Voodoo Fest returned to New Orleans’ City Park in style on Friday, kicking off a weekend of music that has drawn tens of thousands of fans to the city. Attendance appeared to be way up from recent years in what looks like a vote of confidence for C3, a LiveNation-owned festival production company that took over the Voodoo operation for 2016 (C3 is best known for putting on the massively popular Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Festivals).
The Weeknd. Photo by Willow Haley.
The new management’s acumen was on display throughout the festival, which was improved by layout changes that mercifully put the sound bleed issues from past years to rest (in hindsight, orienting the electronic music-heavy Le Plur stage away from the rest of the fest seems like an obvious move).
While the new layout, and the pristine sound that came with it, marked the most significant upgrade from previous Voodoos, the festival was also bolstered by the addition of numerous amenities, including a well-stocked craft beer hall, a wider range of food options and high-production value haunted graveyard installation put on by New Orleans’ The Mortuary.
Of course the musical acts were the biggest draw, and the biggest of those acts was Canadian singer-songwriter The Weeknd (aka Abél Tesfaye), whose style is best described as progressive R&B. The Altar Stage headliner worked through an array of selections from his three album catalog, delivering an impressive falsetto reminiscent of Michael Jackson while backed by a full band and a simple-yet-dazzling visual display.
The Weeknd was preceded on the Altar Stage by G-Eazy, a San Francisco rapper with deep roots in New Orleans whose style was decidedly less tasteful than the act that followed him. The hip-hop took the stage dressed as The Joker before making roughly 50 more demands to “put your hands up” and “make some noise” than one should reasonably expect from a performer. However, the show was not without its highlights, from a crowd-pleasing rendition of “Fuck Donald Trump” to a collaboration with local brass heros The Soul Rebels. Things really peaked about halfway through the set, when G-Eazy’s manager Matt Bauerschmidt (who met the rapper while both were students at Loyola New Orleans) proposed to his girlfriend on stage.
G-Eazy. Photo by Marissa Altazan.
The party never seemed to end at the Le Plur stage, where electronic music mainstays like Carnage and Porter Robinson kept the crowd dancing under a vast array of cluttered and colorful lights. Le Plur has become one of the most popular aspects of Voodoo in recent years and yesterday was no different, with thousands of (predominantly younger) festivalgoers camping out at the stage for the duration of the day.
Considering the prevalence of hip-hop and electronic dance music, the unbridled rock and roll of Foals was a serious breath of fresh air for fans of guitar-driven music. While Saturday and Sunday’s lineups offer more in that respect, the English five-piece were one of the only top-notch rock acts on the bill for Voodoo’s opening day. Fortunately, the group’s hourlong set did not disappoint, with the band’s mix of synth effects and good old fashioned loud/fast electric guitar work pulling a sizable crowd to the main stage. Foals were preceded by New Orleans rockers and current OffBeat cover artists MuteMath, who impressed with a career-spanning set that featured an appearance by frontman Paul Meany’s young daughter.
Foals. Photo by Willow Haley.
Other artists on the Friday docket included rapper Tory Lanez, hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd, blue eyed soul-revivalist Mayer Hawthorne, Shreveport-based rockers Seratones, heavy blues disciple Reignwolf and more.
Voodoo Fest will continue today with headlining sets from Tool and Die Antwoord, as well as performances by Ghost, Rebelution, Cage The Elephant, Claypool Lennon Delirium, Shakey Graves, Excision and many more. Three of those bands are on OffBeat’s list of Six Can’t-Miss Acts at Voodoo 2016, which you can check out here.
All photos by Willow Haley and Marissa Altazan.
