Chris Bickford

“Wake Up, Wake Up, it’s Mardi Gras Morning!”…

So went the chant of the Northside Skull and Bones Gang as they floated quietly through the Tremé and the northeast corner of the French Quarter, rapping on doors and windows, waking up those who’d slept in cars they’d parked on the roadside late the previous night, waking up those who’d been asleep in houses they’d lived in for generations…It was a quiet, muffled chant; the bone gang all wore papier-maché masks of huge skulls over their heads.  A lone tambourine beat out a steady, slow, singular rhythm.  The first one walked on stilts, urging one and all to change their ways…”Stop your cheatin’, stop your lyin’, stop your drinkin’…” he sang, low and slow, almost under his breath…

Through the streets they wandered, five men and five boys, unidentified, anonymous…”Young and old, you’re all gonna go”…They chanted their gang name, “North Side Skull and Bones, wake up, wake up, it’s Mardi Gras Morning…”

Sometimes the doors they rapped on were answered, and old friends would emerge, bleary-eyed, to give the skeleton crew a beer, or a hug, or a friendly wave.   Mostly the streets were empty.

The North Side Skull and Bone Gang have been waking up New Orleans since 1819, or thereabouts.   The details of their early years are enshrouded in myth, though it is generally said that they began their Mardi Gras tradition in the Tremé around 1830…How or why it developed is also a matter of folklore, but there hardly needs to be a reason.  It’s the kind of tradition that has been around in some form or another since the dawn of ritual.   From a strictly religious viewpoint, Mardi Gras is the last day, the very last day, of a celebration whose Latin translation could mean either “farewell to the flesh” or “to lift up the flesh”…In either sense, it is a celebration of life that, at its heart, embraces the inevitability of dying.   Death is ever-present in this life, and at no time is that more true than on the morning of one of the largest and longest-running annual bacchanals the world has ever known–one that, historically, though largely a celebration of life, nearly always involved violence and murder.   So while the Bone Gang slides through the shadows of Mardi Gras morning; as the day grows ever-brighter with the promise of brilliant colors, outrageous behavior, and joyful mayhem; the long shadows of the big chief’s stilts grow shorter and shorter; and death slinks into a dark blue tavern for a cold beer and a soda pop, waiting to re-emerge into the light of day to dance with the living on this the final day of Carnival.

From a New Orleanian standpoint, the march of the Bone Gang plays a major role in the tradition of Carnival Noir, the African-American Mardi Gras.   Along with the Baby Dolls, the Mardi Gras Indians, the Zulu parade, and the boom-boom-boom of thousands of black New Orleanians partying under the overpass on Claiborne street (which, before Highway 10 split the neighborhood in two in the late ’40’s, was a major gathering spot in the Tremé, a neighborhood which boasts a 200-year old tradition of Free People of Color), the Bone Gang represents the resilience and evolution of African-American traditions in New Orleans despite all the obstacles that have been strewn in their path.  Ironically, in the first two years after Katrina, the black diaspora from New Orleans kept the Bone gang from marching.  In a town that had seen so much death and ruin, perhaps nobody needed to see any more skeletons walking through the neighborhood.  But thanks to the efforts of the Backstreet Cultural museum, help from the community, and that old Mardi Gras Indian “won’t back down” attitude, the Bones are back.

It is one more note to take on why New Orleans matters, and what makes it the most culturally rich city in America.   The rituals and traditions of New Orleans are of the people, by the people, and for the people.  They are not mere tourist attractions, but living, breathing expressions of a community that, no stranger to crime, death, poverty, disaster, and hardship, still finds a reason to celebrate, in some of the most unique ways I have ever seen, almost every day.

The goings-on of Carnival season can often present one with difficult choices.  There is simply too much happening, all at the same time, to do it all.  And, as my friend Richard Hofler (whom I will profile in an upcoming post) said to me on numerous occasions, “Carnival is a marathon, not a sprint.”   You need to conserve your energy, guard your down-time, and make sure that you are not so worn out by the end of it that you can’t even make it out of bed on Mardi Gras.

And then, of course, there are the dueling factions of preparation and spontaneity that vie for the heart of the Reveler.   At its heart, Carnival is all about being in the moment, about losing oneself to the spirit of the street dance, about following the second-line wherever it may lead, and hoping that something magical happens to you along the way.  And yet, all those balls, all those parades, all those costumes–they require months, sometimes years, of preparation, and are built up through decades of tradition passed on through the ebb and flow of Carnival history, which in New Orleans is as old as the day of the first French settlement in Louisiana.  You can’t go through all that preparation and then just change your plans last minute, right?

Well, it depends…

I have spent much of the last few months reading, researching, emailing, poring over schedules, talking to contacts on the phone, following this lead and that lead, many of which have led to dead-ends–this ball will not allow photography; this ball, which we were supposed to get tickets for, is now sold out; this parade is canceled due to weather…Federica and I put together calendars and schedules, trying to make sure we had plans in place to maximize our time and get as broad a visual of New Orleans’ Carnival season as possible.   Because as a professional, that’s what you do.  You make a plan.  But your plan, your meticulously thought-out schedule, is not really plan A.  It’s plan B.  It’s what you do if nothing really special happens, because you have to make sure you come home with SOME kind of pictures.  Plan A is hoping to God that something better than Plan B happens that you hadn’t really expected or accounted for, that will cause you to throw all your plans out the window.  Plan A is hoping you just happen to be on the right street corner, on your way to somewhere else, when out of nowhere you hear music and a dancing troupe of second-liners in crazy costumes rounds the corner and sweeps you up in its creative frenzy.

And so it came to pass on Lundi Gras, as Federica and I convened in front of Jackson Square to check out the arrivals of Rex and King Zulu and the fireworks over the water (our plan B, as it were), that the unmistakeable rhythm of the Tremé Brass Band struck my ears, and suddenly there appeared, like an apparition,  a dancing, ghostly krewe of young revelers, all of them decked out in costumes made out of beans.  Not beads, that’s right; beans.  Red beans, white beans, black beans…

There was no time to think about it.  I left the bikes with Fede and fell in to the second-line, following it as it rounded Jackson Square and made its way back towards the Marigny.  Along the way I made photo-friends with the more outrageous krewe members as they hammed it up and hopped up on mailboxes and swung from telephone poles.   The Tremé boys kept the jazz flowing as we headed down Chartres Street, stopping briefly at the crazy house depicted in these photos with the giant ten-foot papier-maché mask in front of it.  Here, Devin Meyers, the king of the krewe–The Red Beans and Rice Krewe–made a welcome speech to his compatriots, wishing them all a happy and joyous Lundi Gras, and without further ado, led the krewe further down the street, into the Marigny, and up Frenchmen Street, where the whole krewe stopped traffic for two hours and danced in the street.   It was Plan A, all the way, and I was loving every second of it.

The backstory of Red Beans and Rice, as Devin told me over a beer he’d poured me from the port-a-keg, was that a couple of years ago, he had shown up at a Halloween party with a costume decorated entirely with beans.  People went crazy for his costume, so he decided to form a little krewe based on the theme; and, since Monday is the traditional day for red beans and rice, it was only natural to hold their parade on Lundi Gras.

And so began a new Carnival tradition, one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, that have come and gone throughout the history of Carnival in New Orleans.  The beauty of the Mardi Gras tradition is that anyone and everyone can be part of a krewe, or start their own.  There’s no barriers to entry, at least to these smaller krewes.  You don’t have to be Comus, or Rex, or a member of one of the First Families of New Orleans, to belong to Carnival.  We all belong to Carnival.  It’s in our DNA.  As one of the Red Beans Krewe responded when someone asked how they could join, “Just follow the music…”

And stitching some beans to your jacket might help as well.

I’ve fallen behind in my posts, as you may have noticed.  Family matters have taken precedence over the last few days, and I have many posts to catch up on.  Over the next week or so I hope to get caught up.  I’ll be posting in no specific chronological order, which I think is only appropriate, since after being in New Orleans for a while the whole concept of linear time starts to erode a little.  I think it was Andrei Codrescu who said something to the effect that New Orleans has preserved a piece of every decade since the 18th century, and you are constantly walking through time warps as you make your way around the city.  Here it’s still the seventies, or the sixties, or the twenties, or the 1850’s, depending on where you are, what’s being celebrated, and what frame of mind you’re in…

Enjoy the Beans…and those of you in the krewe, send me an email, I’d love to hear from you.

Today’s the day…in about 6 0r 7 hours the celebration that has made New Orleans famous throughout the world will begin, the grand finale of weeks of balls, parades, masking, and dancing in the streets. Tonight there are some pulling all-nighters to get their floats and costumes ready for the big day. Some are getting an early night’s rest so they will be fresh for an all-day marathon of merry-making. The whole city will be out celebrating–Rex and Zulu and the Jefferson City Buzzards uptown, the Mardi Gras Indians on Carrolton Street and the seventh and ninth wards…the art crowd in the Marigny, the gay crowd and the tourists in the quarter. Mardi Gras has something for everyone, and it’s not just a tourist event. Everybody here participates. The ones without costumes carrying funny-looking drinks and wearing baseball caps and a ridiculous number of beads around their necks, you can be sure they don’t live here. New Orleanians, of all cultural sub-groups, will celebrate this day by masking in some of the most creative and elaborate costumes you will ever see. This day is theirs, though all are welcome to join in the fun. Buy a mask, a hat, some beads, whatever. It’s all good on Mardi Gras day. Just beware of pickpockets and try to stay off the west end of Bourbon Street if you don’t want to become part of a human sandwich.

I have gotten behind on posting the many events I have attended over the last few weeks. Once this whole thing blows over I will do my best to post pictures as soon as possible, and offer more thoughts and observations on New Orlean’s very special brand of Carnival. Until then, Laissez les bons temps rouler!!

Elizabeth Whitehead Kelsey

September 28, 1914 – February 15, 2010

My grandmother passed away this afternoon at 5 PM Eastern Time.  It was a long time coming, and there have been many false alarms, but she kept holding on for a few more days, a few more weeks, of this sweet life that is so hard to let go of even when you are in such pain and can hardly see or talk.  The last time I saw her she told me I needed to get a girlfriend, then she got me to look at her Charles Lindbergh scrapbook when she made when she was 14, which I’ve seen about a hundred times.   I didn’t know, of course, that it would be the last time.  But that’s the way life takes you.

Nanny was always quick with a joke and a smile, even until the very end when she could barely make out a sentence, still the words that came out were full of twinkles of humor.  I remember, before her body started to fail her, how she had an old exercise bike set up by the telephone in her kitchen.  “When my friends call me, I like to see how many miles they talk”, she would quip.   She was always telling me I needed to “come back home”, and never failed to ask about whatever girl I was dating at the time, or the last one I’d been dating, I guess hoping against hope that one of her grandchildren might sire some offspring…When her mind started to go, she began to joke about having “Some-timers”  disease.   “You know Alzheimer’s disease?” she’d say.  “Well, I don’t have that, I’ve got “Some-timer’s” disease.   Sometimes my brain just stops working for a little bit…”

All of us in the family will always remember the many Thanksgiving dinners she prepared for us, pretty much by herself with a little kitchen help, for years and years.  We’ll remember her longtime boyfriend Tony who passed about 15 years ago, who would regale us with stories of the “mountain people” he met while hunting in the Appalachian mountains, until he would fall asleep in mid-sentence.   We’ll remember all her old scrapbooks and her old sing-songy Tidewater accent, and her old-school crushed ice machine that used to be the biggest thrill when we visited as young children, pouring the ice chunks into the machine and grinding it by hand, and having a real Coke with crushed ice like they served at the drugstore counter…We’ll remember mowing her gigantic two-acre lawn for ten or twenty dollars and thinking we were rich…we’ll remember tossing football outside her house on holidays, watching football games on her little TV after Thanksgiving dinner, and waiting for her to come over Christmas morning so we could open our presents.  In the summer she would take us down to her cabana that she had at the Officer’s Club in Virginia beach and we’d spend all day playing in the water, coming up to the cabana to refuel on ham sandwiches and coca-colas.

Nanny was in such robust health all her life, I used to joke people that she was going to live forever.   Well I guess forever ended today.   I’ve never really made up my mind about the afterlife, but I hope that wherever she is now, she is happy, and she knows that she was loved, and that her children and grandchildren thank her for the miraculous gift of life that she passed on to us.

Farewell Nanny.   We’ll miss you.

“Uncle” Lionel Batiste, AKA Mister New Orleans Himself, turned 78 a few days ago. In his honor, family and friends gathered last night at Sweet Lorraine’s jazz club for a birthday celebration. Lionel, a longtime bass drummer and singer for the Tremé Brass Band, was in fine form, sporting his legendary dapper duds and old-school bling, flirting with all the ladies, and getting up on stage to perform with the band and lead the crowd in rousing versions of “When the Saints go Marching in” and “Who Dat” chants….

Lionel has been a fixture for years on the New Orleans scene. Wherever he goes he is known, and if he is not known, he is noticed. He is always decked out in shiny duds and jewelry, carries a walking cane that looks like an old Druid’s wand, and never fails to give a smile. A couple of years ago I spotted him on Easter Sunday wandering the Marigny, and followed him into the Spotted Cat to see if I could take a picture of him. At the time I didn’t know who he was, just thought he was an interesting-looking character spiffed up for Easter. Only much, much later did I realize that he was the legendary “Uncle Lionel”.

As luck would have it, my assistant Federica Valabrega was out with a friend last week at another bar in the neighborhood where the Tremé Band has a standing weekly gig. Lionel, of course, flirted with her and invited her to his big birthday bash at Sweet Lorraine’s. She came back with the news, and then pulled out my copy of Annie Leibovitz’s “American Music” to find a photo of the Tremé boys in there. She’s been talking about going to Lionel’s birthday party all week.

So despite the “winter storm warning”, which in New Orleans means that it’s cold and rainy, we ventured out the 4 or 5 blocks to Sweet Lorraine’s, an unassuming looking place on a rough-looking street in the Tremé. Inside the vibe was warm, friendly, laid-back, and sophisticated. Lorraine’s is the kind of place you could easily set yourself down at, order a whiskey, and while away the afternoon and evening listening to jazz. New Orleans has a lot of places like that.

New Orleans is a small town, and its local celebrities are really just all members of a big family. After Federica and I had been shooting for a bit, one of Lionel’s daughters asked if I could take some pictures of the whole family. I happily obliged, and got some nice photos for them. Annie Leibovitz they ain’t, but it really felt special to be able to take those photos. The longer I work as a photographer, the more I realize the value of pictures like these. Nothing innovative or imaginative about the composition, and “serious” photographers may not be impressed, but for what the true personal value of a photograph is all about, you can’t get anything more valuable than family photos. These are the pictures that hang on walls, on office desks, and on the refrigerator; these are the photos that bring back memories and form a history of who we are, whether we are celebrities or regular people. These are the photos that matter.

My life is long from over, but I wish I had more photos like these of friends and family. Certain chapters of my life are completely without photographs; certain friends I have made along the road of life and never seen again, I have no photographs of them or the time we spent together. Though I still remember those times and those friends vividly, I wish I had had the presence of mind to record just a few simple moments to aid my memories.

Anyway, my great thanks to the Batiste family for asking me to photograph them and for inviting me and Federica to be part of their celebration. Also check out Federica’s site, http://federicavalabrega.wordpress.com/ for more photos. Enjoy.