NEW MUSIC
I just had to finally write and tell you how much I love your magazine/newsletter and all that you do to promote the wonderful culture, music, food and more of a place that I hold dear in my heart.
I’m a volunteer radio DJ at a public station up in Juneau, Alaska, and my show specializes in music out of New Orleans and Louisiana among other stuff, KRNN.org.
I love coming back down to New Orleans to visit, and I look forward to getting the email update weekly and devouring it. The OffBeat app was useful while I was there last, but I still like the emails best and of course picking up the magazine.
I just wanted to throw some love your way and let you know that y’all help me put my shows together and keep them current with newly discovered musicians, etc. to play on my show. That’s how I found out about Meschiya Lake & the Little Big Horns and Kelcy Mae…among many, many more who find their way into regular radio play in a little town in Southeast Alaska.
So with that, I thank you and all of the OffBeat staff! You truly do a great service.
—Angelina Ahrens, Juneau, AK
WONDERFUL MUSIC
Reading your last “Mojo Mouth”; I want to tell you how I appreciate OffBeat magazine and the weekly news. It’s a wonderful link with the music and the people I love. I’m a subscriber from France and it’s a way to get closer to you.
Thanks to your publication for giving me the opportunity to get new CDs. I order from the Louisiana Music Factory (last one was A Tribute to Sidney Bechet by Aurora Nealand—wonderful—particularly “Blue Horizon”).
I don’t miss any musician coming from New Orleans playing traditional jazz, blues, boogie. This year I had the great pleasure to attend the performance of Mitch Woods in Paris. And Lillian Boutte is coming soon to France.
As I used to say to artists coming from the States, particularly from the South: “Thank you for coming, bringing us wonderful music!”
Congratulations and many thanks.
—Jacques Loubry, Paris, France
BEST DAMN BARGAIN
The following is in response to Jan Ramsey’s blog post “More Than Just Festivals and Sports”
I couldn’t agree more on the fact that food and music is what really attracts visitors to New Orleans. For years now I’ve decried the promotion of coming to our city for “free” music. The continual emphasis on “free” music cheapens it and perpetuates an environment that makes it extremely difficult for musicians to eke out a living. I’d suggest a Walmart business model of promoting our city for what it is—the best damn bargain anywhere! A “bargain,” not free. Nowhere can you fine dine at such reasonable rates as in New Orleans. Nowhere can you see great acts for such a minimal cover charge. Nowhere can you drink at local waterholes so cheaply as in New Orleans. We have the greatest “everyday low prices” of anywhere in the country. We need to sell that! Stop selling free music.
—John Blancher, New Orleans, LA
TOURISM FUNDING
In just six weeks this past spring, the New Orleans music community demonstrated its post-Katrina vitality and proved its incalculable value as a tourist draw beyond even the glimmer of a doubt. From an increasingly well-attended and musically varied French Quarter Fest in early April through one of the most satisfying and pleasurable Jazz Fests in recent memory to a rapidly maturing and uniquely structured Bayou Boogaloo in late May, New Orleans and South Louisiana musicians proved themselves capable of electrifying performances that attracted the interest of hundreds of thousands of local residents and visitors from around the world, absolutely dispelling any concern whatsoever about the ability of the city’s, and region’s, music culture to survive a cataclysmic 21st-Century disaster of Biblical proportions.
—Roger Hahn, New Orleans, LA
