Following Music

There was a day in New Orleans that was the perfect example of why I try not to turn down invitations. (And also why I should never leave my camera behind, no matter what I think I’m going to be doing.) A friend, who lives in Providence, but happened to be in New Orleans while I was–I don’t suppose it’s that strange to find people flocking to New Orleans during Mardi Gras–told me she had a friends from Rhode Island playing at the Cake Cafe and asked if I wanted to come see them with her. I envisioned a couple of folks with acoustic guitars sitting in a coffee shop and singing something that sounded suspiciously like Mumford and Sons. I should’ve known better.

One and Two Halfs Experiences of Mardi Gras Day

I wanted to do all of Mardi Gras. As far as I know this was the only Mardi Gras I was ever going to have and from the pieces of information I was gathering from the people I’d been staying with there were approximately a thousand different experiences of the day.

There was waking up early and wandering the Treme looking for Mardi Gras Indians or the Skull and Bones gangs. There was sitting on St. Charles for the thirty-second time this carnival season and watching Krewe of Rex pass by. And then maybe sticking around for the truck parades afterwards. There was marching with the St. Anne’s parade down to the Mississippi to perform rituals with the water. There was staying home and watching the whole thing from your television. There was grilling under the Claiborne overpass. There was wandering the streets, drink in hand, and reveling in a whole city throwing a party. But even that broke up into different smaller experiences, because depending on which corner you decided to make your home base the energy could be completely different. There were probably even more possibilities to experience that I didn’t ever hear about. And I wanted to do them all.

Needless to say, I didn’t quite manage it.

Four Parades in Half as Many Days

1. ‘tit R∂x

My original assumption that this parade would have something to do with dinosaurs (since ‘tit is pronounced is tee. French. I will never comprehend you.) was misguided. In fact, ‘tit means small. (There’s actually a whole story behind why it’s an ∂ in the parade’s name, and not an e, as well. Apparently Rex is the king of the Mardi Gras parades and they, quite literally, sued the little guy to protect their “brand”. You can read all about it if you’re so inclined. Am I being biased in giving you ‘tit R∂x’s account, maybe, but like I said, they’re the little guy. Who doesn’t root for the underdogs? Anyway, this parade’s name is obviously very complicated in a lot of ways.) So, ‘tit means small and this is a small parade. The floats are built on shoeboxes and pulled down the street. The parade got started a hour late because the patrol car that was supposed to escort them didn’t show up. Eventually they got sick of waiting and paraded along in the bike lane while cars continued to drive past them. Shortly after they set off their escort vehicle pulled up behind them and no one was quite sure how to proceed.

Krewe du Vieux

Krewe du Seuss may have been my favorite krewe.

Krewe du Vieux is the first parade of the Mardi Gras season, and the dirtiest. After all, “Krewe du Vieux comes early.” (As such, this post is not entirely safe for work. Somehow I have a feeling that’s not something I’m going to write often on this blog.)

I went down with a large collection of Michfest women and we staked out some prime real estate pretty early. It was funny to see how a whole crowd of people who’d been standing on the curb or behind it in a very orderly fashion for more than half an hour quickly gave up on that and pressed into the street as soon as the parade started. Krewe du Vieux is also apparently the only “walking parade” left of the Mardi Gras parades. (I gathered all these tidbits in pieces from the women I was there with, each of whom seemed to know some different fact about the history and culture of this parade, and how it fit into Mardi Gras as a whole.) This means that it’s easy to get right up to the paraders, and frequently someone parading will see a friend in the crowd and stop to give a hug and hand out some of the more special swag that isn’t just thrown about. Then they have to go jogging along to catch up with their Krewe. (The whole parade is called Krewe du Vieux, but it’s made up of smaller Krewes that come up with themes together, thus Krewe du Seuss above, as well as Krewe du Mishigas and Krewe du Muumuu and etc. This piece of trivia also brought to you by the people standing around me in the crowd.) After all, it doesn’t do to have someone dressed as a vagina to be walking with the group of people dressed as chickens. You’ve got to stick with your theme.