The music keeps playing at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
Jazz Fest is a celebration of all things New Orleans. The huge festival attracts nearly half a million attendees yearly, displaying the resilient soul of the city. Leslie Bouie, a fifth-generation New Orleans native, remembers the one following Hurricane Katrina most fondly because it was the one that almost wasn’t.
Resilience in New Orleans - Jazz Fest
Music, culinary wonders, architecture and a bit of mystery makes New Orleans – also known as NOLA – what it is today.
NOLA is a place where letting the “good times roll” is a lifestyle, not just a slogan on a t-shirt found on Bourbon Street. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is another true representation of the soul of the city. Held over 10 days each spring, the festival dates to April 1970, when Mahalia Jackson and Duke Ellington headlined the inaugural lineup. Today’s acts mix hometown jazz favorites with international superstars, drawing nearly half a million attendees each year.
Leslie Bouie is a fifth-generation New Orleans native who knows a thing or two about the festival - she’s been attending for 40 years after all.
Leslie Bouie, fifth-generation New Orleans nativeJazz is in the heart and soul of this city. It’s the music that was born here. It was born of the people here. I don’t think New Orleans would be New Orleans without jazz.
Reclaiming confidence in NOLA
When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in August 2005, many doubted if the iconic event – like so much of NOLA – could return to its former glory. Katrina’s floodwaters nearly destroyed the festival’s longtime venue, the Fair Grounds Race Course, scuttling its horseracing season for the rest of the year and organizers wondered if the music could return the following spring, or if at all.
Shell USA, a major employer in the Gulf Coast, stepped up to sign a long-term arrangement as the festival’s presenting sponsor, and with backing from other major supporters, the festival returned for an emotional 37th run in April 2006.
Bouie, who is also a Shell retiree, considers the 2006 festival a pivotal moment that showed the world that New Orleans would recover from Katrina. After the hurricane, when confidence was a bit shaken by the effects of Katrina, Shell committed to the community by moving its 1,000 displaced employees back, hoping to encourage other firms to do the same. At the same time, Shell began heavily investing in the community, training teachers and developing engineering programs at local universities, helping cultivate the workforce that would be pivotal in the rebuilding of the beloved city.
And the music plays on...
Shell’s support of Jazz Fest and NOLA is steadfast. Between the horns and revelry, of Jazz Fest, a massive sustainability effort takes place in the background. As you might imagine, hundreds of thousands of attendees viewing multiple stages for two full weekends means a lot of waste from food packaging, to cooking oil, to utensils, and more. When sent to landfills or treatment facilities, this waste generates greenhouse gas emissions, squandering an opportunity to produce future products.
This conundrum prompted Shell to work with organizers to increase recycling and reclamation. Last year’s efforts diverted more than 21 metric tons of waste from landfills and including 2,500 pounds of reclaimed cooking oil used to produce biodiesel in shrimp boats. At the same time, Shell partnered with NexusCircular to convert 1.13 metric tons of hard-to-recycle plastics into pyrolysis oil, which is a feedstock the company’s nearby Norco Manufacturing Complex can use instead of fossil fuels to produce all kinds of renewable products.
Shell in Louisiana
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Earns Evergreen Certification for Sustainability and Community Impact
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (“Jazz Fest”) presented by Shell USA, Inc. (“Shell”), has been awarded the Evergreen certification by the Council for Responsible Sport (“Council”). Jazz Fest, a 55year-old New Orleans institution known for its celebration of music, art, and culture, is the largest cultural festival to ever achieve Evergreen certification.
