Book description
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as the citizens of New Orleans
regroup and put down roots elsewhere, many wonder what will become of
one of the nation's most complex creole cultures. New Orleans emerged
like Atlantis from under the sea, as the city in which some of the
most important American vernacular arts took shape. Creativity
fostered jazz music, made of old parts and put together in utterly new
ways; architecture that commingled Norman rooflines, West African
floor plans, and native materials of mud and moss; food that simmered
African ingredients in French sauces with Native American delicacies.
There is no more powerful celebration of this happy gumbo of life in
New Orleans than Mardi Gras. In Carnival, music is celebrated along
the city's spiderweb grid of streets, as all classes and cultures
gather for a festival that is organized and chaotic, individual and
collective, accepted and licentious, sacred and profane.
The authors, distinguished writers who have long engaged with
pluralized forms of American culture, begin and end in New Orleans-the
city that was, the city that is, and the city that will be-but
traverse geographically to Mardi Gras in the Louisiana Parishes, the
Carnival in the West Indies and beyond, to Rio, Buenos Aires, even
Philadelphia and Albany. Mardi Gras, they argue, must be understood in
terms of the Black Atlantic complex, demonstrating how the music,
dance, and festive displays of Carnival in the Greater Caribbean
follow the same patterns of performance through conflict, resistance,
as well as open celebration.
After the deluge and the finger pointing, how will Carnival be
changed? Will the groups decamp to other Gulf Coast or Deep South
locations? Or will they use the occasion to return to and express a
revival of community life in New Orleans? Two things are certain:
Katrina is sure to be satirized as villainess, bimbo, or symbol of
mythological flood, and political leaders at all levels will
undoubtedly be taken to task. The authors argue that the return of
Mardi Gras will be a powerful symbol of the region's return to
vitality and its ability to express and celebrate itself.
"Blues for New Orleans is a generous study of Mardi
Gras, but it is also a creative intervention, a passionate explanation
(and defense) of creolization, a cultural rescue operation. It is a
furious, blues-tinged, erudite hymn to our greatest vernacular city.
Read it and weep; read it and rejoice!"-Edward Hirsch, President,
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Roger D. Abrahams is Hum Rosen Professor of Humanities Emeritus at
the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of many
books, including After Africa (with John F. Szwed), African Folktales:
Traditional Stories of the Black World, and Everyday Life: A Poetics of
Vernacular Practice, also available from the University of Pennsylvania
Press. Nick Spitzer is Professor of Folklore and Cultural Conservation
at the University of New Orleans and host of NPR's American Routes. John
F. Szwed is John M. Musser Professor of Anthropology and African
American Studies at Yale University. Among his numerous books are So
What: The Life of Miles Davis, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times
of Sun Ra, and Crossovers: Essays on Race, Music, and American Culture,
also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Robert Farris
Thompson is Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at
Yale University. He is the author of Flash of the Spirit: African and
Afro-American Art and Philosophy and Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of
Africa and the African Americas.
