[Dixielandjazz] New Orleans & Mardi Gras

[Steve barbone]

Mardi Gras Dawns With Some Traditions in Jeopardy

NY TIMES By JON PARELES - February 28, 2006

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 27 ‹ Surrounded by bags of feathers and beads in the
bedroom of a temporary apartment, Monk Boudreaux had plans for the long
Carnival weekend before Mardi Gras. Amid the parades, costume balls and
general excess here, the 64-year-old Mr. Boudreaux would be doing what he
has done for decades: sewing his suit for Mardi Gras on Tuesday.

That suit, created anew each year, is a larger-than-life assemblage of
glitter, sequins, extremely fine hand beadwork on leather patches and giant
ostrich plumes, each feather securely sewn in to withstand a lot of dancing.
He was also finishing five other suits for his grandchildren. Mr. Boudreaux
is the chief of the Golden Eagles tribe of Mardi Gras Indians, a New Orleans
African-American parade tradition that dates back more than a century.

For longtime New Orleanians, Mardi Gras isn't a frivolous diversion from
deep problems; it's a symbol of continuity and identity. "It's not that
we're going to celebrate and party and forget our rough times," said Irvin
Mayfield, a jazz trumpeter whose father drowned during the flooding after
Hurricane Katrina. "We're going to celebrate and party and make that about
our rough times." 

Through the weekend of Carnival, parade floats for organizations like the
Krewe d'Etat and costumes at parties like the annual Mom's Ball made pointed
references to the storm and its aftermath. Krewe d'Etat's theme was a
post-Katrina Olympics, with events like Breach Volleyball and Looter
Shooting. At Mom's Ball, along with the glitter, revelers made costumes from
hard hats, hazmat coveralls and the blue tarpaulins used for temporary roof
repairs. 

After Katrina, the lingering question is whether the New Orleans cultural
traditions that had sprung up spontaneously in African-American
neighborhoods would survive.

The people in neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward, some of whom had
lived there for generations, have been scattered by the evacuation. But New
Orleans musicians, almost unanimously, insist that their traditions will
prevail. 

"You only come to New Orleans for the culture; there's no reason to come
down to these swamps otherwise," said Bruce (Sunpie) Barnes, a zydeco
musician who is also part of a Mardi Gras tradition called Skull and Bones:
skeleton-costumed dancers who pop out at Mardi Gras parades as a reminder of
mortality. They plan to appear this year.

Bands whose members have been scattered to various states have driven and
flown in to play New Orleans dates. Mardi Gras Indian practice sessions have
been held as far away as Texas. Coolbone, a brass band that played a
jazz-funeral tribute to Clarence (Gatemouth) Brown on Saturday afternoon,
now has members in Texas and Alabama; a saxophonist for the Rebirth Brass
Band now lives in New York City. But the groups are staying together.

Musicians who are synonymous with New Orleans, like the trumpeter Kermit
Ruffins, have moved back and reclaimed their regular local dates. "I
couldn't wait to get back," said Mr. Ruffins, who established himself so
quickly in Houston after the storm that he's lending his name to a barbecue
restaurant there. "All my life I grew up in the little nightclubs, and I
couldn't wait to go back to just the old hole-in-the-walls."

For musicians, as for hundreds of thousands of other displaced New
Orleanians, housing is the main problem. Real estate prices have skyrocketed
because so much of the city is uninhabitable. Mr. Ruffins said that
musicians who could make comfortable livings as New Orleans expatriates
would still be eager to return. "If they had thousands of homes for people
to stay in, I know that every musician who left would be right back," he
said. 

No upheaval would make Mr. Boudreaux change his Mardi Gras ritual. "You
gotta do this," he said. "If that spirit is in you, it has to come out."

The Mardi Gras Indians represent one of New Orleans's endangered
neighborhood traditions. So do the brass bands that play for jazz funerals
and other neighborhood parades. Parades in New Orleans aren't complete
without a "second line" of strutting, dancing, clapping spectators turned
paraders ‹ a street-level, neighborhood celebration. Now, in places like the
Lower Ninth Ward, there are no neighbors.

On Mardi Gras morning the Indians appear: shaking tambourines, dancing down
the streets and singing bellicose chants like "Iko Iko" (the basis of the
old Dixie Cups hit) and "Meet the Boys on the Battlefront." The syncopated
beat of those chants, a beat shared with old brass-band struts, pervades New
Orleans music from traditional jazz to funk; it's also called the second
line. Once the Indians were like gangs battling for turf with shotguns as
well as songs. Nowadays, they are more cooperative, and the competition is
for who can be the flashiest and the "prettiest."

The Indians traditionally have done everything on their own ‹ most of them
never tote up how much they spend on materials for their suits ‹ but this
year, some of them had help. A foundation associated with the New Orleans
Jazz and Heritage Festival (which starts April 28) bought and distributed
900 strings of marabou feathers and 175 pounds of custom-dyed large African
ostrich plumes ‹ two pounds per Indian, with 75 to 100 feathers per pound.
The festival has also been paying the cost of police permits for second-line
neighborhood parades ‹ which was raised, in January, to $3,605 ‹ and fees
for the brass bands. "This is all that is left of this jazz culture in the
world," said Quint Davis, the director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival. 

Tipitina's, a club devoted to New Orleans music, is now a nonprofit
foundation. It has been distributing instruments, including a shiny new
brass sousaphone for the leader of the Rebirth Brass Band, which had New
Orleans gigs all through the weekend. It also turned its upstairs offices
into a community center for musicians, where they can use computers, get
free legal help and meet one another: a kind of substitute for neighborhood
hangouts that are now gone. And in November 2005, it began holding Mardi
Gras Indian practices, which used to take place in neighborhood bars. The
practice sessions doubled in size each time until they outgrew the club.

Long-term questions remain about what will happen to New Orleans traditions.
High school bands in African-American neighborhoods were a vital training
ground and source of instruments for young New Orleans musicians; with far
fewer students in the city, many schools are closed down or consolidated,
and music instruction is unlikely to be the most pressing priority for those
that reopen. But on Carnival weekend, the clubs were full of familiar New
Orleans names and sounds: brass bands like the Hot 8 and the Soul Rebels,
funk bands like Galactic and the Radiators, the bluesman Walter Wolfman
Washington and jazz musicians like the New Orleans Vipers and Trombone
Shorty. 

In the aftermath of the storm, there has been a huge surge of interest in
New Orleans music. "Since Katrina, the culture in this city is being
recognized more," said Bo Dollis, chief of the Wild Magnolias, another
parading tribe. "And without the music, I don't know how this city will
survive." 

Then, flanked by tribe members in feathers and beads, he took to the stage
of the Rock 'n' Bowl in the Mid-City neighborhood ‹ much of it still dark
and deserted ‹ to sing the old Indian songs once again.