The Highland Jazz & Blues Festival is an annual music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 and arts

ARts

aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....

 event that takes place in Shreveport, Louisiana

Shreveport, Louisiana

Shreveport is the third largest city in Louisiana. It is the principal city of the fourth largest metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana and is the 109th-largest city in the United States....

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is held on the second Saturday of November at Columbia Park

Columbia Park

For other places known as Columbia Park, see Columbia Park Columbia Park or Columbia Avenue Grounds was a baseball stadium that formerly stood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...

, a city park

City Park

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 located in the historic Highland neighborhood. The festival was created by the Highland Area Partnership, Inc. (HAP) in 2003. The festival is a nonprofit event meant to contribute to the ongoing growth of the neighborhood in which its held. There is no admission charge so all will have access to the event. Proceeds are reinvested into the festival and into various community projects.

The festival draws from Shreveport's rich pool of musical talent for the bulk of the 10 bands that play during the event. However, the festival added a headliner

Headliner

A headliner is a composite material that is adhered to the inside roof of automobiles or yachts. It typically consists of a face fabric with nonwoven or foam backing. Headliners consist of multilayered composite materials that bring together multiple functionalities, including the requested look,...

 spot in 2008 that draws from outside the area for talent. The headliner is usually an example of a particular "school" of jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 or blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 music. Past performers have included Grammy Award

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 winner Henry Grey, a Chicago

Chicago

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 blues legend. The 2009 festival featured the New Orleans institution known as "Rebirth Brass Band

Rebirth Brass Band

The Rebirth Brass Band is a New Orleans brass band. The group was founded in 1982 by tuba/sousaphone player Philip Frazier, his brother, bass drummer, Keith Frazier and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, and other school marching band members from Joseph S. Clark Senior High School in New Orleans’ Tremé...

".

The festival added craft and food vendors with the 2005 event. The number of participants has grown from three to a max of fifty-six with the 2010 event