The New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival - January 18 - 20, 2024

Join us for the 8th annual CBG Festival at the New Orleans Jazz Museum! More than twenty professional acts will perform, making the event the largest of its type in the world. The New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival is a unique celebration of the art, music, and cultural history of homemade stringed instruments in the city where those rudimentary devices played a key role in the early development of both the jazz and blues musical traditions. But, one of the keys to the uniqueness of the festival is that it's not a Jazz festival or a Blues festival .... not a Folk festival or a Rock festival. It's a music festival performed on unique instruments. The cigar box guitar world is populated by musicians of almost every inclination, representing the various genres, sub-genres and combined genres of today's music. The CBG festival reflects that wide array. Only 100 seats are being sold, guaranteeing each and every attendee a comfortable and intimate experience in the New Orleans Jazz Museum's state-of-the-art 3rd floor Performance Center. Enjoy this unique music festival!

Happy Birthday, Samantha Fish!

Samantha Fish was born on January 30, 1989, in Kansas City, Missouri. Fish started out playing drums, but when she was 15 she switched to the guitar. Fish frequently went to the Knuckleheads Saloon to hear touring Blues artists, ultimately joining in with the performers after she turned 18. Fish recorded and produced the live album Live Bait in 2009, which led to a record with two other female blues artists, Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde, titled Girls with Guitars, as well as an international tour in 2011. Fish won the 2012 Blues Music Award for Best New Artist for her record Runaway. In 2013, Fish released her second major studio album, Black Wind Howlin', and her third studio album Wild Heart, in 2015. Fish released her fourth solo album, Chills & Fever in 2017, her fifth, Belle of the West in 2017, her sixth, Kill or Be Kind, in 2019, and her seventh, Faster, in 2021. Fish regularly performs in New Orleans and is a favorite at local festivals. The annual Samantha Fish Cigar Box Guitar Festival showcases her unique talent using unique instruments. Today we say to this amazingly talented artist, Happy Birthday Samantha!

Photo: Salamanamanjaro

The New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival - January 18 - 21, 2023

Little Freddie King and Ghalia Volt will kickoff the 7th annual CBG Festival at the New Orleans Jazz Museum! More than twenty professional acts will perform, making the event the largest of its type in the world. The New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival is a unique celebration of the art, music, and cultural history of homemade stringed instruments in the city where those rudimentary devices played a key role in the early development of both the jazz and blues musical traditions. But, one of the keys to the uniqueness of the festival is that it's not a Jazz festival or a Blues festival .... not a Folk festival or a Rock festival. It's a music festival performed on unique instruments. The cigar box guitar world is populated by musicians of almost every inclination, representing the various genres, sub-genres and combined genres of today's music. The CBG festival reflects that wide array. Only 100 seats are being sold, guaranteeing each and every attendee a comfortable and intimate experience in the New Orleans Jazz Museum's state-of-the-art 3rd floor Performance Center. Enjoy this unique music festival!

Happy Birthday, Monk Boudreaux!

Monk Boudreaux, born Joseph Pierre Boudreaux in New Orleans on December 7, 1941, is the Big Chief of the Golden Eagles, a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. He is widely known for his long-time collaboration with Big Chief Bo Dollis in The Wild Magnolias, which he joined in the late 1960s. Dollis and Boudreaux were close friends since their childhood. In 1970, Boudreaux appeared with the Wild Magnolias at the very first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. In that same year, the group released the single "Handa Wanda", the first studio recorded music by the Mardi Gras Indians. In 1974, he appeared with the Wild Magnolias on their debut album, which featured supporting musicians Snooks Eaglin and Willie Tee. Boudreaux is exclusively featured on Golden Eagles' 1998 live album Lightning and Thunder. In 2001, after 30 years with the Wild Magnolias, Boudreaux left the group. Since then, he has performed and recorded with artists such as Anders Osborne, Galactic and Papa Mali in addition to the Golden Eagles.

Boudreaux participated in the recording and tour of the Voice of the Wetlands All-stars, a band that also featured Tab Benoit, Cyril Neville, and Dr. John among others. He is also featured on one track in Sing Me Back Home, the New Orleans Social Club's album released in 2006. In addition, he performs in New Orleans with John Lisi & Delta Funk, with whom he has also recorded. In 2010, Boudreaux appeared in the feature-length documentary Bury the Hatchet, which provides an intimate look at the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, following Boudreaux and several other Mardi Gras Indian Chiefs in the year before Hurricane Katrina, through the storm and the years after. In 2016, Boudreaux received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship. Today we celebrate the birthday of this unique New Orleanian! Happy Birthday Big Chief!

Photo: Masahiro Sumori

Happy Birthday, DJ Khaled!

Producer, rapper, songwriter, and record label executive Khaled Mohamed Khaled, better known as DJ Khaled, was born in New Orleans on November 26, 1975. A popular radio host at a hip hop station in the 1990s, he DJ’d at Terror Squad’s live shows and eventually gained production credits on their recordings. His 2006 debut album “ Listennn... the Album” achieved gold, and Khaled founded his own label, We the Best Music Group. He has continued to achieve great success with his subsequent releases, even garnering a Grammy nomination in 2016 for Best Rap Album for his ninth studio album, “Major Key”. Subsequent releases have also achieved great commercial and critical success, with his 2019 album, “Father of Asahd” achieving number 2 on the Billboard 200. Khaled is also a prominent media personality, an actor, and he is a New York Times bestselling writer with his book The Keys.

Photo by: Meghan Roberts - DJ Khaled, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46144938

Celebrating the Birthday of Dr. John

On November 20, 1941, New Orleans gifted the world with Malcolm “Mac” John Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, the Night Tripper. Rebennack was a singer, songwriter and musician whose unique “New Orleans Sound” combined blues, pop, jazz, soul, boogie woogie, funk, and rock n roll, and whose stage appearance was inspired by Mardi Gras Indians and voodoo shaman. He made his album debut with Gris-Gris in 1968, and had a hit single in 1973 with “Right Place, Wrong Time”. Over the following decades, Dr. John has released numerous albums and songs covering a wide range of styles and genres, becoming a six-time Grammy winner along the way. He was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Dr. John passed away in his beloved New Orleans on June 6, 2019.