A DJ Saved My Locals Thursday at Jazz Fest

DJ Shub and dancer at Jazz Fest, by Alex Rawls

Black Indians and Indigenous People dominated my Thursday at Jazz Fest.

There are times when Jazz Fest is work, and in the early afternoon Thursday, it was tough to find a place to land. I was off-schedule with things that interested me, so I was constantly between sets. The Locals Thursday $50 ticket brought a lot of people out, so grazing required time and energy too.

Fortunately, things picked up starting with Loose Cattle’s rocking “It’s Not Over Yet,” which laughed in the face of everything New Orleans can throw at you. The afternoon was saved by, of all things, a DJ set. First Nations DJ and producer Shub commanded the wheels of steel on the Jazz and Heritage Stage with two tribal dancers to periodically liven up the visuals during the set.

The set was fun in part because it showed Shub’s range, from heavy dubstep drops to extended stretches of turntable scratching.He mixes tribal elements into his beats, and hip-hop was far more prominent in his mix than it was in any of his previous visits to Jazz Fest. At one point he scratched a voice that sounded like an old-school emcee who encouraged him, “Shub rock the beat.”

I periodically I need Jazz Fest to be contemporary in the way Shub’s set was, not simply featuring the next generation of artists but music that could only happen now. Before his set, I heard people play songs the way they have been played for decades or longer, and there’s little from the 21st century in the music. It’s great to live in a city and attend a festival where roots and traditions are so visible, but it can feel like a low grade battle with the modern world at times. Sets like Shub’s push back against that impulse.

Shub wasn’t a typical Jazz Fest booking, but it was nice to see a set that met the future Jazz Fest audience where it lives. Shub didn’t ask them to sign on to their parents’ aesthetics, though they likely share a lot of them if they’re at Jazz Fest in the first place. The only other person I saw over 40 whispered, “Shouldn’t I be grinding my jaws like in the ‘90s when we were on X?” A few in the crowd could have been a little more culturally conscious, but as Shub’s former bandmate Bear Witness in A Tribe Called Red said, part of the challenge for indigenous peoples is their invisibility, which means their issues don’t get on the public radar.

For much of the show, members of Cha Wa could be seen in the wings, and they were a tantalizing reminder of what could be. What if new musical Black Indian bands used hip-hop as their musical basis instead of funk bands? Cha Wa came onstage for a version of their “My People,” and their performance was proof of concept.

After DJ Shub, Larkin Poe worked along a similar axis. The blues band led by thirtysomething sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell gave younger fans someone to connect to. It said that you don’t have to be an old goat or a child prodigy to play the blues. Their bio suggests that they’re more interested in roots music in general, so even though they played Son House Thursday in the Blues Tent, they likely learned from the Allman Brothers and Tom Petty as much as anyone else. Because of that, they also rocked and left a lot of people waiting for their return to Jazz Fest.

Flagboy Giz at Jazz Fest, by Alex Rawls

Flagboy Giz opened the day with a reason to think change can come to Black Indian music. His sung/spoke delivery split the difference between rap and Black Indian performers before him, while his band muscled up his funk. And as much as I enjoy the hearing the classics, I’ll take a rewrite of “Shallow Water Oh Mama” to speak to a new disaster: “They’re gentrifying our city.”

What Should be on Your Radar Friday at Jazz Fest

Kris Baptiste and Deelow Diamond Man

1:45 p.m. Congo Square

My guess is that this is a split set with the young R&B singer Baptiste and rapper DeeLow Diamond Man. I’m curious.

Alynda Segarra

1:50 p.m., Cultural Exchange Pavilion

Segarra will perform on Saturday with Hurray for the Riff Raff, so it will be interesting to see what she does as a solo under her own name.

Trumpet Mafia

2:50 p.m., Congo Square Stage

Ashlin Parker leads this trumpet-forward group that scales. I’ve seen it down to three or four trumpets on videos, but I’ve seen more than 10 onstage at Jazz Fest before. Bigger is better.

Kane Brown

5:20, Shell Gentilly Stage

Brown’s country hip-hop was inevitable considering the evolution of mainstream country, and Nashville makes reliably well-crafted songs.

Jon Batiste

5:30 p.m., Festival Stage

Batiste returns to Jazz Fest as a conquering hero including a very not-secret secret show at the Maple Leaf this week. The reason to attend is the creativity with which he has approached Jazz Fest gigs in the past. It will almost certainly be more than a simple presentation of songs.