hotel reservations online with cheap hotels, resorts and spas and discount rates


TIME
Central Standard Time


STATE
Louisiana

REGION
Southern States

New Orleans: Where Jazz Began

• Jazz began as a synthesis of tribal AfroCaribbean chants (set to percussion instruments of bone and proto-tambourines), African-American spirituals, blues, and ragtime, folk songs, and European brass instruments. Some say the cries of French Quarter vendors worked their way into the jazz mix.

• The tradition of the brass instruments used in jazz came primarily from Germany, Italy, and Ireland, where brass marching parades had long been celebrating feast days.

• Jelly Roll Morton was the first to get the very improvisational music of jazz on paper, translating the tunes into musical notation.

• The frottoir, the trademark Zydeco instrument, developed from a washboard and corrugated tin played with bottle openers.

• The term Dixieland may have come from the New Orleans $10 bill on which DIX, French for ten was printed in large letters.

• Queen of the Blues, Irma Thomas, learned to apply makeup from a group of female impersonators in the dressing room of Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

New Orleans is a giant, outdoor museum, one big block party, a never-ending concert, and a gourmet/gourmand paradise.

It has glorious parades, brassy bands, haunted houses, historic streetcars and paddlewheelers, a world-class zoo, festivals for every occasion, a top-five aquarium and nationally recognized children’s museum, gourmet snowballs, the French Market, the National D-Day Museum, and Six Flags theme park.

New Orleans is a city with perfect pitch. Its affair with music and dance began in 18th-century ballrooms, at the old French Opera House, and with the tribal rhythms and rituals of slaves in Congo Square (now the site of Louis Armstrong Park).

For 300 years, music has reverberated throughout the city, constant as the river, diverse as the gumbo of people who settled here. Known for jazz, Cajun, Zydeco, rhythm and blues, gospel, soul and funk, the Big Easy mix includes virtually every form of music, including rock, pop and new age.

New Orleans never needs an excuse to celebrate. No matter what time of year you decide to visit, there is some sort of festival to attend. While the Mardi Gras festivities are no doubt the city's most popular, there are a wealth of other events where you can revel in the city's treasures, including its art, culture, food and, of course, music.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is the greatest free show on earth: cool parades, hot jazz, incredible entertainment and spectacular fireworks. There’s no admission charge for the romance and adventure of a city where the Old World and the New carouse together in the moonlight.

Most visitors to New Orleans have some common stops on their agendas: Bourbon Street, The Aquarium of the Americas, great jazz clubs, unique shopping venues, and, of course, the greatest eateries in the world.

But some of the finest attractions in the Crescent City are those that stand in one place, sometimes for centuries. They don’t speak or sing or change. They are the majestic and elegant statues of New Orleans, some dating back centuries, and others reflecting the most contemporary values and issues facing the city. Among all of the fine statuary of the city are the common themes of history, culture and a way of life known only in New Orleans.

In Life on the Mississippi , Mark Twain described the daily tumult of the New Orleans Riverfront as mile after mile of paddlewheel steamboats prepared to depart each afternoon.

While the old packet boats are gone from the Mississippi River today, their legacy lives on in New Orleans. Several excursion boats offer daytime and evening cruises that give modern-day visitors the same view of St. Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square enjoyed by steamboat passengers over a century ago.

The landscapes of the Mississippi River deltaic plain don't conjure up conventional images of hiking, a la the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians. But the proximity of wilderness preserves to New Orleans, and the paths that come with them, ensure that a good walk through the natural environment is never far away. At destinations like Barataria Preserve and Bayou Segnette State Park, visitors can expect to find fabulous examples of the swampy Bayou country for which this region is world famous.

New Orleans has an abundance of Zenlike spas, champagne and chocolates at four star hotels and gustatory feasts at some of the world's most original and satisfying restaurants. New Orleans has it all .... the funky, the retro, the southern, the edgy - basically, the cultural mix known to the globe's most international "it" cities.

NEW ORLEANS HOTELS


Photo courtesy Carl Purcell and New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau

home / United States / regions of America / cities of the United States / hotels and resorts in America / feature articles on destinations in the USA / news snippets / handy links / other resources /


About Us: Travel Tidings USA features vacation travel information for the cities and regions of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming. General topics covered include dining, lodging, shopping, travel accommodations, attractions, hotels, pet friendly hotels and resorts, AAA 4 Diamond Hotels, AAA 5 Diamond Hotels and more. Do not hesitate to contact us for further information at info@traveltidingsusa.com!