Trombones and Tabasco

I AM NOT a jazz person. Never have been.

In fact, I’m the sort of jazz philistine who once wondered if Dizzy Gillespie was a cocktail. I like songs that go somewhere, that build to a crescendo or at least have a tune I can hum to. Jazz, to me, was a musical choose-your-own-adventure, where everyone plays a different tune at the same time and somehow they all end up happy.

Now the New Orleans Jazz Festival didn’t really call out to me. I went there because I happened to be in the vicinity when it was on. And I was enlightened be­cause I realised that is not just about jazz.

This event – the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival – is about celebrating legacy.

Here, Louisiana’s bruised and beautiful cultural stew bubbles to the surface—hot, hearty, and unapologetic. It’s a festival where music is not just played—it’s preached. It isn’t live. It’s alive. And it grabs you by the soul and drags you dancing through 300 years of colonial misadventure, migration, slav­ery, survival, resistance and celebration.

From the very first trumpet blast, I realised that I wouldn’t just experience music here. Rather I would witness a rhythmic expression of history.

Let me put it this way: even if you think jazz is just music for people who collect vinyl and wear berets, the New Orleans jazz fest will seduce you. Because it’s not about jazz. It’s about joy. And fiery food. And art. And about letting music move you with wanton abandon.

Held over two weekends at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans, the jazz fest is a sprawling, joyful mess. Dozens of stages, tents and food stalls burst to life in the Louisiana heat. Gospel pours from shaded tents, zydeco shakes the dirt from your boots, and if you’re lucky, a sousaphone will sneak up be­hind you and blast away any remaining doubts about jazz.

Sure, there’s jazz—the real kind, the kind that can turn purists teary with joy—but there’s also blues, Cajun, Creole folk, Afro-Caribbean chants, Latin beats, country soul and Baptist gospel so pow­erful that it gets geriatrics gyrating to it.

You don’t need to know the differ­ence between a trombone and a tuba to let the music wash over you and have a good time. The music transcends genre. It transcends age. At one point I saw an octogenarian shimmy like her pension depended on it. Next to her, a toddler clapped along, half in time but complete­ly in sync in spirit.

Every musical note here feels like a tribute to a past that hasn’t been erased, only remixed.

A word of warning though, don’t come here with a full stomach, bring a healthy appetite along as your plus one. The food is as much of a headliner as the music. Crawfish Monica, soft shell crab po’boys, deep-fried oysters, boiled Louisiana crawfish and fried alligator, and jambalaya. The kind of food Louisiana grandmas cook as routine, dismiss­ing any concerns about cholesterol with a wave of their ladle.

I had a plate of crawfish enchiladas and Prejean’s pheasant, quail, and andouille gumbo and it nearly made me weep. Not because it was spicy—which it was—but because it tasted like the recipe was telling a tale. The rumour is that this gumbo was specially created more than 25 years ago specifically for the jazz fest by Prejean restaurant’s late former chef James Graham. Vegetarians and vegans need not shy away — there’s plenty to enjoy. The festival offers a wide variety of plant-based and vegetarian options to satisfy every taste.

Like the music and the food, there is an eclectic mix of visitors all drawn by the aforementioned, a delicious jamba­laya of humanity. There were families with perambulators and grandmas with walkers all boogying like tomorrow’s got a hurricane warning. An old-timer, stomping his titanium knees to the music, told me that his ashes were going to be scattered here when the time came. “This is my church,” he said, pointing at the Congo Square Stage.

I had rolled into New Orleans for the festival as the final stop of my Louisiana road trip.

A few days earlier, I had started driv­ing from Dallas, Texas, and in 5.5 hours I arrived at Lake Charles. I checked into the L’Auberge Casino Resort—a gleam­ing, palm-draped oasis where the only thing louder than the slot machines was the décor.

I forsook blackjack for tarmac and pointed the car south towards the Creole Nature Trail All-American Road. This route is 207 miles of bayous, marshlands, and the shimmering gulf coast, that is affectionately dubbed as Louisiana’s outback.

I noodled along bits of the road going south on Highway 27 and then turning west at Creole towards Cameron and Holly Beach. At these places, purpose-built boardwalks lured me out of the car for breezy strolls where the birds were as obliging as runway models. The alliga­tors were elusive though.

At Lake Charles the next morning, my guide Adley Cormier, pulled up in a horse-drawn carriage pulled by Daisy, a docile mare. He regaled me with tales of the Acadian settlers—booted out of Canada in 1755—who pitched up here and set about building homes from native pine and cypress. They were not architects but had loads of good old DIY spirit. ‘Char­pentier’ means carpenter, and these folks earned the title, crafting unique homes that still dot the district today, some standing proud, others looking like they’d withstood one hurricane too many.

The Acadians—better known as Cajuns—didn’t just bring carpentry skills. They brought their culinary swagger too. Cajun cuisine, often mistaken for its fancier cousin Creole, is hearty, bold, and utterly unapologetic. Enter the boudin and crackling—two dishes that could convince anyone on a diet to deviate. I sampled them at Famous Foods (1475 Gertsner Memorial Drive). The boudin, a sort of rice-and-meat-stuffed sausage, was spicy, rich, and needed no adornment. The crackling—fried pork skin and fat— was salty, chewy, and wickedly addictive. I ruefully realised that if heart attacks had a mascot, it’d be a bag of this stuff.

Feeling suitably indulgent, I moved on to Steamboat Bills, where I tackled a mountain of boiled crawfish with a side of spicy mayo. A messy, glorious affair that left me elbow-deep in shells and blissfully happy.

No visit to Louisiana would be complete without a pilgrimage to the tabasco motherland: Avery Island. I have often doused dishes with tabasco, and in France where it is an insult to the chef to even ask for salt or pepper, I often carry a bottle of the red magic surreptitiously in my jacket pocket.

So I headed east on the I-10 and then turned south at Lafayette onto US-90 to swing by the tabasco factory where I took the free tour, and watched with wide-eyed admiration as the magic po­tion was made. The ingredients are salt from the island’s own mine, peppers, and vinegar — the fermentation recipe and curing timelines are a tightly kept secret. The Country Store was a won­derland, boasting not just sauces (seven varieties, no less) but everything from tabasco salt to tabasco chocolate and the brand’s own Bloody Mary mix.

I drove back to Lafayette where I spent the night. The next morning I drove east along the I-10 and at exit 115 headed towards Henderson into the hauntingly beautiful Atchafalaya Swamp. At McGee’s Landing, I met Mark Allemond, a Cajun swamp whisperer with an airboat and the fashion sense of Crocodile Dundee.

Mark’s airboat—a raucous, fan-powered beast—was waiting to whisk me across the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp – a murky maze of cypress and Spanish moss. It was a wild ride, ear-splitting and exhilarating with the air boat skimming over water. Mark knew these waters like the back of his sunburnt hand and he pointed out alligators, marsh rats, and birds with names that sounded made-up. He also dropped me alone on an island while he zoomed off to do a Donut for my camera, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t size up a tree for potential climbing should a gator waddle out of the swamp.

Mark and his partner Peggy live in nearby Breaux Bridge, where they have built a cosy cabin for guests where I stayed the night. That evening, Peggy rustled up a mean beef gumbo, washed down with a punchy local IPA— it was a fabulous evening with great food, a good local beer and easy conversation.

My next destination was Baton Rouge 60 miles to the east of Lafayette on the I-10. Here the Louisiana State Capitol standing at 450 feet (34 floors) is the tallest state capitol in the US. Its observation deck affords a grand view of the Mississippi River. Across the road, the Capitol Park Museum delivered a crash course in Louisiana culture, with food and music taking centre stage. Naturally, Louis Armstrong—old Satchmo him­self—featured heavily, his spirit practi­cally humming through the exhibits.

My last overnight halt before New Orleans was at a supposedly haunted erstwhile plantation mansion, 55 miles to the south-east of Baton Rouge.

A place where the trees are older than democracy in the US and the columns are grand, Oak Alley Plantation is where the ghosts of history rustle louder than the leaves. Today this grand dame of Louisiana, with her sweeping canopy of live oaks and her Greek revival mansion preens for the camera and looks every bit the southern belle. But behind the photogenic façade lies a bitter truth: this was once a bustling sugar plantation powered by the brutal toil of over 100 enslaved souls. It is very pleasant to stroll the manicured grounds and admire the architecture, but it’s essential to remember that all this beauty was built on unimagi­nable suffering. The story of Oak Alley is as much about its grandeur as it is about the resilience and heartbreak of those whose lives were stolen to create it.

True to this belief, Oak Alley’s mu­seum pulls no punches while laying bare the grim history of slavery with haunt­ing artefacts and sobering displays—a gut-wrenching reminder of a dark past that must never be forgotten or repeated.

From there I headed to New Orleans, 54 miles to the east, just in time for the second weekend of the jazz fest. I parked myself at a colonial-style hotel in the French Quar­ter, dodged overpriced dai­quiris on Bourbon Street, and headed straight to the Fair Grounds where enlightenment was awaiting me.

Atchafalaya Basin SwampAvery IslandCajun townsLouisianaNew Orleans Jazz FestivalplantationsswampsTravel Issue 2025