With hundreds of performances out at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, it’s hard to know where to start. So Gambit has some suggestion for bands and musicians to see on the second Saturday of Jazz Fest 2025.
Yusa Cuban Soul
1:25-2:15 p.m., Jazz & Heritage Stage
Yusa grew up in Havana, Cuba, and was encouraged to pursue her musical curiosity from an early age. She trained at the prestigious Amadeo Roldán Conservatory, where she absorbed a wide array of influences, from classic trova and son cubano to jazz, bolero, and North American pop.
A multi-instrumentalist, Yusa moves effortlessly between bass, guitar, keys and the Cuban tres. But it’s her voice — deep, smooth, and quietly commanding — that centers each track. Often compared to Tracy Chapman, she’s also known to rap, improvise, and bend melody and phrasing with poetic instinct.
Expect grooves that nod to funk and folk, bossa nova ballads that feel like ocean breezes, and inventive twists on Cuban accent and rhythm. Her music doesn’t just reference Cuban history — it reinvents it in real time. — LIAM PIERCE
Rickie Lee Jones
1:40-2:30 p.m., Gentilly Stage
Chicago-born singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones started her career off strong with her 1979 self-titled album, which was commercially successful and included her hit “Chuck E.’s in Love.” She soon after won the Grammy Award for best new artist. She’s gone on to release 14 more albums since, spanning genres from jazz and soul to rock and pop in a signature soft and breathy tone.
New Orleans has been a part of her life for a while. In 1990, her cover of “Makin’ Whoopee” with Dr. John earned her a second Grammy. Then, in the early 2010s, she moved to the city and has been here ever since, an experience she told Tidal in 2023 “has changed pretty much everything.”
Gwen Thompkins also will interview Jones on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage at 12:15 p.m. Thursday. — KAYLEE POCHE
Samantha Fish
1:45-2:45 p.m., Festival Stage
Though she originally hails from Kansas City, Missouri, Samantha Fish has made a home in New Orleans. She’s built a following for her blues and retro rock ’n’ roll recordings and searing solos onstage.
At her Jazz Fest set, expect to hear rollicking new tracks from Fish’s latest full-length album, “Paper Doll,” which was released April 25. After the festival, the singer and guitarist will head out on a tour of the U.S., U.K and Europe. — SARAH RAVITS
Rickie Lee Jones
Nicholas Payton and Triune feat. Karriem Riggins
4:20-5:30 p.m., WWOZ Jazz Tent
Multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Payton has long outgrown his onetime Young Lions label, but the deep knowledge about and experience with the music that led him to that position haven’t waned. Over the years, Payton has leveraged the reservoir of Black American Music as foundation for much more progressive works and expanded his primary instrument base from trumpet to a mix that also includes Fender Rhodes and Clavinet.
He’s also teamed up regularly with drummer and producer Karriem Riggins. The pair’s partnership dates back (at least) to a mid-’90s session they recorded with Common that Payton later dropped on SoundCloud as “BoomBap,” a nod to that era’s fluid, jazz-infused hip-hop style. In more recent collabs like “The Couch Sessions” and “Smoke Sessions,” the duo’s dynamic still feel tied to that aesthetic, albeit with more cerebral grooves and liquid flows.
Bassist Esperanza Spalding is set to join them at Jazz Fest and at Café Istanbul this weekend. — JENNIFER ODELL
The Headhunters feat. Bill Summers and Mike Clark with Eric Krasno
4:35-5:30 p.m., Jazz & Heritage Stage
In 1973, Herbie Hancock’s album “The Headhunters” made an indelible mark on the landscape of jazz, funk, rock and pop music for decades to come, making unlikely hits out of the recording’s long, slinky earworms. Those included “Watermelon Man,” featuring the uber-dexterous Bill Summers on a slew of African percussion instruments and, famously, blowing into a beer bottle.
The band’s 1974 follow-up, “Thrust,” found drummer Mike Clark in the mix, launching a musical partnership between Summers and Clark that continues today with help from saxophonist Donald Harrison, keyboardist Kyle Roussell and bassist Chris Severin.
The Headhunters’ latest album, “The Stunt Man,” builds on the legacy of Hancock’s seminal band while incorporating New Orleans rhythms and piano aesthetics, Afrobeat elements and heavy doses of groove. The addition of Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno should only up that ante. — JENNIFER ODELL
Pearl Jam
5-7 p.m., Festival Stage
Is Pearl Jam now a legacy act? With 35 years under their belts, sure. But that also dramatically undersells Pearl Jam. The band formed in Seattle in 1990, and with Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, helped re-shape rock music. Songs like “Alive” and “Even Flow” are seared into the brains of not only Gen X slackers but virtually everyone born into the era after “Ten” was released.
But last year’s “Dark Matter,” Pearl Jam’s 12th studio album is arguably the band’s best since their ’90s explosion — probably helped by the fact the album’s producer, Andrew Watt, was born in 1990 and grew up on Pearl Jam’s music. It showed Pearl Jam is a remarkably consistent band of five guys who still enjoy making music together, know how to evolve and still write loud, socially conscious rock. — JAKE CLAPP
Kenny Wayne Shepherd with Bobby Rush
5:30-7 p.m., Blues Tent
Bobby Rush was not a young man when he won a Best Traditional Blues Album Grammy Award for “Porcupine Meat” in 2017. He won the same trophy for last year’s “All My Love for You,” and at 91, he’s not slowing down.
He teamed up with fellow north Louisiana native and bluesman Kenny Wayne Shepherd to write and record “Young Fashioned Ways,” released in January. Shepherd is half Rush’s age, but the title is a nod to their shared admiration for Muddy Waters. The record is steeped in classic blues riffs, and it has some of the saucy lyrics Rush is known for, including on new versions of four or his songs. — WILL COVIELLO
Ledisi
Margo Price
5:35-7 p.m., Fais Do-Do Stage
Though Margo Price hails from Illinois, she sounds like she was immaculately conceived in Nashville. A background in theater and church choir harmonies eased her transition into Music City, where she waited tables and taught dance at the YMCA while chasing gigs.
Her voice hits those Dolly Parton highs but can grovel down to a rumble, making it ideal for country’s personal narrative traditions. But in recent years, Price has turned that voice outward: to protest, channeling Bob Dylan-style Americana to tackle gender inequality, political hypocrisy and social unrest. Her sets are just as wide-ranging. Soaring psych-rock ballads like “Radio,” lonesome outlaw country, beer-soaked honky-tonk, and twangy barnburners all run side by side.
Price also will be interviewed by Scott Jordan at 1 p.m. Saturday on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage. — LIAM PIERCE
Tems
6-7 p.m., Congo Square Stage
Nigeria has been the hotbed of contemporary Afrobeats, a genre dominated by club-ready, up-tempo rhythms. But while Temilade “Tems” Openiyi watched her peers ride that wave, she cooled those searing beats in favor of a soul-steeped brand of R&B. She puts narrative first, singing of longing and lost love in a slightly pinched, brassy register that wrings emotion from every line.
Ironically, that left turn opened the door to her biggest breakthrough: a feature on Afrobeats superstar Wizkid’s 2020 hit “Essence,” the first Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Since then, the collaborations have poured in: Drake, Future, Beyoncé, Rihanna. Each one sought out the depth she brings — not just a hook, but a feeling. — LIAM PIERCE
Ledisi Sings Nina
6-7 p.m., WWOZ Jazz Tent
New Orleans-born, Oakland-raised singer Ledisi dedicated her 10th studio album to legendary musician and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Recorded with the Netherlands-based Metropole Orkest, “Ledisi Sings Nina” was well-received and garnered nominations for a Grammy Award and an NAACP Image Award. She’ll now perform many of those Simone songs during her set at Jazz Fest.
Ledisi, who also is a film and television actor, performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black National Anthem, at the Superdome before the Super Bowl in February. Her 12th studio album, “The Crown,” just dropped on April 25.
Ledisi also will be interviewed by Karen Celestan at 1:15 p.m. Sunday, May 4, on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage. — SARAH RAVITS
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com ’
