Jazz Fest 2025 Starts with a Good Locals Thursday

Seun Kuti, by Kola Oshalusi

Locals Thursdays are not usually newsmaking days at Jazz Fest. They frequently feature popular local artists and well-liked national artists whose stars don’t shine quite as brightly as they once did. 

That’s not the case on the first day of Jazz Fest 2025, which seems well-balanced with the definition of a Thursday headliner–John Fogerty–at one end of the track while we get an unusual Thursday booking in Goose, the jam band du jour, making its debut at the other. 

I’ll be at Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 at the Congo Square Stage to close the day. Kuti is the son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela, and he has been positioned as Fela’s inheritor with his band (or what remains of it). Kuti was brilliant when he played Jazz Fest in 2012, and I had the unusual experience of meeting him in the parking lot of his hotel in Metairie afterwards so that he could give me a tour of their tour bus for a Spin feature. 

The piece is not online, and it was part of a last ditch effort to get people to buy physical copies of the magazine by making it a beautiful object that wasn’t available on the Internet. The plan didn’t work, but it did result in me supplying the text for a photo essay on life on the tour bus with Kuti and his band. The 14 or so members all fit on one bus, though both of the female backing singers shared his bed in the bus’ backroom. 

We talked about trying to decide what movie he was going to take the women to on an off-night on the tour, and his need to replenish the Costco-sized jar of golf ball-sized buds. I also remember another big jar with a scary brown liquid with twigs and weeds in it on the floor outside of the members’ berth. Kuti explained that it was a hangover remedy, and I was thinking that I’d need it because the only way I could spend weeks on a bus with that many people in micro-berths is by getting wasted. 

I’m also looking forward to LeTrainiump (12:20 pm, Congo Square Stage), Los Tremolo Kings (12:35 p.m., Lagniappe Stage), El Dusty & the Homies (2:10 pm, Expedia Cultural Exchange Tent; 4:45 pm, Rhythmporium Tent), and Grupo Fantasma (2:40 p.m., Congo Square Stage; 4:55 p.m., Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion Stage). Follow the links to pieces we have written about all these artists. 

I’ll start Thursday with Denisia (11:15 pm, Congo Square Stage), who has been on playlists I’ve made since 2016 when she became the R&B diva of bounce, singing Adele’s “Hello” and Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” with Big Choo supplying bounce beats and shout outs. Bounce and hip-hop remain a crucial part of her sound, but as last year’s “You” made clear, she can be a straight up soul singer when she wants to be.

It’s also great to see Flagboy Giz & the Wild Tchoupitoulas (1:30 pm, Congo Square Stage) where they belong. On the Jazz and Heritage Stage where they’re slotted in among a number of Mardi Gras Indian acts, it’s certainly accurate to see them as part of that continuity. On Thursday, Flagboy Giz will stand more clearly as part of the community of indie hip-hop/R&B artists in New Orleans, which is a more productive way to think about him.

For more on Flagboy Giz, check out the excellent profile on him at The Fader by My Spilt Milk alum Raphael Helfand.

Check out more of My Spilt Milk’s coverage of Jazz Fest 2025 including previews, interviews and reviews of artists who’ll play at the Fair Grounds.