Ani DiFranco News

The first weekend of the 37th annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival ended with a slow, elegiac version of the Crescent City standard "When the Saints Go Marching In," just the kind of thing you'd expect at the first Jazz Fest since Hurricane Katrina.

The song came not from one of the dozens of local acts performing at the festival but from the year's most notable newbie, Bruce Springsteen, who chose the festival as the setting for the first official show by his loose, rough, exhilarating Seeger Sessions Band.

Springsteen and band, 20 strong, took a lusty, rollicking approach to the traditional folk and gospel songs that form their core repertoire, augmented by a small handful of drastically rearranged originals: a slow, syncopated "Johnny 99," a swinging "Open All Night," a completely overhauled "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)." Unlike the sometimes curiously apolitical new album "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," Springsteen made the Katrina disaster, and the government's lack of response, the centerpiece of an alternately rousing and tremendously emotional celebration of New Orleans and its music.

From a roaring attack on the old spiritual "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" to a rewrite of the Depression-era standard "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," Springsteen made it clear that the high spirits and uproarious energy of his show was, in the words of one song introduction, "the sound of laughter through tears."

Springsteen was, of course, only one of hundreds of musicians who dealt with Katrina and tried to bring a measure of healing and celebration to the city where boarded-up houses with visible waterlines surrounded the fairgrounds where Jazz Fest is held. One of the most moving came from local legend Allen Toussaint, who, near the end of an elegant but cutting set with special guest Elvis Costello, began to recite the glories of New Orleans -- its music, neighborhoods, food, people -- as the crowd chanted "home, home, everybody come home."

Not everyone displayed such a sense of occasion: Bob Dylan, for instance, made virtually no concessions to the event, churning out a standard version of his current show in a voice that sounded as if it were buried beneath even more layers of phlegm than usual. But Dylan was the exception. From Dave Matthews Band, joined during their Saturday set by the Edge from U2, to an acoustic but muscular Ani DiFranco, nearly all of the visiting musicians made a point of saluting the city and its residents.

And for the locals, this Jazz Fest clearly was a watershed of sorts. Not only was first-weekend attendance close to record levels, according to producer-director Quint Davis, but some out-of-towners reportedly cut their fees while Louisiana musicians were paid more than usual. And make no mistake: Despite the presence of Bruce 'n' Bob 'n' Elvis, the heart of Jazz Fest still is the Southern artists who showcase the city's unique musical tradition by playing an invigorating, soulful gumbo of just about every musical style to make it down the Mississippi River or up from the Gulf of Mexico.

Highlights included the adventurous Cajun band Beausoleil ripping through a wickedly twisted new arrangement of its classic "Zydeco Gris-Gris," a song bandleader Michael Doucet said they'd been performing at Jazz Fest since 1976; the Soul Rebels Brass Band breaking out a bracing brass version of Grandmaster Flash's rap classic "The Message" near the end of its Sunday set; and R&B diva Etta James launching into "I'd Rather Go Blind" after pointing out that the torchy blues was big in the Crescent City before it became a hit anywhere else.

Again and again, the local musicians commented about how happy they were to be back in action in New Orleans. On Friday afternoon, for instance, one member of the Pinettes Brass Band, the city's first all-female brass band, spoke for a host of displaced and uprooted musicians. "You know what?" she said. "Texas was nice. Georgia was nice. Mississippi, Alabama, Florida -- they were all nice places to visit. But there ain't no place like home."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter