Sunday, April 28, at Jazz Fest: Heart, Juvenile and Mannie Fresh and more

Gambit's picks for Sunday at Jazz Fest.

Bishop Joseph Carter & the Boyz

11:15 a.m.-noon Sunday

Gospel Tent

If it’s Sunday morning at Jazz Fest, then it’s time to go to church. Kicking off the action in the Gospel Tent Sunday is Bishop Joseph Carter & the Boyz. For more than five years, they have been performing in churches and festivals across the Gulf Coast. The band brings a classic funky, rockin’ style of gospel and praise to the stage, and combined with Bishop Carter’s crowd work and presence, it’ll have even the most hungover among the flock on their feet and feeling it.

Rosie Ledet

11:20 a.m.-12:10 p.m. Sunday

Fais Do-Do Stage

Rosie “The Zydeco Sweetheart” Ledet has produced eleven records over her 30-year career in music. The Church Point native became fascinated with zydeco as a teenager, picking up the accordion after seeing Boozoo Chavis at the tender age of 17.

Since then, she and her band, the Zydeco Playboys, have become a pillar of the zydeco scene, with Ledet being one of a handful of women who over the years have successfully fronted bands in a traditionally male-dominated genre. From her precise playing to her powerful voice, Ledet leads one of zydeco’s most fun and energetic bands, ready-made for dancing and partying.

French Quarter Festival in New Orleans Sunday 2018 (copy) — Rosie Ledet & the Zydeco Playboys will perform Sunday at Jazz Fest.
Photo by David Grunfeld / The Times-Picayune

Joaquin Perez y Su Herencia Ancestral

11:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m. Sunday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

4:30-4:45 p.m. Sunday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

Jazz Fest is celebrating the music and culture of Colombia this year, and you don’t want to sleep on Joaquin Perez y Su Herencia Ancestral. According to El Universal, Perez founded the nine-piece band as a way to highlight and celebrate Colombia’s traditional styles of music, including cumbia, and it features a variety of drums and other percussion instruments, flutes and dancers. The band hails from Barranquilla, a port city of Colombia’s Atlantic coast known for its Carnival traditions. The group also leads a parade starting at the Cultural Exchange Pavilion at 4:30 p.m.

Jontavious Willis

12:15-1:10 p.m. Sunday

Blues Tent

Jontavious Willis is part of a new generation of young, Black artists who over the last decade have come up in the blues world, working to reclaim one of the foundational genres of American music and reintroducing it to Black audiences. Along with Willis, that also includes Cristone “Kingfish” Ingram (who also is performing at Jazz Fest this year) and Marques Knox.

Mentored by legends Keb’ Mo’ and Taj Mahal — who called Willis “my Wonderboy, the Wunderkind” — the Greenville, Georgia, native Willis has been performing since 2014. Playing a country blues style spanning various styles from Delta to Texas and Piedmont blues, he's produced two records, and his second album “Spectacular Class” earned him a Grammy nomination in 2020.

Jacobo Velez y La Mambanegra

12:40-1:40 p.m. Sunday

Festival Stage

3:10-4:20 p.m. Sunday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

Singer, saxophonist and producer Jacobo Velez leads the nine-piece La Mambanegra orchestra, comprised of guitars, synthesizers, drums and horns. The group hails from Cali, Colombia, known as the Salsa Capital of the World. The group’s sound is based in salsa but works in funk, R&B, jazz and raggamuffin (a strain of Jamaican dancehall music) influences to create an energetic style they call “Cali breaksalsa.” The group drew international attention from its debut album “El Callegueso y Su Mala Mana.” Last year, it released the EP “Radio Mambo Internacionale AM.”

Gaita Loop

12:40-1:25 p.m. Sunday

Cultural Pavilion

3:35-4:20 p.m. Sunday

Rhythmpourium

In keeping with the festival’s inclusion of experimental international acts, there’s Colombia’s Gaita Loop. A multi-instrumentalist, Gaita Loop uses traditional Colombian instruments, samplers, vocals and even beatboxing to create a unique sound. Their 2021 single “Fuga” is a breathtaking mix of traditional Colombian music with drum and bass beats that combine for an infectiously danceable song.

Silver Synthetic

2:50-3:45 p.m. Sunday

Lagniappe Stage

Veterans of the local rock scene Silver Synthetic make their Jazz Fest debut this year. Founded in 2017 by frontman (and BJ’s bartender) Chris Lyons of Bottomfeeders, the band also includes former Bottomfeeders drummer Lucas Bogner, Kunal Prakash and Ben Jones. The band’s first EP came out during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, followed by the criminally overlooked first full album, the self-titled “Silver Synthetic” in 2021.

The band melds classic rock ’n’ roll, old school pop and a fair bit of country to create a dreamy, melodic sound that’s reminiscent of what an early ’90s, countrified Beatles would have sounded like.

Kombalisa Mi

2:50-3:35 p.m. Sunday

Congo Square Stage

5-6 p.m. Sunday

Cultural Exchange Pavilion

“Kombilesa Mi” means “my friends” in Palenquero, a language blending African Bantu, Portuguese, French and English. It’s the language of the tiny Colombian town of San Basilio de Palenque, the first free Black town in the Americas, settled by escaped slaves in the 17th century. The nine-member hip-hop group fuses contemporary rap in Spanish and Palenquero and Colombian rhythms played on mostly traditional hand-made drums. The band is preserving the language and building relationships with other Latin American groups bridging Indigenous sounds and hip-hop. The group got wider exposure online in a Tiny Desk meets globalFEST concert in 2022.

Michael Franti and Spearhead

3:45-4:50 p.m. Sunday

Festival Stage

Since the mid-’80s, Michael Franti has been putting out high energy music that mixes an unabashedly political and socially conscious worldview with a joy and hopefulness often missing from similarly themed work.

Franti doesn’t have a single style. He often plays reggae, sure. But he’s branched out into everything else, from other forms of Afro-Caribbean music to rock to underground hip-hop with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and even the more pop-ish positivity of his latest release, 2023’s “Big Big Love.”

Over his career Franti has won a well-deserved reputation for putting on a fantastic, tight performance and his turn on Jazz Fest’s main stage will be one not to miss.

Bela Fleck: My Bluegrass Heart

4:15-5:40 p.m. Sunday

Fais-Do-Do Stage

Even in an industry like music chock full of weirdos and eccentrics, Bela Fleck stands out as an oddity. Over his nearly 50-year career, Fleck has perfected what can only be described as a psychedelic banjo style of picking that draws from psych rock, bluegrass, jazz, world music and even experimental electronic genres to create his signature style.

Fleck, who has said he first became interested in the banjo because of Earl Scruggs’ theme song for the TV show “The Beverly Hillbillies,” started his career busking on the streets of Boston. Since then, as a solo artist and with his bands Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and New Grass Rival, he has racked up 19 Grammies off more than 40 nominations.

For his Jazz Fest set, Fleck is joined by Michael Cleveland, Sierra Hull, Justin Moses, Mark Schatz and Bryan Sutton. He will be interviewed at 1 p.m. on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage.

Heart

5:30-7 p.m. Sunday

Gentilly Stage

Long before bands like Pearl Jam and Sub Pop Records solidified grunge as the Seattle “sound,” there was Heart. In fact, during their 2013 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell cited the band as a key influence on not only his development as a musician but on Seattle’s broader rock scene.

Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson have been the literal heart of the band since they first hit the scene in 1973, and the band is considered to be the first “hard” rock act to be fronted by women. Since their 1975 breakout debut record “Dreamboat Annie,” Heart has been a mainstay of classic arena rock across the globe with their hard charging, infectious style of rock ’n’ roll. They’ve had more than two dozen songs on Billboard’s Top 100 list over their career, including classics like “Magic Man,” “Crazy on You” and “Barracuda,” and they’ve sold more than 35 million records and produced top 10 records in four different decades.

The Allman Betts Band

5:35-7 p.m. Sunday

Blues Tent

Don’t let the name fool you, the Allman Betts Band isn’t some sort of tribute act to the first families of Southern rock. Founded in 2018 by Devon Allman (son of Gregg) and Duane Betts (son of Dickie), the Allman Betts Band stands on their own Southern fried music feet.

Not that fans of the original Allman Brothers Band won’t feel at home at the Blues Tent stage on Sunday. In their relatively brief history, the band has produced two records, 2019’s “Down by the River” and the 2020 follow-up “Bless Your Heart,” both of which draw from the classic sensibilities of the late rock legends. But the Betts and Allman scions have put their own spin on things, and generally their shows focus on original material with some covers of their fathers’ work thrown in.

Rolling Stone editor David Fricke interviews Allman and Betts at 2 p.m. on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage.

Juvenile and Mannie Fresh, featuring Hot Boy Turk

5:40-7 p.m. Sunday

Congo Square Stage

Jazz Fest will be graced by some of New Orleans’ true hip-hop royalty when Juvenile and Mannie Fresh take to the Congo Square stage Sunday along with the legendary Hot Boy Young Turk.

Raised in the Magnolia Projects, Juvenile first hit the local scene with his 1995 debut record “Being Myself.” After signing with Cash Money, Juvenile hit his stride, releasing his second record “Solja Rags” in 1997, in what would become the first of many collaborations with Fresh, as well as joining Lil Wayne in the Hot Boyz. But it was 1998’s “400 Degreez” that truly cemented Juvie as an international superstar, featuring classic like “Back That Azz Up” and “Ha.”

Over the last year, Juvie has seen a resurgence on the national and international scene, parlaying a now legendary Tiny Desk performance into a national tour, while here at home he’s continued to hold it down at his weekly parties at Treme Hideaway, put out a hard tea through Urban South and even a new type of CheeWees, dubbed 400 Degreez.

Fresh, meanwhile, remains the godfather of New Orleans hip-hop, whose influence can be felt across the decades thanks to his skills as a DJ, MC and producer (and Gambit’s Dec. 24, 2023 cover model!). Since his earliest days in New York Incorporated to his work with Juvenile today, Fresh has been a singular presence in the history of hip-hop and bounce music.

Both Juvenile and Mannie Fresh will be interviewed before their set at 4 p.m. on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage.