NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival kicks off on Thursday, bringing together a smorgasbord of the city's most iconic homegrown artists for the next two weeks.
The festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of attendees, began in 1970 as a homage to the sounds of the birthplace of jazz and other genres with deep regional roots: blues, gospel, folk, Cajun zydeco and more. It now covers a wide range of music — headliners include Pearl Jam and Lenny Kravitz alongside hometown favorites like Lil Wayne — but remains focused on celebrating local artists and culture.
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FILE - Bonerama performs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Friday, May 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Robert Harrison III, Loretta's Pralines president and CEO, holds a portrait of his mother on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, as he prepares thousands of pralines for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
FILE - Sous chef Darren Chabert serves up chicken and andouille gumbo at Emeril's Delmonico in New Orleans, Monday, Feb. 17, 2014. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Baked oysters are displayed at the Bourbon House Restaurant in New Orleans, Tuesday, June 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - A classic serving of shrimp creole is served at Cafe Dauphine in New Orleans, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Jerry Clifton, 56, a Loretta's Pralines baker, prepares confections on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
FILE - Audience members dance during the "Bounce Shakedown" at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Sunday, May 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
“We started out to reflect New Orleans to the world but now it's just as much a part of New Orleans as Mardi Gras,” said Quint Davis, the festival's longtime producer.
Davis also urges attendees to come hungry — the local flavors served up by festival celebrate the city's renowned cuisine just as much as its music.
For some attendees, Davis says, the festival's world-class musicians provide a soundtrack for their first priority: getting their hands on the delicious Cajun and Creole meals — from pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo to pecan catfish meunière and alligator sausage — served by local vendors.
Most of the nearly 70 different vendors have been part of the festival for several decades and “perfected their craft," said Michelle Nugent, the festival's food director.
“The menu we feature you can't find anywhere else,” Nugent said. “Everything is handmade and home-cooked.”
Robert Harrison III carries on the legacy of his late mother's bakery, Loretta's Pralines, which sells chocolate, rum and coconut pralines, along with a fan favorite that mixes pralines with a deep-fried dough pastry known as a beignet.
“The praline beignet — my mom was a genius for this: she took two New Orleans products that were just so French and she mashed them together,” Harrison III said. He and his staff have spent weeks preparing thousands of pralines for the festival: “It's something that you have to love to do — my Mom loved to do it and we do too.”
Another Jazz Fest offering to drool for is the Cochon de Lait Po Boy — suckling pig slow roasted on French bread — prepared by Walker's Southern Style BBQ.
“We dry rub all those pork butts every night and they smoke all night long,” said Shayne Brunet, whose family has operated a stall at the festival for more than two decades. They add fresh coleslaw for crunch and the family's secret “wertie” sauce — what Brunet describes as “Creole creamy” — for a sweet kick.
“One thing you won't find there is burgers, hot dogs, pizza, French fries, any of the normal food that you can get any other festival type of place," said John Caluda, who runs a baking shop and pioneered the crawfish strudel, a festival mainstay that wins over skeptics with its contrasting, flavorful textures.
The strudel joins the pantheon of festival originals beside local chef Pierre Hilzim's "Crawfish Monica" a creamy pasta dish featuring crawfish tail meat and named after his wife. It's become one of the festival's most popular dishes and Hilzim says he requires nearly two million crawfish to satiate the appetites of festival customers.
“To be able to put a dish in the lexicon of food in this city — I’m very humbled by that,” Hilzim said. As for attendees of the festival: “I don’t think anywhere in the world is eating better food.”
Headliners at the festival include Pearl Jam, Lenny Kravitz, Dave Matthews Band, Luke Combs, Kacey Musgraves, Santana, Burna Boy and Lil Wayne and The Roots.
The majority of the dozens of artists playing over the course of eight days across 14 stages are native New Orleanians — Lil Wayne among them — such as Trombone Shorty, Big Freedia, Irma Thomas, Harry Connick, Jr. and Mardi Gras Indian leader Big Chief Monk Boudreaux.
This year's festival poster features local band Tank and the Bangas, whose album “The Heart, the Mind, the Soul” won a Grammy earlier this year for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album.
Lead singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball, who grew up on a street called Music, first performed at the festival as a member of her high school choir. Even after touring around the world, she says there's nothing like performing for her city.
“When it comes time to be at home for Jazz Fest, everybody just wants to give a little extra magic to the show,” Ball said. “You want to make it extra special because your auntie is out in the crowd, your little cousins — cause it's home.”
She's also looking forward to the festival food — her family runs a fried chicken and jambalaya stand, and Ball says they'll have a plate saved for after her show.
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.
FILE - Bonerama performs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Friday, May 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Robert Harrison III, Loretta's Pralines president and CEO, holds a portrait of his mother on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, as he prepares thousands of pralines for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
FILE - Sous chef Darren Chabert serves up chicken and andouille gumbo at Emeril's Delmonico in New Orleans, Monday, Feb. 17, 2014. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Baked oysters are displayed at the Bourbon House Restaurant in New Orleans, Tuesday, June 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - A classic serving of shrimp creole is served at Cafe Dauphine in New Orleans, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Jerry Clifton, 56, a Loretta's Pralines baker, prepares confections on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
FILE - Audience members dance during the "Bounce Shakedown" at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Sunday, May 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
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Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
