The inaugural Louisiana Sunshine Festival will be held at The Broadside in New Orleans on Sunday, November 28. Presented by Feed the Second Line in collaboration with the Louisiana Solar Fund and the filmmakers behind music documentary On Va Continuer!, the festival features live music, food, solar demonstrations, and an outdoor screening of the documentary.
Musicians will play on two solar-powered stages with solar demonstrations by the Footprint Project, an organization that aims to provide cleaner energy for communities affected by disasters. The festival brings together aid efforts of local musicians and filmmakers with a conscious mind on preparation for imperiled communities in South Louisiana confronting the effects of climate change.
Proceeds will benefit the Louisiana Solar Fund and Feed the Second Line’s solar project, Get Lit, Stay Lit.
Feed The Second Line (FTSL) has been working to support the culture bearers of New Orleans since the beginning of the pandemic. With Hurricane Ida, FTSL helped tarp/repair 150 culture-bearer homes, delivered mutual aid to the bayou communities, and launched the Get Lit, Stay Lit campaign to help better prepare Louisiana communities for the next hurricane.
Get Lit, Stay Lit is raising funds to outfit neighborhood restaurants in New Orleans with solar panels and batteries to enable these businesses to aid their communities in the aftermath of natural disasters and to lessen food waste and job insecurity during recovery. The initiative has raised $90,000 so far and 50 percent of proceeds from the Louisiana Sunshine Festival will go to the organization.
“We have to be realistic and build resilience block by block,” says FTSL founder Devin De Wulf. “We all know it’s on us to make Louisiana better prepared for the inevitable next storm.”
Louis Michot, lead singer and fiddle player of Lost Bayou Ramblers, who will perform at the festival, also hit the ground running when Ida made landfall.
“When Hurricane Ida hit, I was checking in on friends in Houma and Golden Meadow who lost pieces of their roofs from the 140 mile-per-hour-plus winds, and at the same time started seeing people in LaPlace turning to Twitter for rescue as their town unexpectedly flooded, leaving many on their roofs or stuck in their attics,” said Michot. “I wished at the time that I had been prepared to help, but it was the middle of the night, and I was a hundred miles away while the hurricane was still in full force. The next day I decided to put together a team of friends with trucks and tools, and a call for funds, which had surprisingly amounted in $10,000 in 24 hours. We made our first trip to Houma on September 2 to patch roofs and bring essential goods, but we would only be able to offer temporary relief. Houses that survived served as refuges for multiple families at a time who had lost their own homes, and the largest need after food and water was a generator and gas, both which were initially in short supply. We were able to bring a few generators, and hundreds of gallons of gas to keep people mobile and air conditioned in the heat, but it had to be brought from hours away, and took so much time and more gas to procure.”
This trip to Houma solidified the realization that shelter and reliable power are needed as soon as possible after a storm if rebuilding is going to be an option—and so sparked the Louisiana Solar Fund (LSF), a 501c3 under the Cultural Research Institute of Acadiana. The solar fund is active through GoFundMe with currently $16,000 in donations to purchase solar-powered generators as well as deep freezers that can run off of one small battery and a solar panel for residents affected by Hurricane Ida.
The first solar installation is set for November 12 in Pointe-Au-Chien, Louisiana, to power a prototype “Rescue Shelter” being developed by the organization Another Gulf is Possible in collaboration with Williams Architects. The Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe (PACIT) is a traditional village descended primarily from Chitimacha, but also Atakapas, Biloxi, and Choctaw—all farmers, fishers, and hunters—who have been living in lower Pointe-au-Chien along the Louisiana Gulf Coast for centuries. PACIT is a state-recognized tribe but has been seeking federal recognition since the 1980s.
The tribe is in crisis due to coastal erosion, sea-level rise and the intensity and frequency of hurricanes. LSF aims to provide with solar setups for the Pointe-Au-Chien community moving forward. Fifty percent of proceeds of the festival will go to the Louisiana Solar Fund.
On va continuer, French for “We will continue,” has become an unofficial mantra for Michot and is the title of a documentary featuring the Lost Bayou Ramblers. Filming began during widespread flooding in South Louisiana in 2016 when director Bruno Doria met Michot through cleanup efforts at Dockside Studios in Maurice. Following Michot and his brother, accordion artist Andre Michot, along with the other members of the band, the film joins the Ramblers on tour and delivers a message of cultural, lingual, and environmental preservation.
“We made this film with a focus on the language of Louisiana French and the culture of the music, but it all comes down to the people,” said Bruno Doria, the film’s director. “To keep our culture alive, we have to support the people of our communities. That means providing music and enjoyment in good times, but also responding when times are bad. We went through this with the floods in 2016, now with Ida, and we will see this happen again. We want to contribute to find better solutions for the people who live here.”
Louisiana Sunshine Festival Schedule:
Stay-Lit Solar Stage (Feed The Second Line)
2 p.m. | Footprint Project Solar demonstration. A “Rescue Shelter” will be demonstrated, outfitted with solar panels and a Powerpac at The Broadside, in preparation for shipment to the next resident in need.
3:30 p.m. | Lost Bayou Ramblers feat. Lady Red, 79rs Gang, and a surprise guest
6 p.m. | On Va Continuer! screening
Rodé Soleil stage (Louisiana Solar Fund)
2:30 p.m. | Amigas de Samba
5 p.m. | Julie Odell
7 p.m. | Corey Henry The Treme Funktet
Food and drinks are included in ticket packages that range from $20 to $75. To purchase, visit here. The Broadside is located at 600 N. Broad Street.
