By Claire Soares, Correspondent

ST. LOUIS, Senegal – If it weren't for the men in boubous, you might think you were in New Orleans. The same snatches of jazz waft among the wrought-iron railings and wooden balconies, but this is the jazz capital of Africa, not America.

Here, the dress code is not black turtlenecks but colorful long robes (boubous); the tipple is a Coca-Cola rather than a martini. Banished are the conventional jazz connoisseurs studiously stroking their beards; at tonight's gig, the fans are more likely to be drumming along on their plastic chairs.

Now in its fourteenth year, the St. Louis festival has attracted some of jazz's biggest names, from Herbie Hancock to Roy Haynes. Inheriting the 'star attraction' mantle this year is American saxophonist Jessie Davis. "It's my first time in Africa," he bellows to the crowd, sat under a starry sky in the town's main square.

It is a motivation that crops up in Senegal's St. Louis year after year. While European artists tend to relish escaping the stuffiness that characterizes the jazz scene back home, for many of the American musicians, it is an opportunity to discover their roots.

"It does my heart good to come to a place and see people that look like me, like my cousins and like Leroy down the street," Davis tells me backstage, sweat dripping off his face after a mammoth two-hour set.

"I'm from New Orleans originally and it's very similar to the vibe there," says the saxophonist, who has played with Milt Jackson and Wynton Marsalis. "It's been a wonderful revelation. I have anticipated this trip my whole life."

It is just not an ethnic retracing of steps, but a musical one too. The clash of African rhythms and European instruments on the clean slate that was the United States is often said to have given birth to jazz.

Africa's musical traditions are as strong as ever. Wander around the center of St. Louis on any given day and you'll see young girls dancing to a tune in their heads, mothers singing to their babies, and guys on street corners banging out a rhythm on their drums – a big djembe wedged between their legs or a small tama tucked under an arm.

Each night during the jazz festival, local musicians pack into backstreet bars and play alongside visiting musicians. These unscripted jam sessions, a rarity in the rest of the world, often trump anything on the official program. With untrained raw talent mixing with schooled professionals, anything goes and it usually goes until the sun comes up.

Organizers say the jazz festival draws up to 60,000 people from around Africa, Europe, and the United States, and it certainly provides the annual moment in the spotlight for the town, France's first settlement in Africa.

Newcomers – whether musicians or music lovers – revel in the photogenic faded pastels of the colonial buildings that line the island city centre and marvel at the bridge linking it to the mainland that was built by Gustav Eiffel, of the tower in Paris fame.

But the picture postcard world of the jazz festival – its root-seeking musicians and pleasure-seeking tourists – is shattered just a few hundred meters from the main stage.

Walk across another less famous bridge on the other side of the island, and you set foot on a thin peninsula, the last land barrier before the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge, built by an anonymous designer and now a mass of twisted rusting metal, splintered planks, and gaping holes, feels more like an obstacle course (although clearly not to the Senegalese egg vendor who sped across effortlessly in front of me).

On the peninsula's white sand beach, a woman washes her vegetables in the waves while a dead dolphin decomposes in the sun. Occasionally casting their eyes gloomily at the trawler silhouettes that dot the horizon, local fisherman complain about depleting fish stocks as they lug their brightly-colored pirogue boats up the sand and offload a disappointing day's catch.

By night, the traditional pirogue vessels play another, more sinister, role. They leave on a clandestine sea voyage, packed with young men, hoping to break into Fortress Europe, hoping for the chance to earn a decent wage even if it means doing menial jobs and living in squalid conditions. Thousands have perished en route, either getting lost, running out of food, or drowning when their boats capsize.

Musicians like Jessie Davis, whose forbears were shipped off the continent as slaves, may get a buzz from coming back to their ancestral land, but such sentiments are largely irrelevant to the current day inhabitants. For many St. Louis youngsters, the idea of tough labor overseas is a lifeline to which they aspire. And jazz? Jazz is just a once-a-year interlude.