A corporate event in the struggling city brings stars and money but also creates tensions with the locals.
The Essence Music Festival vs. New Orleans
by Brentin Mock
The Essence Music Festival's Marketplace and Art Expo this past weekend resembled a Monopoly board. Spaces around the perimeter of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center's conference halls were bought, or rather leased. Instead of houses and hotels marking properties, there were stages and DJ booths popping all over. The area held by carmaker Lincoln featured shiny, silver Navigator SUVs glimmering like updated versions of the tiny, aluminum race car that come with the Monopoly board game.
The massive area was far more marketplace than art, and all the top corporate sponsors -- Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, McDonald's -- to name a few -- were duly represented, along with prominent placement, curiously, for the U.S. Army. If nothing else, it was an exhibition of capitalism, and the corporations knew how to reach their captive market -- through disc jockeys.
In a far back corner was a bookstore run by the local vendor Community Book Center, whose bookstore in New Orleans' Seventh Ward is an essential ingredient of the city. For 25 years, it's nourished families with books, educational seminars, art expos and its own musical festivals. When Essence visits, though, the Community's owners and operators Vera Warren-Williams and "Mama Jen" are in the Marketplace every year, greeting and rewarding the city's guests in a way that neither the mega-corporates nor the Army could. The Book Center is this event's version of Monopoly's "Community Chest."
However, the scene outside the convention center, beyond the Superdome where the nighttime concerts are held, is a city that's been failed by markets and the Army alike. When disasters such as oil spills and hurricanes have arisen, Louisiana has been left vulnerable by the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to build adequate levees and protective barrier islands. And when public housing was demolished, wiping away the few homes still standing for low-income families that the breached-levee floods didn't destroy, markets were supposed to chip in to help erect replacement affordable housing. That hasn't happened yet.
With Essence Fest, there's a legitimate question whether the 40-year-old women's magazine has a special obligation to provide more prominent placement to local businesses and artists. The expo is free -- a great service -- but the cost to attend the concerts can be prohibitive ($53 for nosebleed seats; $180 for the floor; as high as $3,000 for VIP access) in a city where close to a quarter live below poverty level (23 percent) and the median household income is $37,047 -- both 2008, pre-recession figures.
Read the Full Essay @ The Root
The Essence Music Festival vs. New Orleans
by Brentin Mock
The Essence Music Festival's Marketplace and Art Expo this past weekend resembled a Monopoly board. Spaces around the perimeter of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center's conference halls were bought, or rather leased. Instead of houses and hotels marking properties, there were stages and DJ booths popping all over. The area held by carmaker Lincoln featured shiny, silver Navigator SUVs glimmering like updated versions of the tiny, aluminum race car that come with the Monopoly board game.
The massive area was far more marketplace than art, and all the top corporate sponsors -- Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, McDonald's -- to name a few -- were duly represented, along with prominent placement, curiously, for the U.S. Army. If nothing else, it was an exhibition of capitalism, and the corporations knew how to reach their captive market -- through disc jockeys.
In a far back corner was a bookstore run by the local vendor Community Book Center, whose bookstore in New Orleans' Seventh Ward is an essential ingredient of the city. For 25 years, it's nourished families with books, educational seminars, art expos and its own musical festivals. When Essence visits, though, the Community's owners and operators Vera Warren-Williams and "Mama Jen" are in the Marketplace every year, greeting and rewarding the city's guests in a way that neither the mega-corporates nor the Army could. The Book Center is this event's version of Monopoly's "Community Chest."
However, the scene outside the convention center, beyond the Superdome where the nighttime concerts are held, is a city that's been failed by markets and the Army alike. When disasters such as oil spills and hurricanes have arisen, Louisiana has been left vulnerable by the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to build adequate levees and protective barrier islands. And when public housing was demolished, wiping away the few homes still standing for low-income families that the breached-levee floods didn't destroy, markets were supposed to chip in to help erect replacement affordable housing. That hasn't happened yet.
With Essence Fest, there's a legitimate question whether the 40-year-old women's magazine has a special obligation to provide more prominent placement to local businesses and artists. The expo is free -- a great service -- but the cost to attend the concerts can be prohibitive ($53 for nosebleed seats; $180 for the floor; as high as $3,000 for VIP access) in a city where close to a quarter live below poverty level (23 percent) and the median household income is $37,047 -- both 2008, pre-recession figures.
Read the Full Essay @ The Root
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