The newly-opened historic landmark, Dew Drop Inn Hotel & Lounge, officially announces its programming during the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, an eleven-night celebration of local music and culture. The Dew Drop Inn will debut their first annual Groove City series, a nightly series during Jazz Fest, which will welcome some of the biggest names in Black American Music to play in the iconic venue, where many legendary music artists have played in decades past.
Groove City will conclude Weekend One of Jazz Fest with an intimate one-night-only experience featuring the now 70 years running, Chicago-born, Grammy nominated collective known as the Sun Ra Arkestra, on Sunday, April 28th at 9 p.m. The founder of the Arkestra, the late Sun Ra, was among the earliest pioneers of the synthesizer and the free jazz revolution of the 1960s. He sent a strong spiritual and musical message to his Arkestra urging them to help make the universe better through positive vibrations and music. The broad collective has taken on many musicians over its many iterations, spanning six decades, with some original or longtime members still playing today.
To follow-up the trajectory of Afrofuturist Fusion and Black Orchestral Jazz that Sun Ra catalyzed in the 1950s and 1960s, Groove City will close out Weekend Two featuring one of New Orleans’ most exciting new projects evolving this style of music in the 21st century – Steve Lands’ Rearranging the Planets on Sunday, May 5th at 9pm. Hot on the heels of two sold-out performances at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) for their 2022-2023 season, Louisiana-born trumpeter and composer, Steve Lands, presents his Rearranging the Planets composition with full band, comprised of an all-star cast of the city’s leading young jazz musicians, for their singular Jazz Fest 2024 performance.
Although the sun was setting on the original Dew Drop Inn’s star just as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was born at Congo Square inside Louis Armstrong Park in 1970, the two musical legacies ran in stride for just two years concurrently. Since then, the New Orleans Jazz Fest has grown into an annual international institution over the last 50 years, to be met in 2024 with the rebirth of one of the integral venues where much of the Black American music that the New Orleans Jazz Fest celebrates was born and nurtured – The Dew Drop Inn Hotel & Lounge in Central City.
The Dew Drop Inn’s Jazz Fest series, Groove City, takes its name from the original Groove Room, which the former historic nightclub was nicknamed by its previous owner, Frank Painia. The name embodies the very essence of countless musical giants and their impromptu jam sessions til dawn on many a night during the mid-20th century at the Dew Drop – a place where innovators meet to elevate their musical styles and a place of discovery where guests can hear new sounds that reverberate around the world.
Additional Groove City performances and programming will be announced in the coming weeks.Visit dewdropinnnola.com for more information.
