Turning the Table Over: Collaboration and Critique at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

Abstract

In the late 1970s, the African American Jazz Coalition responded to the marginalization of black vendors at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival by partnering with the Festival to create the Koindu Marketplace, now known as Congo Square. Whereas much public representation of the Festival suggests a transcendence of racial boundaries inside Festival grounds, the content and structure of contemporary interviews with the activists reflect continued racial tensions, power dynamics, and resentment. This thesis analyzes oral histories with the founders of the Afrikan American Jazz Coalition stored at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Archive. Critical discourse analysis of these interviews focuses on linguistic structures and inherent frames of worldview. Juxtaposing interviewers’ intentions regarding the Festival’s mission with what the activists consider a continued marginalization of black culture, I highlight moments of both conflict and heightened self-awareness amongst the participants.