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

Early Morning Open Thread: Mardi Gras

by Anne Laurie|  March 8, 20116:05 am| 26 Comments

This post is in: Music, Open Threads

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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!
__
I did not previously know the complicated history behind Iko Iko, but I quite like this gentleman’s explanation of the lyrics…

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26Comments

  1. 1.

    stuckinred

    March 8, 2011 at 6:26 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 6:29 am

    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

  3. 3.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    March 8, 2011 at 6:37 am

    fat tuesday!

    the holiday of my people!

  4. 4.

    RosiesDad

    March 8, 2011 at 6:52 am

    @stuckinred: Can’t wait for Season 2.

  5. 5.

    mellowjohn

    March 8, 2011 at 7:32 am

    laissez les bon temps rouler!!

  6. 6.

    Steve M.

    March 8, 2011 at 8:06 am

    The Wild Tchoupitoulas gonna stomp some rump!

    Great album. Must-have.

  7. 7.

    Montysano

    March 8, 2011 at 8:09 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 8:10 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 8:20 am

    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.

  10. 10.

    Ash Can

    March 8, 2011 at 8:27 am

    Gotta get out and round up some punchkis today! We’re not too far from some good Polish bakeries, so we’ll be indulging today.

    And in other news, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is seeing if they can nail Scott Walker on campaign finance ethics violations based on his little chat with “David Koch.”

  11. 11.

    ET

    March 8, 2011 at 8:49 am

    Happy Mardi Gras!

    Wish I was with my family in NOLA.

  12. 12.

    ET

    March 8, 2011 at 8:57 am

    @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.

  13. 13.

    South of I-10

    March 8, 2011 at 9:14 am

    Happy Mardi Gras! I’m about to have a mimosa. Hoping the rain holds off.

  14. 14.

    jayjaybear

    March 8, 2011 at 9:19 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 9:19 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 9:39 am

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

  17. 17.

    kindness

    March 8, 2011 at 10:29 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 10:53 am

    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

    March 8, 2011 at 11:09 am

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

  20. 20.

    Bmaccnm

    March 8, 2011 at 11:22 am

    @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

    March 8, 2011 at 12:26 pm

    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.

  22. 22.

    Cris

    March 8, 2011 at 1:40 pm

    The Dixie Cups recording is still my favorite, but everybody should hear the dynamite 1950’s version by Larry Williams.

  23. 23.

    oondioline

    March 8, 2011 at 3:07 pm

    What kinda hoodoo religious bullshit is this?

    Take it to Amy Sullivan’s blog, pls.

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    March 8, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    @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!

  25. 25.

    sneezy

    March 8, 2011 at 7:36 pm

    @kindness:

    “God how I miss Jerry.”

    I still miss him, too.

  26. 26.

    Karen

    March 9, 2011 at 8:36 pm

    @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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