Mardi Gras: The Parade That Holds the City Together
Louisiana
Mardi Gras is not a party. It is a system.
The system is built around organizations called krewes, social clubs that plan and finance and execute parades, balls, and public spectacles according to traditions specific to each krewe. Some krewes are old, dating to the mid-nineteenth century, and their membership and routes reflect the class and racial hierarchies of the city in the periods when they were founded. Rex, the King of Carnival, has reigned on the parade route since eighteen seventy-two. The older krewes were white and exclusive for most of their histories, and some remained so well into the twentieth century.
The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club began marching on Mardi Gras morning in nineteen oh nine as a deliberate parody of the white krewe pretensions. Zulu's members wore grass skirts and blackface makeup and carried gilded coconuts, inverting the ornate self-seriousness of the established krewe tradition. The krewe became one of the most beloved in the city, and its coconuts became prized throws. The commentary embedded in the original concept, that Black New Orleans was choosing to mock rather than aspire to the social order represented by the white krewes, was absorbed into the tradition.
The Mardi Gras Indians operate on an entirely different axis from the krewe system. They do not seek permits. They do not announce routes in advance. They move through the Black neighborhoods of Treme and Central City on their own itinerary, seeking each other out for competitions and encounters that the suits make possible. The Indians and the krewes occupy the same city on Fat Tuesday but inhabit different ceremonial worlds.
The day itself is the one occasion when all these systems, the old-line krewes, the Zulus, the Indians, the second-line clubs, the high school marching bands, the tourists, and the locals, converge in the same streets at the same time. What looks like chaos from the outside is the city's most legible annual statement about who it is and what it is made of.
