…As Mayor La Toya Cantrell Unlocks New Orleans’ Vast Economic Potentials with Festival

By Olatunji Oke

Some of Nigeria’s leading entertainers like Wizkid, Kizz Daniel, Richard Mofe Damijo, and Stella Damasus are currently in New Orleans for the Essence Music Festival of Culture regarded as America’s largest celebration of Black culture and achievement. The three-day festivity, which began Thursday, June 29, and runs till Monday, July 3, combines high-octane music performances with inspirational speakers and provocative conversations about gender, race, culture, and art.

The presence and performance of the Nigerian stars are predicated largely on the growth of the homegrown movie industry popularly called Nollywood and the rise, renown, and mainstreaming of Afro Beats on the global music scene.

While Wizkid and Kizz Daniel join a long list of American music heavyweights like Lauryn Hill, Jermaine Dupri, Wyclef Jean, Ludacris, and Megan Thee Stallion among others to perform some of their chart-bursting hits to the ecstatic and eclectic crowd, RMD and Damasus led other Nollywood stars to a welcome party organised by the Mayor of New Orleans, La Toya Cantrell. The reception party was tagged ‘Hip Hop Sip & Shop’ to also celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip hop.

At the colourful ceremony, Mayor Cantrell, the first black female Mayor of New Orleans, said, “I am excited to welcome the ESSENCE Festival of Culture back to the City of New Orleans!
The ESSENCE Festival of Culture is considered the largest festival in the nation in terms of single-day attendance, with an average of 176,000 in-person attendees PER day. Last year’s ESSENCE Festival brought in over 500,000 visitors and brought in more than $300 million to our local economy! New Orleans is home to the ESSENCE Festival and we will continue to be proud partners with Essence to bring this festival back to the city for years to come.”

To lend credence to her assertions, a study commissioned by Essence and generated by Dillard University declared that the 2022 festival had a $327 million impact on the City of New Orleans’ economy. Before Essence, the city struggled in the summer because of the sometimes tumultuous and always hot weather. Now, the festival is a major rainmaker for the city’s summer tourism season.

Further, Mayor Cantrell urged her Nigerian guests to take advantage of Louisiana’s successful film tax credit, a state-run program that is open to all motion picture production companies headquartered and domiciled in Louisiana to produce nationally or internationally distributed motion pictures. 

The Mayor announced that the program, which has significantly boosted the hospitality and tourism sector in New Orleans, has now been extended to 2031. Indeed, New Orleans has evolved into the fourth largest film production hub in the United States due largely to Mayor Cantrell’s many interventions, studio infrastructure, diverse architecture, and scenic and historic neighbourhoods. 

Like New Orleans, which is regarded as the most pro-African city, Lagos, the most populated black city, is the hub of filmmaking in Nigeria. Also, Mayor Cantrell reportedly views New Orleans and Lagos as two peas in a pod. Her city being one of the recipient ports of enslaved Africans to the United States from Lagos where 70% of Africans who were victims of the slave trade were exported. Added to that is the robust cultural heritages of the two cities. 

Abiodun Ogunjobi, leader of ‘The Brotherhood,’ a delegation of Nigerian-born American business professionals based in Ohio commended Mayor Cantrell for her initiatives on creative economies while promising their unflinching support for what they described as a prospective multi-million dollar partnership.

Held over Fourth of July weekend at the Caesars Superdome and throughout downtown New Orleans, the Essence Music Festival berthed nearly 30 years ago when the creators of Essence Magazine came to New Orleans to celebrate the publication’s 25th anniversary with a salute to Black women highlighting culture, empowerment conversations with the nation’s thought leaders and, of course, music.

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