[Dixielandjazz] Mardi Gras Indians

[Tim]

Obviously, these are individuals who are performing because they
want/need to, regardless of what anybody else thinks.  That has always
been the tradition of the Mardi Grad Indians...it is what they are,
independent of any other opinions/ideas.

That is part of what makes New Orleans and its music great.

For further enlightenment, read "Why New Orleans Matters", by Tom
Piazza.

Listen to the marvelous lyrics of Mardi Gras songs like "Iko Iko" and do
the research to fully understand them.

Great bands of any genre are because they love and are about the music
and the feeling...not the audience.

Just my opinion, for whatever it's worth...

-----Original Message-----
From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of Steve
Barbone
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 4:02 PM
To: DJML
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Mardi Gras Indians

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.


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