Saturday, May 4, at Jazz Fest: Neil Young, Queen Latifah, Rhiannon Giddens and more

Gambit's picks for the second Saturday out at Jazz Fest.

Creole Group

12:40-1:35 p.m. Saturday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

Hailing from San Andres, a Caribbean island governed by Colombia, Creole Group formed in 1986 as a way to preserve the island’s Creole language and musical identity. Using acoustic guitars, mandolin, a jaw bone and washtub bass, the band plays a blend of calypso, mento, reggae, quadrille and other Caribbean styles.

Lucio Feuillet

12:45-1:40 p.m. Saturday

Gentilly Stage

5-6 p.m. Saturday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

Guitarist Lucio Feuillet is from Narino on the Pacific Coast of Colombia along the western front of the Andes. He often performs solo in a slow-picking folk singer-songwriter style, but he also uses larger bands for the more upbeat sounds of the region’s Carnival celebrations, with strong Latin beats. His 2021 album “Bailando Bailando” incorporated synthesizers and electric guitars in a contemporary exploration of Carnival’s traditional music. His most recent release is last year’s solo project “Minimo Infinito.”

Cimarron

1:20-2:05 p.m. Saturday

Festival Stage

3:20-4:25 p.m. Saturday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

Cimarron, named for a type of horse, plays joropo, a fast and festive music from the plains straddling Colombia and Venezuela. Its primary instruments are harp, cuatro, bass and maracas, and it can sound like it’s related to Spanish flamenco. Cimarron was formed roughly 25 years ago by harpist and songwriter Carlos Rojas and Ana Veydo. When Rojas died in 2020, Veydo took over leadership of the band.

The group has experimented, pushing the boundaries of the music’s Indigenous and rural roots, at times including Afro-Latin beats. Despite its foundation in rural Colombian traditions, the band has always reached beyond the nation’s borders, and its first album was released on Smithsonian Folkways. Its most recent album, 2019’s “Orinoco,” was nominated for a Best Folk Album Latin Grammy.

Bejuco

2-2:55 p.m. Saturday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

4:35-5:35 p.m. Saturday

Jazz & Heritage Stage

From Tumaco, a city along Colombia’s Pacific Coast, Bejuco roots its sound in marimba music, bambuco and Afro-Colombian musical traditions, but also incorporates Afrobeat, rap and other global influences for a high-energy, percussive style the band has coined “bambuco beat.” The group of forward-looking musicians released its captivating first album, “Batea,” in 2021.

Ann Savoy: Another Heart

2:15-3:15 p.m. Saturday

Lagniappe Stage

Guitarist and singer Ann Savoy usually performs at Jazz Fest with one of her family bands, like the Savoy Doucet Band with her husband Marc Savoy and fiddler Michael Doucet. The Savoy Family Band, which includes Marc and sons Joel and Wilson, performed last weekend. Savoy also performs with the all-women band the Magnolia Sisters. Though she grew up in Virginia, many of her roughly 40 albums have been rooted in Cajun sounds.

For this show, she’s performing with the band she assembled to record “Another Heart,” released on Smithsonian Folkways. The album includes originals, like “Cajun Love Song,” which she wrote for Marc, but there also are covers of the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Stolen Car” and Joni Mitchell’s “Tin Angel.” The album builds on a project of duets with Linda Ronstadt that the duo released in 2006, and it is more of a folk-rock album. She’ll be joined by guitarist Dirk Powell, who produced the album, son Joel Savoy on fiddle, and more.

Jazz Fest 2019 : First Thursday (copy) — BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet will perform Saturday at Jazz Fest.
Photo by Michael DeMocker / The Times-Picayune

BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet

2:50-3:45 p.m. Saturday

Fais Do-Do Stage

BeauSoleil celebrated its 50th anniversary in Acadiana in February. For decades the band has toured and brought Cajun music to the world, bridging the gap between the older bands like the Balfa Brothers and the wave of new bands, like the Lost Bayou Ramblers and Pine Leaf Boys. It will always be the first Cajun band to win a Grammy Award.

The band also has embraced the Creole music of Acadiana, and its 2013 album, “From Bamako to Carencro,” traced the roots of Louisiana music. Fiddler Michael Doucet remains the face of the band.

BeauSoleil will be interviewed by Michael Tisserand at noon on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage.

Samara Joy

4:10-5:25 p.m. Saturday

WWOZ Jazz Tent

On her most recent performance in New Orleans, Samara Joy was joined by family members at the Orpheum Theater in December to sing holiday songs from her Christmas album. The Bronx native was inspired by her family, which included professional gospel singers. But fans in the jazz tent can expect a bit more of what she’s known for.

The 24-year-old jazz singer released a debut self-titled album in 2021. She followed it up in 2022 with “Linger Awhile,” which won a Best Jazz Vocal Album Grammy and helped her also claim the Best New Artist Grammy. At the most recent Grammy Awards, she collected another trophy for Best Vocal Performance for “Tight.”

Joy will be interviewed by author Karen Celestan at 1 p.m. on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage.

Rhiannon Giddens

4:15-5:30 p.m. Saturday

Blues Tent

As a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, violinist and banjoist Rhiannon Giddens played Black string band music with roots in folk, bluegrass, blues, gospel and Appalachian string music. Her solo career has been more far ranging, and most recently she won a Pulitzer Prize for Music for “Omar,” an opera she wrote with Michael Abels. The opera tells the story of Omar Ibn Said, a Muslim cleric in West Africa who was enslaved and transported to Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1800s.

Giddens currently lives in Ireland, but she is no stranger to Louisiana, having worked with musician and producer Dirk Powell, who performed with her at her last appearance at the Blues Tent. He and New Orleans’ Leyla McCalla — as well as Jason Isbell — contributed to her latest solo release, last year’s “You’re the One.” “"I hope that people just hear American music,” she said about the album. “Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock — it's all there.”

Giddens will be interviewed by NPR’s Gwen Thompkins at 2 p.m. on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage.

Nickel Creek

4:15-5:35 p.m. Saturday

Fais Do-Do Stage

Mandolinist Chris Thile’s voice may sound familiar. For four years, he hosted “Live From Here,” the successor to “A Prairie Home Companion.” In the contemporary bluegrass band Nickel Creek, he harmonizes with siblings Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins. The trio found wider acclaim with their self-titled 2000 album and won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album for 2002’s “This Side.” In 2007, the band went on hiatus so members could pursue other projects, but they reunited to release “A Dotted Line” in 2014. They started a Livecreek livestream series in 2021 and have been touring since the release of last year’s “Celebrants.”

Neil Young and Crazy Horse

5:30-7 p.m. Saturday

Festival Stage

For all the attention grabbed by The Rolling Stones, one could have missed that Neil Young is headlining Jazz Fest on Saturday. The Canadian import is no less talented than the British Invasion lads, and at 78, he’s not much younger. He’s not topped the charts nearly as often, but he continued to put out relevant music well into his later years.

With his high strained voice, Young might not seem like a natural for rock fame, but he was a key player in numerous bands, and evolved through several phases, including as the so-called godfather of grunge. He’s released protest anthems through the decades, from early work with Buffalo Springfield to the Vietnam War protest “Ohio” with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, to the hard rocking and agitated ’80s screed “Rockin’ in the Free World,” to a concept album criticizing agriculture industry giant Monsanto.

Young currently is back on tour with Crazy Horse, for the first time since 2019, and after a few years backed by Lukas Nelson’s Promise of the Real. Over five decades, Young and Crazy Horse released 15 studio albums together, as well as several live recordings, including the landmark 1979 album “Rust Never Sleeps,” which also had studio-recorded tracks. That album is often described as a precursor to grunge and helps explain Young’s collaborations with Pearl Jam members in the 1990s.

Young and Crazy Horse just released “FU##IN’ UP,” a nine-track EP full of re-recordings of their 1990 album, “Ragged Glory.” The album name comes from a song on the earlier album, and many songs were re-recorded with new names.

Besides that project, there’s plenty to choose from just from songs recorded with Crazy Horse, and other work from his more than 45 studio albums. He’s never been hesitant about doing things his own way and was once sued by a record company for delivering music it didn’t think was commercially viable. On stage, he sometimes tours through his hits, and sometimes ignores his best known work, but in the last two decades, he’s only solidified his reputation as a great live performer, regardless of the recording ideas he’s pursued.

Queen Latifah

5:40-7 p.m. Saturday

Congo Square Stage

Starring on the TV show “Living Single” and romantic comedies and hosting a daytime TV talk show may have obscured the impact Queen Latifah had as a pioneering rapper in the early 1990s.

Albums including 1989’s “All Hail the Queen” and 1993’s "Black Reign” made her the queen of hip-hop. But she also started acting in the early 1990s, including in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever” and appeared on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” with Will Smith in 1991.

Her wider success hasn’t negated anything about her life in hip-hop, though she hasn’t released an album since 2009. She’s doing a handful of concerts this year, and this trip to New Orleans isn’t going to be like “Girls Trip.” But Latifah can handle either with ease.