On Saturday, January 31, Rockin’1000 performed for the first time in the United States with a concert at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. A thousand musicians on the same stage, coming from 26 countries and 48 states, have played a selection of great rock classics in front of a stadium audience, bringing overseas a format that in the last ten years has already crossed much of the world.
The event followed the typical structure of Rockin’1000: a great rock orchestra composed of guitarists, bassists, drummers, singers and breaths that play in unison, focusing more on the collective impact than on individual performance. It is a formula that does not try to surprise by originality, but by scale, and that precisely for this it works in spaces designed for sport and for great events, like the Superdome.
To make the concert specific for the context was the direct involvement of the local music scene, with a special moment of welcome directed by Harry Connick Jr. and the participation of brass bands, gospel choirs and musicians related to the city tradition. More than just a tribute, the insertion of these elements has avoided the “format effect dropped from above”, adapting the Rockin’1000 plant to a city where music is part of everyday life and not only of show.
The debut in the United States is a significant step because it marks Rockin’1000’s entry into the country that gave rise to rock as a popular and industrial language. Starting from New Orleans, recognized in 2025 as the Creative City of UNESCO Music, it means comparing with an audience accustomed to reading music as a cultural fact before even as an entertainment.
Born in 2015 by an idea by Fabio Zaffagnini, Rockin’1000 has grown to become an international community of over 100,000 musicians, capable of filling stadiums in 20 countries and transforming amateur participation into a large-scale professional event. The New Orleans concert did not try to change this model, but to show its estate in one of the most symbolic contexts possible.
More than a celebration or a point of arrival, the live American was a verification: understand if a project born as a European viral initiative could work there where rock is a native language. The answer, at least from the point of view of participation and stage performance, was clear.
L’articolo Rockin’1000 debuts in the United States, New Orleans proviene da IlNewyorkese.
