There's a carnival in Louisiana every year, and it's called:
Mardi Gras = (literally) “grease tuesday”
In 2001 mardi gras is at 27 februar.
The end of februar, beginning
of march is the time the alligators
start crawling out of the mud,
after their hibernation sleep,
and they bask in the sun of the early
spring.
The weather is a
uncertain factor: it can be soft and sunny,
but it can
be misty, rainy and chilly as well, at the end of
wintertime.
The festivities start already the wednesday
before,
and become
bigger
and bigger,
till the “explosion”
on the "grease tuesday",
a spectacle for eye and ear!
Everywhere you hear
the
"Danse de Mardi Gras”:
out
of loudspeakers, live
played by bands,
on the radio.
In the overture of mardi gras
there are cajun and zydeco concerts,
parades (those
in New Orleans *
are worldfamous ) and
culturel
activities that give more attention to the cajun heritage (culturel
heritage of the cajuns).
Bands play in the streets, in cafe’s,
in theaters, en also
riding on
trucks.
And then the Mardi
Gras itself..........
The day
begins with big parades in Cajun
Country with dozens,
sometimes a
few hundred horseriders per parade, the most of
them with "capuchons"
(pointed hats), trucks with playing bands
and with puppets of cajun
historical persons,
and with
the so called “runners” or "couriers":
these are riders or
men on foot who chase the
chickens, that got loose around the
parcours. (In earlier days it was
meant as free food for poor people,
only they had to catch it
theirselves!)
It takes a lot of velocity and dexterity to pluck the total hysterical
hens and
roosters from the trees and to tear them away out of
the pricking bushes.
 runner |
||
 gumbo candidate |
I've seen a runner holding a chicken by the legs between his teeth,
because he needed both hands to climb down out a tree !
and
then.......the unfortunate chicken disappears in a bag, becoming
part of
the gumbo (chickensoupe) at the end of the day.
When the parade
finally has arrived in het centre (I watched in
Eunice) then a magnificent party starts: in one street
zydeco bands,
in the other cajun bands, and a lot of people are dancing in the
streets.
Everywhere there are
snack bars with delicacies, like boudins
(sausages) and tassos (spicy, dried
meat) and lots of beer in
buvettes (little cafes).
it looks as if the people woke up from their winter sleep too !
In Eunice all is happening around the Liberty Centre.
* Mardi Gras in New Orleans: New Orleans is worldfamous because of its mardi gras, as you can also see in movies like: "the Big Easy" of Jim McBride, with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin, and "Point of No Return" (or: "the Assassin") of John Badham, with Bridget Fonda (in the film she assassins someone in Bourbon Street during mardi gras). Except the immense parades with dozens floats and drum-/brassbands (terrific rhythms........not compareble with a Dutch drumband), there's a whole spectacle in Bourbon Street, where the booze is flowing largely. The
big sport for the men there is to challenge
the girls, standing on the balconies of the colonial houses,
to shake their breasts out of their blouse; the girls
get rewarded with necklaces thrown up to the balconie's. |
The wednesday after mardi gras Louisiana looks like as if nothing
like a
carnival has been there. Everything
that remembers of
mardi gras
is removed immediately, and
the Danse de Mardi Gras
is silenced.
Literature: Mardi
Gras, a Cajun Country Celebration
by: Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith (Holiday House, N.York. ISBN
0-8234-1184-2)
Willem Versloot, 20-1-2001