[Dixielandjazz] Mardi Gras Indians

[Steve Barbone]

No Dixieland in this article. Just Mardi Gras Indians. Two days to go. Hope
we get some jazz.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


NY TIMES - Mardi Gras Journal - By Jon Pareles

DAY 4 | 02.19 6:30 P.M.
A Time for Indian Gangs

The Wild Magnolias must have already finished sewing their Mardi Gras suits
‹ the fantastical, towering outfits of feathers and beads they make anew
every year ‹ because they've been gigging constantly as Fat Tuesday
approaches. On Sunday, I saw them twice in two very different guises:
performing as a band and playing on home turf.

At noontime, they were at Le Bon Temps Roulé, an uptown club with a mixture
of tourists and locals awaiting a parade up Magazine Street. Two of the
Magnolias wore their suits, one in white, one in pink, with coronas of
ostrich plumes that nearly filled the small club stage.

Behind them was their funk band, riffing crisply through familiar Mardi Gras
tunes like "Iko Iko" while the Indians added the crucial layers of cowbell,
tambourine and voices. Like a lot of Indian songs, "Iko Iko" is a vow of
pride and a threat to battle rivals, growing out of the time when Mardi Gras
Day was a time for the Indian gangs, as they still call themselves, to
rumble with genuine bloodshed rather than the flamboyance of their suits.

Bo Dollis, the Magnolias' chief and patriarch, left most of the singing to
Gerard Dollis, his son, and the other Indians. But he unleashed his raw,
leathery shout enough to prove it was still one of the strongest voices in
New Orleans music. The Indians belted the old songs, still hinting at their
belligerence as they tied them to New Orleans funk and R&B ‹ a good,
entertaining set. 

But that evening, at their own place in a tougher neighborhood ‹ Handa
Wanda's, named after a song ‹ the Magnolias were the host of a Mardi Gras
Indian "practice," a raw, freeform jam session that's as close as American
music gets to an African village ritual. Handa Wanda's is a long, narrow,
barnlike clubhouse; the dancing, singing crowd made room down the center for
an aisle where arriving Indians could run a gauntlet toward the stage.

The Indians wore street clothes, and the only instruments were drums and
percussion, in a ferocious high-speed clatter. Songs were dissolved into
drum-powered call-and-response chants, some traditional ‹ "Got a heart of
steel/and I won't back down" ‹ and some improvised. These were battle
chants, not R&B songs: "Some gonna run, some gonna hide/some gonna scream,
and some gonna die."

It was more organized than an Indian practice I saw last year; now the
singer had a microphone, for which I was grateful. But it was just as
unpredictable. Every so often, another group of Indians would arrive,
shaking their own tambourines to a different song, making a riot of
polyrhythm in the room.

At one point, a contingent showed up at the door pounding its own song and
would not stop. Gerard Dollis warned, "You better turn around and go back
where you came from." Other groups arrived and made gestures of challenge
and respect ‹ hard-eyed and staring at each other, then relaxing ‹ that were
inscrutable to a tourist like me. Once, Gerard Dollis and a visitor both
raised their arms overhead and seemed to mime sewing with a needle and
thread. 

Indians also sent their young children dancing down the aisle, and there
were roars of delight as they mimicked their parents' crouching, thrusting
moves. Members of other tribes were not announced as the microphone was
passed around. There were probably members of Creole Wild West, the White
Eagles, Yellow Pocahontas and other gangs.

"I'm a young-time fellow with old-time ways," Gerard Dollis sang, and when
he raised his voice he had a good part of his father's power. But he's also
adaptable. When the lights accidentally went out, he was in mid-chant:
"Injuns comin', turn your cell phones on," he intoned.