music · Oct 15, 2026 · DAILY TRANSMISSION
NOLA Funk Fest Lets Students Run a Stage, Because Somebody Has To Learn the Damn Controls
This weekend, a New Orleans riverfront festival turns young musicians into bookers, promoters, performers, and part of a living museum-in-progress.
A riverfront, a brass band, and a booking spreadsheet
Starting Friday, October 16, the Mississippi riverfront near the Audubon Aquarium gets loud for NOLA Funk Fest. Music runs through Sunday, October 18, across four performance areas stretching toward St. Louis Street.
There’ll be Galactic with Jelly Joseph, Dumpstaphunk, C.J. Chenier, Cimafunk, George Porter Jr., and the Original Pinettes Brass Band. That’s already a sturdy weekend of bass lines and sweat.
But the most interesting stage may not have the biggest names. It has 20 acts, about 80 student musicians, and a group of Loyola University New Orleans students helping decide who gets the mic.
The students aren’t only the opening act
The youth-focused Passing the Torch stage is sponsored by Loyola and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, or NOCCA. Its sets move through funk, jazz, hip-hop, and R&B across all three festival days.
For the first time, students in Loyola’s Howl Entertainment class booked the artists playing that stage. They’re working through Wolf Moon Entertainment, a creative collective where students practice booking, promoting, and presenting live shows.
That sounds like backstage homework until you picture it. Your choices affect a real festival schedule, real performers, and a crowd that came to see veterans. You don’t learn that by pretending a classroom is a club with sticky floors and a broken monitor speaker.
Passing the torch without making it corny
“Passing the torch” can sound like something printed on a banner beside a corporate snack tent. Here, the machinery is visible: students book acts, artists play, and the audience hears them in the same park as Louisiana music heavyweights.
Dirty Dozen Brass Band co-founder Gregory Davis is slated to emcee the student stage. That puts emerging musicians in a program with people whose work already lives deep inside the city’s musical bloodstream.
The festival isn’t selling a shiny “next big thing” fantasy. It’s offering something tougher and more useful: young local artists learning how music work actually works. Booking. Production. Promotion. Stage presentation. The unglamorous gears that keep a scene from becoming a museum label.
Meanwhile, the museum is already happening outside
Funny thing: NOLA Funk Fest is also the main fundraiser for a planned Louisiana Music & Heritage Experience museum. Organizers say the nonprofit-backed project is aiming for a 120,000-square-foot River District building in 2029.
Until then, the festival is trying out museum ideas in the open air. A Heritage Passport leads visitors through six participatory stops. There are Black Masking Indian suit and beadwork displays, plus a Cajun Village with music, dance, foodways, and demonstrations.
Bousillage, for example, is a traditional building material made with mud and plant fibers. Visitors can also find filé-making, accordion and zydeco washboard history, cooking, and dance. It’s less “please admire this behind glass” and more “come see how the thing is made.”
Saturday gets gloriously crowded
Saturday’s bill shows why “funk” is doing a lot of work in this festival name. Lost Bayou Ramblers perform with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. C.J. Chenier appears. The Toussaint Family Orchestra leads an Allen Toussaint tribute.
Nearby, somebody can watch filé being made or learn Cajun and zydeco dance steps. Zydeco is a Louisiana dance music tradition shaped by Creole communities, often driven by accordion and washboard.
That jumble is the point. Music lives in hands, kitchens, costumes, family groups, rehearsal rooms, and somebody’s risky decision to give a student booker a real job. By the river this weekend, the future won’t wait politely in the wings.
SOURCES FROM THIS TRANSMISSION
NOLA FUNK FEST | New Orleans ↗Loyola University New Orleans to Showcase Student Talent, Book Acts at NOLA Funk Fest | Loyola University New Orleans ↗NOLA Funk Fest 2026 | Oct. 16–18 | New Orleans ↗NOLA Funk Fest ft. Galactic ft. Jelly Joseph, Dumpstaphunk, Soul Project + More! | WWOZ New Orleans 90.7 FM ↗NOLA Funk Fest 2026 ↗PASSING THE TORCH | NOLA Funk Fest ↗NOLA Funk Fest ft. Allen Toussaint Tribute with the Toussaint Family Orchestra, Lost Bayou Ramplers with the LPO + More! | WWOZ New Orleans 90.7 FM ↗