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skull and bone gang

my favorite part of my first mardi gras day was the very beginning. i had set my clock for about 5am, but i didn’t make it up until closer to 5:30. still pretty early, but not early enough. by the time i had showered, bundled up in my mardi gras uniform (two pairs of long johns under my pants, a thermal top under my shirt and sweater, my down coat, a scarf, and some gloves), heated up my breakfast, and headed out alone into the cold, quiet streets, it was already past 6am, and i was already too late to catch the mardi gras indians.

i had been informed that at least one tribe would be setting out from tremé’s backstreet cultural museum at 6am, and i was hoping to knock seeing indians off my mardi gras to-do list right from the get-go. as it turned out, even if i had been on time i would have missed them; as i later discovered, they actually left around 5:30. i guess next year they’ll have the museum tell people 5:30am and actually leave at 5. hmph.

any-hoo…i was none the wiser, so i sat there on a bench across the street from the museum with a few other early-rising lookee-loos waiting for a ship that had already sailed. what did emerge from the museum on my watch was not the feathered spectacle i was expecting but a more macabre ensemble. right in front of me, wearing bulbous papier mâché skulls, skeleton painted clothing, and white leather butcher aprons, was the bone gang, the tale of which i’d once heard spoken of like the myth of bloody mary or the candyman.

“i heard they might knock on your door on mardi gras morning and tell you you’re next.”

“next?”

“to die.”

“are you serious? how do they choose you?”

“i don’t know, but it sounds scary.”

well, i wasn’t scared; i was thrilled! the myth was real! the rest of the early birds and i were lucky enough to follow the bone gang on their mardi gras morning pilgrimage. one member walked on stilts and had dreds hanging out behind his mask, lending him a menacing predator-like appearance. others carried animal bones or even the whole animal foot. they used these to bang on doors or tambourines while the leader breached the calm of the morning by bellowing refrains like:

“skull and bone gang!”

“north side skull!”

“mardi gras morning!”

“get up out the bed!”

“bone gang comin’!”

“it’s too late!”

not to mention a creepy brrr-r-r-r-aaahh sound and a crow-like shriek that gave me the chills.

they stalled traffic, menaced drivers, banged on doors, and delighted the children of the tremé neighborhood, many of whom answered their door expectantly, showing me that the bone gang was as much a part of their childhood repertoire as santa claus or the easter bunny. nonetheless, i instinctively kept behind them a little bit, hoping not to call any attention to myself for fear of being one of the few recipients singled out for their one trademark mardi gras tiding that might actually have made me nervous:

“you next.”

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the following is an excellent piece on the fascinating (and, for me at least, unexpectedly deep-rooted) historical significance of the skull and bone gang. the text, along with excellent accompanying photographs, can be found here: http://www.charlessilver.com/signsoflife.html. i’ve pasted the text below because i think it’s terribly interesting and because i know some of you lazy lima beans won’t bother following the link!

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SIGNS OF LIFE: NEW PHOTOGRAPHS FROM NEW ORLEANS
by Charles Silver

An amended exhibition text from the Carnaval Noir exhibit curated by Judy Boudreaux at McKenna Musuem of African American Art, 2003 Carondolet Street, New Orleans:

Part 2
Shadows and Spirits: The North Side Skull and Bones Gang

SKULL AND BONE GANGS

“Too late … it’s too late,” the Bone Gang warns us that death is unpredictable yet inevitable, so live right today, and they remind us to enjoy today. “Scared straight” describes the frightening role of the Bone Men since 1819, welcoming in Carnival’s dawn. From cemeteries they rise to preserve the “oldest” Indian tradition in New Orleans.

Every year in New Orleans the “Skeletons” are the first to kick-off Mardi Gras Day customs and traditions. They are known for taking to the streets before sunrise beating drums and shouting chants to wake up Carnival.

Best known of all, the North Side Skull and Bones Gang is a kind of secret society.  Its living oral traditions were most recently passed down to “Big Arthur” then to Big Chief Bone Man Al Morris and to Chief Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes. Donning handcrafted over-sized skulls and skeleton suits, wearing butcher’s aprons and carrying freshly butchered gigantic animal bones, they can be seen waking the community in the old Treme neighborhood.

Very early on the morning of Mardi Gras Day with tambourines, drums and shouts of  “Skull and Bones!,” “Bone Gang’s here!” and other chants and alarms that echo down the empty streets, the Bone Men make their way through the old neighborhoods. They run onto porches and using gigantic ham bones they knock on doors and go into homes where they yell “Wake Up! You Next!” and can be seen challenging sleepy children: “Did you do your homework? Don’t Lie to me, I’ll know. If you don’t do your homework you’re going to see me again, tonight.”

Similarly dressed  Skull and Bone gangs can be found parading through the streets during Carnival celebrations throughout the Caribbean, Central America, the West Indies and Africa.

Some theorize that like Carnival, the Skull and Bone gangs originated in Europe in the fifteenth century. Skeletons appeared as apparitions and as embodiments of the concept of ‘memento mori’ (“remember that you are mortal,” “remember you will die”) during Carnival and Lent. Others say that the spiritual presence of the Skeletons echoes the calacas of Indigenous Mexico’s Dia de los Muertes (Day of the Dead) and Haitian Voudun’s  Barron Samedi (loa of death-like Orisha of Santeria or The God of Christianity).

Not only are they often spotted parading with the Mardi Gras Indians, they also maintain a similar hierarchy within their organizations. Skull and Bone gangs just like the Mardi Gras Indians have a chief, a second chief, a spy boy, a flag boy and a wild man. There are other similarities as well. Such ancient rituals preserve customs and traditions from generation to generation. They also illustrate the complexity of African and Indigenous cultural survival amidst New World Colonial Creolization.

SACRED GROUND

The acting Big Chief of The North Side Skull and Bones Gang, Big Chief Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, described his Mardi Gras preparations in this excerpt from an article SACRED GROUND by David Winkler-Schmit, from the Gambit Weekly that appeared during Carnival, 2008.

For many New Orleanians, Mardi Gras is a neighborhood cultural celebration. In the wake of Katrina, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods — Treme — clings to its traditions against a tide of change.

Early in the morning, Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes begins his Fat Tuesday preparations to march with the North Side Skull and Bones Gang.

On Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras Indians converge on Claiborne Avenue under the I-10 overpass. For Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, Mardi Gras day begins quietly in the darkened pre-dawn hours as he takes a solitary journey to a local cemetery to commune with the dead. Kneeling before graves, he asks the spirits of the past to enter his body so that he can become their living vessel, joining his soul with theirs as he takes to the streets. Later, at sunrise, he emerges in full costume, calling out and waking up the Treme neighborhood with his group, the North Side Skull and Bones Gang, which has followed the Carnival tradition for decades.

“We’ll bring all the past dead spirits to the streets,” Barnes says. “Mardi Gras is the one day we do that.”

glossary

bloody mary

noun

a bloody mary is an alcoholic beverage made up of the following:

vodka
v8
horseradish
celery salt
worcestershire sauce
hot sauce
lemon wedge
lime wedge
spicy pickled green beans
wait…did you hear me?
i said spicy pickled green beans

dude…wtf? you ever seen a drink with string beans in it before? you ever seen a bar with a jar of string beans on it before? well, i’d never seen such a thing in all my born days…then i moved here, and it became par for the course.

“of course there are string beans in my bloody mary.”

“who doesn’t put string beans in a bloody mary?”

“who doesn’t know there’s a plastic baby in the cake??”

*smh*

any-hoo, if you do not have or do not wish to acquire all the above ingredients, a bottle of zing zang is the new orleans approved pre-made mix to substitute. and why am i mentioning any of this right now in the middle of my scintillating mardi gras coverage? because just as a king cake is the quintessential food of mardi gras season, a bloody mary is the thing to drink on mardi gras morning. i haven’t bellied up to that bar yet, but guess who has…

big red demonstrates his complete cultural assimilation

glossary

lundi gras

noun

okay, let’s review. “lundi” is french for monday, so what does “lundi gras” mean? correct—it means fat monday. and what’s so special about fat monday? well…nothing, really. it’s not like there haven’t been mad festivities going on for some time already up to this point, but just in case there wasn’t enough drankin’, dancin’, and/or debauchery to go around, the zulu social aid & pleasure club, inc. (<< yeah, inc.! and don’t you forget it!) decided, in 1993, to start having a festival on the day before mardi gras.

luckily (or not) for me, they have this festival right in woldenberg park, i.e. the riverfront right along the quarter, i.e., in strollin’ distance of my house. so what the hell…stroll i did. and what did my elvish eyes see? well, there were stages with good musical acts, and people who’d brought their chairs out to sit and listen, and vendors selling really good food, desserts, dranks (yes, dranks), art, jewelry, and other stuff. there were kids and balloons and people in costume, including a full court of alice and wonderland characters, from the dormouse on up to the queen of hearts. i ran into darren sharper’s parents there, too.

if i’d stuck around or come back, i could have watched the arrival of the king of carnival, rex. he arrives by boat on lundi gras. but you know what? blah blah blah. it was sort of a family-friendly fête, and that don’t impress me much these days. i’ll skip this next year and hang onto the $8  i spent on food instead. not that the hot crab and catfish combo wasn’t good, but man…mardi gras season sure does wind up costing a girl.

this zulu rascal wouldn't give me one of his golden nuggets. (hmm...did that sound weird to you, too?)

glossary

king cake

noun

i can now, from experience, say the following: you know mardi gras season is upon you when the king cakes start popping up. king cake is the quintessential mardi gras food item. it will be at every new orleans party you attend from new year’s day until ash wednesday. when i first heard of it, before i came here, i was excited about it. a kind of cake i’ve never had? woohoo! then i got here and discovered it’s just a glorified cinnamon roll…and not the delicious, dripping-with-butter kind either. more like if you took several cans of pillsbury cinnamon roll dough and twisted them into a big ring. pour white glaze and colored sugar on top, and—voilà—king cake.

small parts warning required

there are two things you can put inside a king cake, though, that make it special. one is the baby. there has to be a baby. native new orleanians will grumble your ears off about the fact that the bakeries don’t put the baby in anymore, instead placing it on the side for the purchaser to insert. the reason? liability. someone somewhere must have choked on a plastic baby and the bakery got sued and that was the end of that. i always look sheepish when the natives get restless over this issue…

“who doesn’t know there’s a baby in a king cake?” they exclaim.

me and everyone else that’s not from here, that’s who! is what i’m thinking in response. any idea what the word “mardi” means, jerky? no? i didn’t think so. now thank you for performing the heimlich on me. good day to you.

i suppose at some point the plastic baby represented the baby jesus, but what it represents now is who has to buy the next in the seemingly unending procession of mardi gras king cakes. a fellow americorps member of mine was hoping to get the baby when her job site had a king cake. she did get it and was laughed at hysterically when the others found out that she thought buying the cake “next time” meant next year.

“next year? hahaha! try tomorrow!”

dumb non-natives strike again.

the other thing that can be put into a king cake to make it a treat is filling. i didn’t mess with any of those fruit ones, but i did have the cream cheese filling, and believe you me—it makes a world of difference. it takes that ol’ oversized breakfast bun and turns it into something worth the caloric intake. you gotta spring for it, though; the difference between a filled king cake and an unfilled one is a good four dollars. i sprang for cream cheese for the mardi gras party at my house, and of the three (count ‘em, three) king cakes that turned up that night, mine was the only non-plain one and the only one that got finished. i may be a dumb non-native, but hey—at least i’m not cheap.

anatomy of a *good* king cake

glossary

mardi gras

noun

okay, let’s start with the real basics here. “mardi” is french for tuesday, and “gras” is french for fat. ergo, “mardi gras” together means fat tuesday. please don’t be insulted; you’d be surprised how many people—new orleans natives, no less—have no idea of the meaning of these words (or even that their city was founded by france…le sigh…but this is another story for another blog).

now… why is it called fat tuesday? well, mardi gras is a christian-based celebration that originates from the tradition of enjoying rich, decadent (or, to belabor the point, fatty) foods on the eve of lent. this was done because lent is a period of penitence, self-denial, and even fasting  carried out either in preparation for baptism (in more ancient times) or as commemoration of the death and resurrection of jesus (i.e. easter) in more modern ones.

sooooo…date-wise, you have easter—which occurs on the sunday after the first full moon that follows the vernal equinox—from which you count back forty days, the length of the season of lent (the first day of which is ash wednesday), and then you go back one more day, and there you have fat tuesday. whew. so the date of mardi gras depends on the date of easter and can, therefore, fluctuate wildly. this year it was february 16; next year it isn’t until march 8!

in new orleans, as soon as christmas and new year’s are over, mardi gras season begins. i got back from the holidays, and gone were the wreaths and trees and bells and bows. in their place was everything mardi gras in its official colors of purple, gold, and green. smiling, open-mouthed masks beckoning one and all to the monster’s ball of christianity. live it up today, folks, for tomorrow…you might wake up catholic!

index

super bowl xliv

noun

february 7, 2010

first time ever for the saints.

who dat indeed?!

update, feb. 7:

CONGRATULATIONS,

SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS!

you know, i moved to los angeles in the summer of ’99, and that season the lakers broke their losing streak and won the championship. i moved here in the summer of ’09 and…well, i think you get my drift.

you’re welcome, new orleans.

index

cajun music

first, the formalities: acadia was a region of canada colonized by the french. the acadian people were exiled at some point and migrated to other areas, including, most notably, new orleans, where the name acadian morphed into “cajun.” cajun music is the music of the (white) acadian people and is comprised of waltzes and more up-tempo two-steps played with an accordion, fiddle, bass, drum, and, of course, a vest frottoir—a steel washboard worn like an umpire’s chest protector and played with, at least where i just saw it, a pair of spoons!

so okay, where i just saw it is at tipitina’s, a new orleans music staple since the 70s, created for and dedicated to revered new orleans musician professor longhair. i went there dolo hoping that i would somehow get to learn the partner dancing that goes along with this style of music. inside was a fairly good sized dance floor covered with ashy, super old school linoleum tiling worn out in some places in a way that suggested i might be in luck. the clientele that trickled in and sat in the folding metal chairs that surrounded the floor on three sides, however, suggested that i might not. these were old people. i mean old for real. like ye olde. it looked like i had stumbled into a nursing home social. an all-white nursing home social. perhaps the 5:30pm start time should have tipped me off.

there was one brotha there, though, who had come in at the same time i did. at first i thought maybe he and i might huddle together, seeking safety in numbers, but then i saw that he knew all these old white people. folks greeted him by name and came up and hugged him and such. buh? luckily for me, megan and guadalupe showed up pretty early on and sat down next to me. turned out they were tourists from none other than my Favorite City in the World: san miguel de allende, mexico. neat!

so i sat and waited while the locally famous bruce daigrepont cajun band was busy sound-checking and giving me a little of my first exposure to people speaking cajun french. ooo-la-la! ‘bout time, chère. once the bows were rosined and the levels were good, the music began, and i quickly learned not to judge a book by its cover: those old white people could dance! they were just a’two-steppin’ and a’waltzin’ and a’twirlin’ all over that linoleum. and they weren’t hesitant to ask us newbs on the sidelines to join in. in fact, smitty had come over and addressed me and my girls-by-default before the music even started.

smitty, we ascertained, was the club social director, which we all appreciated because he made sure we had a good time. he stayed grabbing us up to teach us circle dances and every other kind of dance that went with the music. and he was good, yo. at one point, he grabbed me up for a really fast two-step. he threw everything he had at me and, as is the mark of a really great lead, i was right there in step with him for all of it. wherever my feet needed to be, they were there. it was awesome! later on, though, i was talking with one of the other two brothas that had shown up, and he laughed his ass off when i mentioned that we thought smitty worked there. “smitty paid his seven dollars to get in here just like you and me,” he cackled. hmph, i say!

so, in conclusion, bruce daigrepont’s “fais do do” (which i just now discovered is cajun for “dance party”) makes for a good time and an early night. so put on your twirly skirt, tie on a bandana, and get your ass to tipitina’s on sunday. the music is fantastic, and you’ll dance the night evening away, whoever and whatever you are. smitty will make damn sure  of that!

next stop: zydeco. because, as i learned from the brothas at tipitina’s, it is not the same thing.