’s why it’s the perfect place for me to contemplate a new chapter. Or rather, not a new chapter, but an emerging phase in my spiritual, emotional, and intellectual journey. Several days of being immersed in this unfathomably deep roster of artists compounded the emotions the complex New Orleans environment was already invoking in me.
Building this visit around music has been the perfect vehicle. I’ve explored an incredibly broad range of genres and styles from different geographies and cultures—overlaid with rich cultural tones from Mardi Gras Indians, Klezmer, Cajuns, Mexico, Africa, and the Caribbean. Add in the big acts—country star Luke Combs, John Fogerty nailing the Creedence Clearwater Revival catalogue, grunge rockers Pearl Jam, and the Latin fire of Carlos Santana.
A massively complex city and culture. An impossibly broad range of music. And my own inner dialogue on meaning and purpose.
From the chaos, a clearer sense of direction is beginning to emerge—a transition from intense career years, with all the stress and good fortune they brought, to a more reflective and intentional life. The tensions and contradictions within the culture of New Orleans mirror the complexity of my own history—my flaws and strengths, spirit and soul. The endlessly complex inner self, and all the possibility it holds.