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This month\u2019s LA Jazz Festival was slated to be one of the largest concerts in Los Angeles history.<\/p>\n
With dozens of performances spread throughout every City Council district, organizers hoped the shows would draw 250,000 attendees and inaugurate the city as a home for jazz events on par with New Orleans and Montreal.<\/p>\n
Those hopes will have to wait, as organizers announced the cancellation and postponement of the festival on Friday, including its main show Aug. 22-23 on Dockweiler Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been very intentional about telling the narrative of that human rights struggle called Jazz,\u201d said Martin Ludlow, the event\u2019s organizer.<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to significant, unanticipated last-minute public safety and municipal costs associated with the final permitting of the On The Beach Festival, we have reached the decision to unfortunately postpone this year\u2019s inaugural LA Jazz Festival,\u201d organizer Martin Ludlow said in a statement to The Times. \u201cAlthough this decision was an extremely difficult one to reach, our commitment to the audiences and artists participating in the festival is to have a first-class experience worthy of the great legacy of Jazz and our great city. We were encouraged by the enthusiastic support of the artists on the bill, the fans and our sponsors for this inaugural event, and we look forward to presenting all of the components of this incredible cultural opportunity for Los Angeles and the world in 2027 and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Legend, Janelle Mon\u00e1e, Charlie Wilson, Parliament Funkadelic and Raphael Saadiq were booked to headline the main show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are so grateful to all the artists \u2014 from our headliners to our musicians in the parks, many of whom went above and beyond to make this affordable to the community,\u201d Ludlow added. \u201cAll current ticket holders for LA Jazz Festival events will be refunded in full within 30 days. We apologize deeply for this situation and vow to make this right over time.\u201d<\/p>\n
LA Jazz Festival was a major project for Ludlow, a former Los Angeles City Council member turned music promoter and community activist after pleading guilty to misappropriating funds in 2006.<\/p>\n
Ludlow announced the show in a splashy speech on the steps of City Hall in February, flanked by Mayor Karen Bass and other civic leaders. \u201cDuring this journey, you can only imagine there\u2019s a lot of highs and a lot of lows,\u201d Ludlow said then. \u201cWhen you have those lows, you want a friend that really can lift you up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in February, Ludlow described the mission of LA Jazz Festival with a civil rights-inspired fervor, saying, \u201cThis festival is intended to lift up our ancestors that came to this country in bondage, terrorized, brutalized. It\u2019s also about celebrating the end to those last bastions of Jim Crow racism, the days we were denied access to public drinking fountains, public swimming pools and public beaches. From the beginning of this journey, we\u2019ve been very intentional about telling the narrative of that human rights struggle called Jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n