When hoots and hollers go up for Lou Phelps, the opener, one guy think he’s FKJ. The Frenchman of few words has tended to speak through his instruments, and most concertgoers seem led by a devotee proselytizing to their friends. Jazzdads don kilts and part the crowd with their deadhead sons. Girls wear bandanas for shirts, still dusty from the track.

The 50th annual Jazz and Heritage Festival has shown up in force with free energy. Inside, it is impossible to edge to the front of even the VIP balconies, let alone the floor. One gaggle of beards speaks actual French. Gender-fluid, surely fake-ID’d teens strut their peach fuzz and snapbacks. An older woman in an elegant gown-Louisiana plates-hurries in. Thirty-somethings swig whiskey from the trunk. The crowd converging on Republic is diverse by every measure. Watch FKJ play an exclusive live set on the world's largest salt flat. The young man was a triple-threat producer: programmer, arranger, and, he reminded folks-instrumentalist. He was DJing, had released an EP ‘Twins’ (2012) and was nearly relegated to turntablist, when he began playing live sets. Sound design led to electronic music in Paris, where house was dominant. “FKJ’s” mum is de la République Française, his father New Zealand (a Kiwi).įenton had been composing on guitar and piano for years when he enrolled to study audio engineering for film. Years ago Vincent Fenton, the man, conceived French Kiwi Juice, the experience. Loyalists have eschewed Frenchmen Street for the relative purgatory of the warehouse district and a genre noone can seem to define. But tonight, thousand-person capacity Republic NOLA has been sold out by one groove ambassador from the city of Tours in Western France. The pronunciations are bastardized, and deploying a Parisian accent will highlight you as a tourist. When the crowds leave Fest and Mid City, they hit the grids: color-coded cubes of aftershows, where the avant-garde can be found.įrench language is so embedded here that it slips right by.

Words by Daniel Joey Oakley / Photos by Mary Katherine Leslie-Van-Hookįestival season in New Orleans means nosefuls of night-blooming jasmine, vomit on Bourbon Street, and mud indistinguishable from horseshit at the fairgrounds racecourse.

Fkj leave my home