Guitar rock was one of the big draws at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Saturday, with Aerosmith drawing crowds to the Acura Stage, but elsewhere it seemed to be a day for scatting, especially in a vibrant performance by Dianne Reeves in the WWOZ Jazz Tent, with Anita Baker keeping Congo Square audiences rapt, and even in the Cultural Exchange Pavilion, where Kermit Ruffins had fun scatting through "Mack the Knife" in his salute to Louis Armstrong.
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Dianne Reeves was recently named an NEA Jazz Master, and in the Jazz Tent she put her deep voice, elegant phrasing and commanding stage presence on impressive display. She opened with Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," with an arrangement and attention to every syllable that makes it her own. She nimbly scatted through some songs in their entirety, sang slow contemplative love songs with minimal accompaniment, offered emotional laments such as "Cold," and then delivered a joyous rendition of "Nine," which extolls the simple wonders of childhood. Reeves doesn't even need to sing a song to show how ย skilled and assured she is, which she proves by singing introductions to her band, working in short bios, including for the piano player, who she said she'd never performed with before.
At the end of her performance, Reeves said she was going to go listen to Anita Baker, and if she did, she was not alone. The crowd at the Congo Square Stage overflowed into the infield and beyond the Jazz Fest "Ancestors" at the back of the area. The set started 15 minutes late, but Baker entered with a crowd-pleasing rendition of "Lady Marmalade." Much of the set came from her emergence as a soul jazz star in the 1980s, with the hits "Sweet Love," "Caught up in the Rapture," "No One in the World," "Same Ole Love." She stretched several of the songs out, and asked the audience to sing parts. About a half hour into her set, she told the crowd, "I've sung like three songs, and I'm exhausted." But the hits kept coming, the crowd was fine with the pace, and Baker finished with "Fairy Tales."
On the more energetic side was Jupiter & Okwess from the Democratic Republic of Congo. With two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer and singer Jupiter Bokondji occasionally on congas, it mixes Afro-pop, folk music from Congo, including a version of rumba, and rock. At the Jazz & Heritage Stage, the band jumped into a set full of propulsive rhythms with strains of funk and blues and guitar-driven space jams. Some lyrics are in French, the official language of Congo, and some are in an indigenous language.
In the Blues Tent, there was a much more familiar scene as New Orleans R&B stalwarts Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Wanda Rouzan the Dixie Cups and others had fun singing their hits. The Dixie Cups saluted Charles Neville, who died last week, with their hit "Chapel of Love," The set ended with the Dixie Cups singing "Iko Iko" and "When the Saints Go Marching In," with handkerchiefs waving throughout the tent, and "Who Dat" interlude led by Rouzan dancing with a parasol.