Three Louisiana cities—Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette—today will officially become part of the Americana Music Triangle, a new tourism marketing campaign that promotes a 1,500-mile stretch of highway across five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The initiative specifically will highlight more than 30 communities, including Baton Rouge, that are among those that gave birth to nine genres of American music—blues, jazz, country, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, gospel, Cajun, zydeco and bluegrass. The Nashville-based project aims to launch a global grassroots movement for American music tourism and build an online community dedicated to the Triangle’s culture and history, according to the Americana Music Triangle website.
Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne will attend the kick off ceremonies later today in Lafayette, where the Americana Music Triangle bus is making a stop. Dardenne spokesman Jacques Berry says the lieutenant governor’s office, which doubles as the Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, was not asked to put up any state money to help support the effort, but that a department staffer attended an organizational meeting for the group in Mississippi.
It’s unclear how much tourism-related business Louisiana might hope to gain from the Triangle project, which will promote driving routes throughout the South with stops at significant music-related destinations. But Berry says the office has seen an increase in music-related tourism since it heavily promoted Louisiana music in 2012.
“That year we promoted music as a theme, and from what our stakeholders told us it brought more tourists with an interest in music to the state,” he says.
—Stephanie Riegel
