Mardi Gras celebrations started in New Orleans in the 1730’s. The first Jazz Fest was 1970. Today, we commonly use the term “Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest” to talk about two events of equal importance.
It says something about the significance of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival that in a handful of decades it’s grown from a small gathering of a few hundred music fans to attaining the same iconic, and economic, status as the nearly 300-year-old tradition that more than anything else defines New Orleans.
Jazz Fest attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to New Orleans every year. It reportedly pumps $350m into the local economy. And then there’s the not insignificant amount of money the event itself generates. It’s one of the most successful music festivals in the world. According to publicly available tax records, Jazz Fest’s gross revenue these days is tens of millions of dollars.
The reason Jazz Fest’s finances are public information is because the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is a non-profit event. It’s owned by a small but extraordinarily prolific 501(c)(3) organization called The Jazz and Heritage Foundation.
The Executive Director of the Jazz and Heritage Foundation is Don Marshall.
Jazz Fest is undeniably New Orleans’ music headliner, but we have other music festivals throughout the year. French Quarter Festivalis the biggest of the city’s free festivals, and in the recent past the biggest ticketed music festival, after Jazz Fest, has been Voodoo Fest.
Sig Greenbaum was one of the architects of the original Voodoo Fest, and for a couple of its biggest years was its co-director. You might remember Mr. Greenbaum from when he was a radio personality known simply as “Sig” on alternative music station 106.7 The End. If you’re a gamer, you might know Sig as the Head of Live Events for the Los Angeles-based Overwatch League, the e-sports operation he built from the ground up into an international live sports league with more than 50 million players.
Today, Sig Greenbaum is the owner of his own live events production company called Sigfest Events. And he’s the founder of an event that might become one of the best things that’s happened for a long time to local musicians, called Nola x Nola.
The cultural economy is the life-blood of New Orleans. Without our music, our musicians, and our music festivals - with apologies to Tennessee Williams - we’d just be Cleveland.
There is no argument that the single biggest thing that has ever happened to promote New Orleans music to the world is Jazz Fest. It takes hundreds of people to produce Jazz Fest every year, but ultimately the buck stops at Don Marshall's desk. Don is typically modest and doesn’t often step into the limelight, but once in a while someone needs to tell him how much New Orleans appreciates him.
And we look forward to the future of NOLA x NOLA and to finding out what other productions Sigfest Events has in store for us.
Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at our websiteitsneworleans.com. And you can check out this show about our cultural economy with Andrew Duhon and Musa Alves.