Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Come on, man.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

He really is that stupid.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let there be snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

It’s the corruption, stupid.

You are here: Home / Music / Early Morning Open Thread: Mardi Gras

Early Morning Open Thread: Mardi Gras

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Shrove (Pancake) Tuesday, time to use up all the saved butter and sweetener, before Ash Wednesday and Lent’s enforced fasts. (Enforced, for most of our European ancestors, by the starvation season between the end of last year’s harvest and the first of this spring’s growth — but if you’re going to suffer anyway, might as well get some spiritual credit in return.) Carne vale: farewell to the flesh!
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I did not previously know the complicated history behind Iko Iko, but I quite like this gentleman’s explanation of the lyrics…

Reader Interactions

26Comments

  1. 1.

    stuckinred

    The Mardi Gras Indians are one of the main story lines in Treme. Clarke Peters is stunningly good as Chief Albert Lambreaux.

  2. 2.

    stuckinred

    Mardi Gras Indians are being introduced to much of the country through Treme, but Clarke Peters had an idea what he was getting into when he signed on to play Albert Lambreaux. He first saw them when Wendell Pierce, who co-starred with him on The Wire, invited him to Mardi Gras in 2004.

    “It blew my mind,” Peters says. “Those men made those costumes. They sewed every bead, they picked every feather. The process is daunting, just selecting a feather to see how it moves, selecting a bead to see how the light works on them. There’s not another community of Black men in America that does anything like this.”

    Peters did background reading to prepare for the part, reading Louisiana history, about the connections between African Americans and Native Americans, and in his mind traced Lambreaux’s roots back to Africa. He worked with Big Chief Donald Harrison of Congo Nation and Otto “Chief Fiyo” Dejan of the 7th Ward Hard Head Hunters to get Lambreaux right (Dejan plays one of Lambreaux’s Indians on the show). Through Harrison, he says, “I learned what to do and what not to do. There are certain signs that are either inviting or provocative to another chief.” From Dejan he learned the chants. “Even in that, it’s pretty specific what you say, what not to say, what order you say them in,” he says. He knew he’d got the attitude right when another Mardi Gras Indian chief challenged him on set. “The only response I have to any challenge is what’s been scripted, so I ran it to him, but I ran it to him like it was mine,” Peters says. “He said, ‘Yeah, you’ll do.’

    “If you’ve ever seen a Mardi Gras Indian chief’s eyes when he dons the suit, that man is another zone. His spirit is elevated to another place. They’re warriors.”

    –Alex Rawls

  7. 7.

    Montysano

    When we lived in New Orleans in the 80s, I worked at the Convention Center. There was a carpenter who worked there named Jake Millon. To the white folks he was just Jake, but to the African Americans he was, by god, Big Chief Jake of the White Eagles, a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. For me, a guy from the cornfields of Indiana, becoming friends with Big Chief Jake was incredibly exotic. He was a wonderful guy.

    Jake died a couple of years before Katrina. I think that was a good thing. Our years in NO were the best of my life. Maybe someday I’ll be able to consider going back.

    Laissez les bon temps rouler!!

  8. 8.

    Alwhite

    I always wondered where ‘Iko-iko’ came from & assumed it was African because of the beat and the word sounds. Did not associate it with New Orleans. THANKS!

  9. 9.

    A Farmer

    I’m eating me some doughnuts for Fat Tuesday. If DougJ’s head didn’t explode from Bobo’s blog,
    he and Tom Levenson will have a fit that McMegan made the Time 25 best financial blogs.

  12. 12.

    ET

    @Alwhite: I guess that since I grew up there it never occured to me that it wasn’t from NOLA. One of the lyrics “My Flag Boy Said to Your Flag Boy, I’m Gonna Set Your Flag on Fire” would likely only mean something to a local.

  14. 14.

    jayjaybear

    Or, as we call it in Amish country, Fasnacht Day! I expect to see plenty of boxes of donuts around the office today…

  15. 15.

    JD_PhD

    You know the whole “carne vale” thing is a myth, right? And if you have to eat up a whole bunch of rich foods, that suggests that there wasn’t much starving that needed to go on.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    Mardi Gras has spread to Los Angeles, so I’m in charge of picking up the King Cakes this morning.

  17. 17.

    kindness

    Isn’t Wikipedia a wonderful thing? Even if you can’t use it as a reference.

    My first Aiko-Aiko exposure was at Dead shows. Never failed to throw us all into a wild dancing and sing along frenzy. God how I miss Jerry.

  18. 18.

    Bubblegum Tate

    I made a simple little remix of “Iko Iko” (The Dixie Cups version) to play in clubs when I DJ. It kills pretty much every time–even the hip little 21-year-olds know it and sing along with it.

  19. 19.

    canuckistani

    You know what the best thing about atheism is? I get to eat pancakes Whenever I Want.

  20. 20.

    Bmaccnm

    @Montysano:
    I also lived in NOLA in the late 70s-mid 80s, and I consider those years some of the best of my life. Of course, i was much younger then, and didn’t know much about much. I loved the random moments on life in NOLA- turning a corner to find an amazing band at a neighborhood bar, seeing flashes of slave-built splendor on foggy mornings, the highest food standard of any city I’ve ever been in. I never, never got a bad meal in NOLA,and I sure as hell couldn’t afford to go any place fancy. There was a strong, artful, resilient culture. Most of those people did not return, and the city has been Disneyfied. I visited briefly, and I thought hard about returning after Katrina, but it seems that most of the city I loved is gone. Tragic.

  21. 21.

    russell

    Some good stuff on the Mardi Gras indians here. The author, Tom Morgan, has a good show on WWOZ, which you can listen to right here on the internets.

    Besides the Tchoupitoulas, music by the Flaming Arrows and the Wild Magnolias is pretty readily available. Louisiana Music Factory in NOLA can also hook you up with a lot of harder-to-find stuff.

    Seriously, go spend some money on some real American culture, you’ll be helping some folks out.

  23. 23.

    oondioline

    What kinda hoodoo religious bullshit is this?

    Take it to Amy Sullivan’s blog, pls.

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    @JD_PhD:

    And if you have to eat up a whole bunch of rich foods, that suggests that there wasn’t much starving that needed to go on.

    In dairy-reliant cultures (my people were Celtic & Viking), butter is a relatively low-spoilage way of storing extra calories. And in ‘those days’, as it was explained to me, the rich were enjoined by the social authorities to demonstrate kinship with the rest of us at least once a year, because fair is fair.

    Of course the form remained long after the function; my parents remember their parents scrimping ration coupons during WWII to be sure they’d have “extra” fats for Fat Tuesday!

  26. 26.

    Karen

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m in charge of picking up the King Cakes this morning.

    I want King cake but I’ll settle for Irish Soda bread…

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