Since 1970, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has been an event that music fans both within Louisiana and well beyond its borders look forward to attending. The lineup for the 2024 edition of the event has been released, and once again it’s filled with a plethora of artists that are in no way limited solely to jazz. In fact, to quote the festival's official website, you can expect a lineup which "encompasses every style associated with the city and the state: blues, R&B, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, folk, Latin, rock, rap, country, bluegrass and everything in between."
The 2024 festival will take place at the Fair Grounds Race Course over the course of two weekends – April 25-28 and May 2-5 – and 14 different stages, with an anticipated attendance of nearly half a million concertgoers...and if that seems like a ridiculous number of people, well, you clearly haven’t studied the lineup yet.
The lineup for the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
The designated headliners of the 2024 Festival are the Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Chris Stapleton, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, the Killers, and Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, but the big names definitely don't stop there. In fact, excuse us for a moment while we take a breath and a paragraph break before continuing with the rest of the lineup.
Also in the mix, and this isn't even all of the artists who'll be in attendance: Jon Batiste, the Beach Boys, Earth, Wind & Fire, Widespread Panic, Heart, Greta Van Fleet, Vampire Weekend, Queen Latifah, the Revivalists, Fantasia, Bonnie Raitt, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Cyril Neville, Steel Pulse, Joe Bonamassa, Irma Thomas, Juvenile with Mannie Fresh, Kem, Big Freedia, Rhiannon Giddens, Jeffrey Osborne, and a celebration of the life and music of Jimmy Buffett led by the Coral Reefer Band.
Additionally, the official press release for the event promises a celebration of "the music and culture of Colombia at the Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion, with 17 bands and a variety of artists sharing the unique sights and sounds from the South American nation, including Colombian salsa, cumbia, champeta, vallenato, chirimia, and currulao. There will also be daily parades honoring Colombia’s vibrant carnival spirit, with attendees getting opportunities to meet Indigenous and Afro-Colombian artisans, purchase their crafts and taste traditional Colombian food and drinks."
As if that lineup wasn't enough to sell you on attending the festival, you can take a deep cinematic dive into the history of the festival by checking out the documentary Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story, which - although it isn't currently streaming anywhere - is readily available for rental at a very reasonable price.
