Iota, Louisiana
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
"Fat Tuesday", Mardi Gras Day, Courir de Mardi Gras
Music at the "Young Musicians Tent"
The Tee Mamou Mardi Gras parade, what a sight! The truck cavalcade rolled into Iota at around 3:00 PM.
Everyone who participated in the courir in the countryside earlier in the day, running after chickens and begging for food, all masked and in Mardi Gras costumes,threw candy to the crowd jamming the side of Duson Avenue and made a racket by pounding or kicking on the sides of the high sided floats (probably that height so they would not lose a kid "overboard" during the parade.)
Twenty minutes after the parade passed through the middle of town, masked celebrants returned to the stage, where they danced to the music and cavorted with glee, many of them standing on the front rails of the raised dance floor and begging for money or candies.
Some parents came to the stage to dance with their younger children, then a shrill whistle pierced the air, the Capitaine cracked a whip and yelled "Everybody down!"
Onto their knees or bottoms they went. The two men who led the parade by triumphantly displaying the red rooster led the kids in the Mardi Gras Song with all the verses. Some of the kids crawled around the stage making begging gestures or acting comically during the song, all part of the bending but not breaking any of the rules they have to learn. Every one of them had to learn the Mardi Gras Song by heart, probably not much of a stretch since they've heard in since they were in utero.
A raucous cheer at the end, a little more cavorting and they stepped off the stage, all of them dancing and begging for loose change.
In the last seconds of the video, a woman shouts, "Love it…. love it!"
"Where do you live?" I ask.
“Boolerow” she says with a Louisiana accent you could cut with a sugar cane knife .
"You're not from here," she says.
"I'm from Boston."
"I'm from Louisiana," she says
I ask her again where she's from.
After three times I finally get it. Just after i mistakenly click off the video, "I leev in Butte La Rose. I live in da swamp! I come fer dis every year!" she says with a booming laugh.
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