New Orleans in Montréal : The Cradle of Jazz in the City of Festivals

Abstract

This paper explores representations of New Orleans and Louisiana music at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal between 1999 and 2001. It questions how Louisiana and Québec have used these representations to construct cultural affinities between their francophone histories, drawing specifically on the tourist place-images of Montréal and New Orleans as cities of festive celebration. First, I frame narratives of New Orleans as the mythic "birthplace of jazz" and those of Montréal as a "city of festivals" to demonstrate how the cultural practice of jazz joins images of the sinful and the festive in each city’s urban imaginary. Second, I examine how the origins of jazz in New Orleans merge with discourses of cultural authenticity and tradition in greater Louisiana, and how such representations are seen to be truthfully celebrated in Montréal as a creative, French city with an open nightlife. I conclude with the argument that the joint marketing of each city’s festive place-image at the jazz festival has occurred within a logic of tourism that has sought to construct a Francophone diaspora in North America, despite the negligible cultural, economic, and even historical contact between the regions.