Mardi Gras and Jazz

When you think of New Orleans, two things probably leap into your mind: Mardi Gras and jazz music. And appropriately so. The two go hand-in-hand just like beans and rice, or crawfish and hot sauce, or gumbo and okra. You get the picture. A Mardi Gras celebration without jazz is unimaginable!

The Carnival season begins on Twelfth Night, January 6^th. The city holds masquerade balls, king cake parties, and concerts. About two weeks before Fat Tuesday (or, in French, Mardi Gras), the parades crank up. There’s at least a parade a day to celebrate Carnival, and some days see several parades. The five days preceding Fat Tuesday, the parades become bigger, louder, and more elaborate, culminating into the biggest bash of all on the Tuesday of Mardi Gras.

Virtually every event features some form of jazz music. The balls and parties generally include jazz in their entertainment repertoire, and the parades feature scores of jazz musicians and marching bands performing Dixieland jazz. In fact, some of the parades have a requirement that at least one jazz band must be in the procession!

Early on the morning of Fat Tuesday, the sounds of marching bands, some founded over a century ago, fill the streets of New Orleans with Dixieland jazz. The all-day celebrations around the city feature a number of jazz performers, often including famous musicians and vocalists like Branford Marsalis, Rockin’ Dopsie, Kermit Ruffins, Amanda Shaw, Big Al Carson, Charmaine Neville, Al Johnson, Irma Thomas, Jason Neville, and native sons Harry Connick, Jr., Frankie Ford, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, and Pete Fountain.

Several of the city’s restaurants offer elegant Mardi Gras brunches with live jazz, and the smoky, seductive notes of jazz spill onto the streets from clubs and lounges. Parks and squares pulsate with the rhythmic offerings of jazz on the big day.

Even a few New Orleans churches join in on the action. For example, St. Augustine’s, located in the oldest primarily black neighborhood in the city, holds a special Mardi Gras Mass where famous jazz musicians perform.

Why is jazz music such an integral part of Mardi Gras? Well, for one thing, the kind of Mardi Gras celebration we know today was born in New Orleans, just like jazz was. They more or less “grew up together.” Also, the Creoles had a huge impact on both institutions.

The term “Creoles” was historically used to include people of mixed race, with French, Spanish, West Indian, and African blood. It became a powerful culture in New Orleans, with many Creoles owning plantations and occupying the upper class. In 1894, strict segregation laws forced the Creoles to move to the city’s West Side and live among poor, uneducated American blacks. The two cultures became intertwined, and jazz music was the creation of “Creoles of Color.”

The Creoles also had much influence on the traditions and celebrations of Mardi Gras. The holiday was first brought to Louisiana by French settlers, who brought their traditional European Carnival customs with them. Since the Creoles also shared French ancestry, it’s only natural that they would include their music in the celebrations of the French Mardi Gras.

All this history is seldom of interest to Mardi Gras revelers. They’re usually much too busy catching beads, feasting on traditional foods, being amazed by the elaborate costumes and floats, or grooving to the seductive sounds of jazz. Or as they say in New Orleans, everyone “Pass a good time.”