With this colorful study, Reid Mitchell takes us to Mardi Gras--to
a yearly ritual that sweeps the richly multicultural city of New
Orleans into a frenzy of parades, pageantry, dance, drunkenness,
music, sexual display, and social and political bombast. In "All on
a Mardi Gras Day" Mitchell tells us some of the most intriguing
stories of Carnival since 1804. Woven into his narrative are
observations of the meaning and messages of Mardi Gras--themes of
unity, exclusion, and elitism course through these tales as they do
through the Crescent City.
Moving through the decades, Mitchell describes the city's
diverse cultures coming together to compete in Carnival
performances. We observe powerful social clubs, or krewes,
designing their elaborate parade displays and extravagant parties;
Creoles and Americans in conflict over whose dances belong in the
ballroom; enslaved Africans and African Americans preserving a
sense of their heritage in processions and dances; white
supremacists battling Reconstruction; working-class blacks creating
the flamboyant Krewe of Zulu; the birth and reign of jazz; the gay
community holding lavish balls; and of course tourists purchasing
an authentic experience according to the dictates of our commercial
culture. Interracial friction, nativism, Jim Crow separatism, the
hippie movement--Mitchell illuminates the expression of these and
other American themes in events ranging from the 1901 formation of
the anti-prohibitionist Carrie Nation Club to the controversial
1991 ordinance desegregating Carnival parade krewes.
Through the conflicts, Mitchell asserts, "I see in Mardi Gras
much what I hear in a really good jazz band: a model for the just
society, thejoyous community, the heavenly city...A model for
community where individual expression is the basis for social
harmony and where continuity is the basis for creativity." "All on
a Mardi Gras Day" journeys into a world where hope persists for a
rare balance between diversity and unity.
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