Mardi Gras is the final day of Carnival or Shrovetide before Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is French for "Fat Tuesday", reflecting the practice of the last night of consuming rich, fatty foods in preparation for the fasting season of Lent.
A krewe is a social organization that stages parades and/or balls for the Carnival season. The term is best known for its association with Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, but is also used in other Carnival celebrations throughout Louisiana and along the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, Florida, Springtime Tallahassee, and Krewe of Amalee in DeLand, Florida with the Mardi Gras on Mainstreet Parade as well as in La Crosse, Wisconsin and at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras or Sydney Mardi Gras is an event in Sydney, New South Wales attended by hundreds of thousands of people from around Australia and overseas. One of the largest such festivals in the world, Mardi Gras is the largest Pride event in Oceania. It includes a variety of events such as the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade and Party, Bondi Beach Drag Races, Harbour Party, the academic discussion panel Queer Thinking, Mardi Gras Film Festival, as well as Fair Day, which attracts 70,000 people to Victoria Park, Sydney.
The Nain Rouge also called "Demon of the Strait", is a legendary creature of the Detroit, Michigan area whose appearance is said to presage misfortune. Its origins in the early French settlement of Detroit are proposed as deriving from Norman French tales of the lutin, a type of hobgoblin, along with Native American legends of an "impish offspring of the Stone God".
The holiday of Mardi Gras is celebrated in southern Louisiana, including the city of New Orleans. Celebrations are concentrated for about two weeks before and through Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, the season is known as Carnival and begins on 12th Night, January 6th, and extends until midnight before Ash Wednesday. Club, or Krewe, balls start soon after, though most are extremely private, with their Kings and Queens coming from wealthy old families and their courts consisting of the season's debutantes. Most of the high society Krewes do not stage parades. As Fat Tuesday gets nearer, the parades start in earnest. Usually there is one major parade each day ; many days have several large parades. The largest and most elaborate parades take place the last five days of the Mardi Gras season. In the final week, many events occur throughout New Orleans and surrounding communities, including parades and balls.
The second line is a tradition in parades organized by Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs (SAPCs) with brass band parades in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The "main line" or "first line" is the main section of the parade, or the members of the SAPC with the parading permit as well as the brass band. The second line consists of people who follow the band to enjoy the music, dance, and engage in community. The second line's style of traditional dance, in which participants dance and walk along with the SAPCs in a free-form style with parasols and handkerchiefs, is called "second-lining". It is one of the most foundationally Black American–retentive cultures in the United States. It has been called "the quintessential New Orleans art form – a jazz funeral without a body". Another significant difference from jazz funerals is that second line parades lack the slow hymns and dirges played at funerals.
"La Société de Saint Anne" is a New Orleans Mardi Gras marching krewe that parades each Mardi Gras Day. La Société de Saint Anne was founded in 1969 by residents of the French Quarter and nearby Faubourgs who recognized the need for a return to earlier traditions of "walking krewes" which at one time were more prevalent but which had been overshadowed by the development of larger float parades in the early 20th Century. As the float parades grew in scale and number, they were forced to move out of the narrow streets of the French Quarter and onto broader avenues uptown and in mid-City. The walking krewes were groups of neighbors from various wards of the city who took to the streets on foot, in celebration of their common love for the City of New Orleans and the food, music, drink, spirituality, and lifestyles that developed there during the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries. La Société de Saint Anne was formed to bring the celebration back down to street level and to revive this old tradition of celebration in the residents' own area. In the ensuing years, as the more bohemian elements of the French Quarter were forced to move further downriver to the Marigny and Bywater neighborhoods by rising property values and rents in the French Quarter, the krewe grew in size and inspired many other such walking krewes to form as subkrewes or as separate krewes altogether. The original krewe now can be identified by the cluster of crabnets and the presence of the Storyville Stompers.
Southern Decadence is an annual, six-day, LGBTQ-based event held in New Orleans, Louisiana during Labor Day weekend, culminating in a parade through the French Quarter on the Sunday before Labor Day.
Krewe of Tucks is a New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe.
The Rebirth Brass Band is a New Orleans brass band. The group was founded in 1983 by Phillip "Tuba Phil" Frazier, his brother Keith Frazier, Kermit Ruffins, and classmates from Joseph S. Clark Senior High School, which closed in the spring of 2018, in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. Arhoolie released its first album in 1984.
KOE, formally known as the Krewe of Elvis, is a Mardi Gras parading organization that consists of members from around the world who meet in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
Mardi Gras is the annual Carnival celebration in Mobile, Alabama. It is the oldest official Carnival celebration in the United States, started by Frenchman Nicholas Langlois in 1703 when Mobile was the capital of Louisiana. Although today New Orleans and South Louisiana celebrations are much more widely known for all the current traditions such as masked balls, parades, floats and throws were first created there. From Mobile being the first capital of French Louisiana (1702), the festival began as a French Catholic tradition. Mardi Gras has now evolved into a mainstream multi-week celebration across the spectrum of cultures, becoming school holidays for the final Monday and Tuesday, regardless of religious affiliation.
The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble is an American instrumental musical group led by Boston, Massachusetts based saxophonist Ken Field. They performs an improvised style inspired by the second line brass bands of New Orleans parades. The group's colorful costumes and creative arrangements have earned it invitations to entertain audiences as large as 20,000
The Courir de Mardi Gras is a traditional Mardi Gras event held in many Cajun and Creole communities of French Louisiana on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Courir de Mardi Gras is Louisiana French for "Fat Tuesday Run". This rural Mardi Gras celebration is based on early begging rituals, similar to those still celebrated by mummers, wassailers, and celebrants of Halloween. As Mardi Gras is the celebration of the final day before Lent, celebrants drink and eat heavily, dressing in specialized costumes, ostensibly to protect their identities. In Acadiana, popular practices include wearing masks and costumes, overturning social conventions, dancing, drinking alcohol, begging, trail riding, feasting, and whipping. Mardi Gras is one of the few occasions when people are allowed to publicly wear masks in Louisiana. Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras, a documentary by filmmaker Pat Mire, provides great insight into the history and evolution of this cultural tradition. In popular culture, two HBO series also make reference to the tradition.
HONK!, also known as HONK! Fest, is a festival of activist street bands held annually on Indigenous Peoples' Day weekend in Somerville, Massachusetts. Each year since 2006, an all-volunteer organizing community invites more than 25 bands from around New England, North America, and the world to participate in this free three-day event that showcases acoustic and ambulatory bands playing free music in public spaces. Since its inception, it has inspired additional HONK! festivals in other locations.
The Tulane University Marching Band (TUMB) is the marching band of Tulane University. It performs at every Tulane Green Wave football home game in Yulman Stadium, bowl games, and some away games. It is also marches in New Orleans Mardi Gras parades each year, having appeared in Le Krewe d'Etat, the Krewe of Thoth, the Krewe of Bacchus, and the Krewe of Rex, among others.
Mardi Gras in the United States is celebrated in a number of cities and regions in the country. Most of these places trace their Mardi Gras celebrations to French, Spanish, and other Catholic colonial influences on the settlements over their history.
Hot Tamale Brass Band is a brass band that plays traditional New Orleans jazz, dixieland, jazz funeral and funky second line music. The band is based in the Boston area. The band has nine full-time members, sometimes performing as small as a quintet, other times performing with as many as 42 members for a Disney special event.
The 'Irish Channel Corner Club is the second oldest marching club in New Orleans, La. organized in 1918. It is an all-male carnival organization that marches in parades during Mardi Gras, in which they don colorful custom carnival costumes and specifically design Corner Club beads, and St. Patrick's Day, in which they wear their traditional green vests. Their members walk with canes that have colorful flowers that are given away for kisses while they dance and drink in the streets.
The Extraordinary Rendition Band (ERB) is a protest marching band from Providence, Rhode Island with approximately 30 active members.
