Jazz Fest's makeup festival may have been cancelled but New Orleans tourism officials hope to entice tourists back to the city in October with a citywide music festival. Its called NOLAxNOLA, a play on Austin’s SXSW, and will play out over the two weekends that were set to feature a packed Fairgrounds.
New Orleans and Company President Stephen Perry told WWL’s Newell Normand the series of shows will take place from October 7th to October 17th across 30 venues scattered from Uptown to the Bywater.
“We are going to have a stunning series of concerts, every weekday, every weeknight, for a two week period,” said Perry. “It’s about bringing New Orleans music back to the world and welcoming people back in.”
A full listing of shows and venues is available at Neworleans.com under NOLAxNOLA. The gigs largely showcase major local artists with a smattering of national acts like St. Paul and Broken Bones, Lake Street Dive, and Gojira. Perry hopes to use that framework to make shows easily promotable and searchable going forward.
Perry said this isn’t just for the tourists, this is for the locals who have struggled under a pandemic and now Ida.
“When you see live music it energizes you,” said Perry. “What we are trying to do is paint a different picture of New Orleans, a New Orleans that is coming out of this that is bringing music back and all that that means to the world.”
