New Orleans (Reuters) - a sea of flower shirts, straw hats and colourful longshoremen bend at a sweltering infectious rate under a blue sky.
Artists ranging from Bon Jovi to jazz singer New Orleans John Boutte pump tunes on several stages as an exuberant crowd revelled in the experience of one of the biggest festivals of world music.
Robbie Alves, engineer in Los Angeles, is almost as comfortable in this context that it is in her West Coast home.
"It is perhaps a bit of evasion, but what is the problem with that?" asked Alves, who followed the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival almost every spring for 20 years. Festival this year, began it the weekend last and continues this Thursday to Sunday.
Forty-two years later, the event called Jazz Fest became a blockbuster of 12 floors, rock, funk, Latin and other styles of seven days which showcases not only jazz, but also blues, gospel, Cajun, zydeco.
It continues to attract music lovers - 375 000 people paid an average of $40-$60 for a day to day last year-, then even that competition from other festivals has increased considerably.
"A festival of rock has a small group of children who go to it." "This festival, from the beginning, for his part, not to do that," said Quint Davis, producer and Director of the event, and CEO of Festival Productions Inc..
"It is a festival for everyone." When Bon Jovi is on stage, Pete Fountain is above this one, Jason Mraz is there and Fantasia is in the middle. ?
Since the 1950s, when the Newport Jazz Festival popularized the concept of live music performed in an outdoor setting, music festivals have become a fixture of the cultural landscape of America.
NEW EVENTS, SURVIVAL CHALLENGE
New events germinate each year producers seek to the success of these pillars as the Festival of music & Arts Coachella Valley, California, Lollapalooza in Chicago, the Austin City limits Music Festival, Texas Sasquatch! Festival of music in Washington and Tennessee Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.
But the laid-back atmosphere that characterizes these events belies their underlying challenge. Just the right combination of music, location and amenities - such as food, parking and overnight accommodation - is a balancing act with a high risk of failure.
At a Conference of industry music held in New Orleans over the weekend, Larry Vallon, an Executive Vice-President with AEG Live, the largest producer of music in North America, checked names of festivals across the country that launched and were closed just in recent years: Rothbury Festival in Michigan, all Points West Music & Arts Festival in New Jersey, Mile High Festival Denver.
Despite stars like Coldplay, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Dave Mathews Band, events "just do step resound," Vallon said.
"The competition is really, really intense," said Danny Melnick, artistic director of the Festival of Jazz of Saratoga of Freihofer of 34 years in the State of New York. Speaking at the Conference, he said that the trick is to retain their audience.
"And it is not necessarily only about music", said Melnick. "It really is on the experience of being at the festival".
Davis, said the focus of the Jazz Festival on the cultural heritage, including the Louisiana arts and crafts and Native American traditions, distinguishes many other festivals. In addition, the range of delicacies of Louisiana - like fried shrimp po - boys and jambalaya Cajun - is a great draw.
Allen Jamieson and his wife Ann Jamieson and their three children - ages 3, 6 and 15 - came from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to participate in the Festival for the second time this year.
He said that they like to see blues-rocker tab Benoit Louisiana, and they like the idea of going to a festival that is fun for adults and children.
He said "You could not obtain this elsewhere, nowhere".
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