JazzFest Moment: Mahlathini & Mahotella Queens

Posted: April 11th, 2026 | Filed under: Culture, JazzFest, Music, New Orleans | 2 Comments »

I am going through serious withdrawal.

JazzFest is just weeks away.

Absent some confluence of miracles, I won’t be there for the second year in a row.

After a thirty five year run.

The realities of being firmly into my octogenarianism are manifest.

As much as it pains, prudence must prevail.

But it’s ever on my mind.

Yesterday I saw a photo somebody posted on the interweb of the entrance signage now up at the Fairgrounds.

I felt a hole in my soul.

Sigh.

Which brings me to this Saturday morning’s all too temporary antidote.

When I found myself dancing in the kitchen during breakfast.

 * * * * *

It was a Fest in the late 80s, early 90s.

Before the fire took down the old clubhouse.

When the entirety of the Fest was inside the track in the infield.

All the stages. All the concessions. All the port-o-lets.

When the acts were mostly all New Orleans/ Louisiana-centric, or from parts of the world that influenced the music of the area.

The Third World acts would be featured on the Congo Square stage. Which area was much smaller then, hemmed in as it was by other stages stuffed into the infield.

I was not a stranger to contemporary African music. Kora master Foday Musa Sosa played at my first Fest in ’76. Or, maybe the second or third.

I was drawn immediately to that sound.

Lyrical. Propulsive. Primal.

Impossible not to dance to.

So, though I had never heard or heard of Mahlathini & Mahotella Queens, I had an inkling.

I and every one else bumper to bumper at that stage danced beneath the azure sky with arms waving free from note one to the last.

I smiled for the hour.

I sweated through my shirt. My shorts. My shoes. My socks. Even my wallet.

It was joyous ecstasy.

Another of oh so many confirmations of the blessing that JazzFest has been in my life.

Oh, for a miracle, and one more once.

— c d kaplan

 

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