There is no more powerful symbol of life in New Orleans and the region around it than Mardi Gras. The annual festival along the central Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is an emblem of the area’s historical and cultural difference from the rest of the South. It also connects America’s “Third Coast” to the Old Worlds of Mediterranean Europe, West Africa, and Native America. Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”), or Carnival (“farewell to fleshly excess”), includes such events as costumed float parades, neighborhood marches or second-lines, street gatherings, informal parties, and formal balls in New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile,...

It is impossible to comprehend Mardi Gras or New Orleans or, for that matter, the Americas, without confronting the concept of creolization. “Creole” is an adjective and a noun heard throughout Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, and it is widely associated elsewhere with that region through movies, advertising, and tourism. But the term has a much older and wider application. “Creole” historically meant someone born in the New World, and in Louisiana it could refer to the offspring of French planters as well as the children of newly arrived slaves. Creole has also come to mean something entirely new, or...

While the sources of similarities between the musics of New Orleans, rural Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, and French Guiana may seem obvious to close listeners, the reciprocal influences between Cuban and Afro-French music are not so apparent. But even a listen to their musical interactions uncovers an astounding amount of cultural ingenuity and confluence as cultures, musicians, and rhythms came together. While one can trace the sources of certain instruments, instrumental ensembles, and stylistic techniques, the music enacted defies easy classification. When the music is played, its sources are subordinated to its overall sound. The complexity of the borrowings and...

Mardi Gras is but one of many festivals that grew not only from the process of creolization, but also from the few ways in which slaves were able to obtain a glimpse of New World freedoms. Slave holidays seem to have existed even under the most repressive imperial regimes. Before Emancipation, in fact, these were commonly the flashpoints of revolt, or if not, of unbridled riots. Afterward, most of them served as archives of past indignities, fueled by a replaying of the moment of emancipation. And again, unsurprisingly, as these festivals serve today as markers of the slave past and...

Mardi Gras is historically associated with French and Spanish populations along the Gulf Coast. However, many groups such as Anglo-American and Jewish cultural elites in Uptown New Orleans, Gays in the French Quarter, and African American middle-class men and women in Mobile now join in the traditional festive occasion. Mardi Gras falls on the Tuesday in February or March prior to Ash Wednesday and, hence, forty days before Easter. The Mediterranean-Latin roots of Mardi Gras are in the pre-Roman rites of spring and later Roman festival or ritual occasions such as Baccanalia, Lupercalia, and Saturnalia. Over time, were incorporated into...

Although smaller in scale and less widely known than the New Orleans Carnival, Mardi Gras in Mobile has been celebrated in various ways since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Cowbellions were formed in the 1830s and later began ordering their costumes from Paris, but during the Civil War Mobile’s public Mardi Gras was called off. In 1866, it was revived by a veteran named Joe Cain, who dressed that year as a mock Chickasaw Indian chief called “Slacabamorinico” and drove through the then-occupied city in a decorated wagon. On the Sunday before Carnival, Joe Cain is now commemorated...

The conditions after Katrina and Rita demand that vernacular creativity and the basic rules of creolization be brought to bear on the situation. Improvisation, community bricolage, breaking, and calling out provide the pattern for a future, whatever the details. The world is still there to be turned on its head. Perhaps the clean-up itself will take its pattern from the way in which Mardi Gras traditionally ends.

After the last float passes, Carnival comes to an abrupt end for those who have endured the entire time. Incredibly strong spotlights are directed at the area where there are the greatest number...