WHEEL INSIDE THE WHEEL by MARY GAUTHIER. Story by Sue Beeton

New Orleans. February, 2013.

From: Sue Beeton
Date: Wednesday, 13 February 2013 at 12:30 AM
Subject: Fat Tuesday in New Orleans

Dear friends,

Well, Mardi Gras season is over for this year, with a BIG Fat Tuesday here in New Orleans.

My highlight was spending it with the Mandingo Warriors’ Fi Yi Yi Tribe of the Mardi Gras Indians – not something most people get to experience. It’s deeply rooted in the black African-American culture of the city and based on their history of slavery, resilience and defiance. We started at 8am at the Backstreet Museum in Tremé and waited for the Skull and Bone gang to return from calling in the spirits and waking the neighbourhood.

While we waited, we talked to everyone and were entertained by everyone’s wonderful costumes – all carefully and creatively home-made, and different each year.

After the Skull and Bone gang returned, they rested at the grave of the Unknown Slave at the church, presenting an eerie tableau in their skeleton costumes, holding gruesome animal bones.

We sang, danced and talked and cared for those overwhelmed by the frenzy, including a woman dressed as Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau who collapsed in ecstasy. Then the Indians arrived – a gang from Uptown, then “our” gang came out of the house, resplendent in their suits of yellow feathers, embroidered patches, masks and glass beads. Words can’t express their beauty and my excitement.

We chatted with strangers who became friends, parading with the Indians and being part of some highly ritualised meetings with other gangs, where the Big Chiefs would decide who had the “prettiest suit” through dance and rhyming trash-talk – one would eventually step back and bow to the other.

We walked (paraded or “second-lined”) with them all through Tremé, finishing at the Bridge (the I-10 overpass), which took many hours. No one, apart from the local community, knows the route they will take, but they always stop and pay respect at the homes of revered ancestors and elders, and all end up at the Bridge.

The Bridge is where the black community parties, with the day-time families giving way to older revellers, and it felt deeply primal as the sounds exploded and bounced off the hard surfaces of the overpass.

Here, I was a very little, very white, fish out of water. Time to head back to safety.

Tomorrow, I leave for Australia, but I will be back.

Love to all

Sue

*

“We won’t bow down, not on that ground.”

The fine silver crescent of the waxing moon rose as we walked with ghosts through the silent backstreets, waiting for the sun to rise and extinguish the tiny crescent moon. The morning mist rose in Congo Square as we approached the Mandingo Warriors home.

 Soon the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi would explode through the doors of the shotgun house.

 The music swirled around me, the intense, rhythmically incessant drumming and chanting embracing me until it found its way deep inside lighting my dark places. I was no more than a small white woman being swallowed up by a sea of feathers, beads and massive masks. All telling their stories. So many stories. So many drums. So very primal and immediate.

 As we swept through the streets, I metaphorically clung to the Wild Man who protects the Big Chief, trusting that the protection would extend my way if needed. But that was all I could do – I was in the zone, forgetting myself in this perennial ritual of resistance and resilience, immersed in their world of spirits and souls.

 Wheels within wheels, whirling, spiralling and spinning …. I never felt so alive, so free and at home.

Stereo Story #810