Carnival traditions were brought over to North
America from Europe along with the first colonists. Louisiana was founded
by the French and for about 45 years was ruled by Spain, then briefly by
France again before Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803.
The 85 years of combined French and Spanish rule resulted in a strong
European cast to the settlements established in this part of the country,
which were carried through by their Creole inheritors.
When the United States took possession of Louisiana in 1803 and Americans
began settling in, establishing their presence in New Orleans, there was,
for more than 40 years, a bit of antagonism between the Creole society and
the American upstarts, who controlled two separate sections of the
developing city. The more puritanical Americans shunned Carnival, while
the Creoles continued to celebrate it, though the celebration began slowly
to die in the 1850s. The break-out of riots in 1856 did not help matters,
and it seemed that Carnival traditions were about to die out altogether in
the growing port city.
That same year, a group of transplanted citizens from the city of Mobile
(which had been celebrating Carnival since 1705) who were members of a
marching/ball society calling themselves the Cowbellions, met in the
third-floor room of a pharmacy in the Vieux Carre and decided to form a
carnival society of their own here in New Orleans. They also decided to do
something which had been virtually unknown up to that time in New Orleans
carnival --to field a tableaux display consisting of marchers in elaborate
papier-mâché costumes, and three floats. They fashioned themselves as a
royal court in the traditions of Old England, even down to adapting the
word "crew" in Chaucerian fashion so that it came out, forever afterward,
as "krewe". They chose, as their central figure representing themselves,
the offspring of the Greek god Bacchus and the sorceress Circe, as
filtered through the poetry of John Milton, and thus was born the Mystick
Krewe of Comus.
The Civil War interrupted carnival through the duration. Comus and other
marching groups, along with the carnival balls, reappeared between 1866
and 1867, but tensions varied with the occupying Union forces and the
Reconstruction government. But when it was announced that Russia's Grand
Duke Alexis was going to take in New Orleans as part of his tour of
America and that his visit would coincide with Carnival in 1872, a group
of leading businessmen and theatre designers quickly formed an
organization calling themselves (which they remain, formally) the School
of Design, to stage a carnival parade complete with floats, bands, and
costumed marchers to honor the Grand Duke on Carnival day. The School of
Design grandly proclaimed their monarch the King of the Carnival, and he
became synonymous with the name of his parade: Rex. Rex paraded during the
day, presenting themselves for the Grand Duke's review at noon, whereas
Comus had always paraded at night. By adding a day parade, a whole new
dimension had been added to the celebration.
Comus' first procession of floats in 1857 had captured the public
imagination and had literally saved Mardi Gras from oblivion. Rex merely
expanded this beyond any scope known, and the future pattern of the
Carnival had been established. The Krewes of Proteus and Momus joined the
carnival in the early 1880s, and the krewes began a gentle rivalry to
produce not only the most elaborate tableaux balls, but the most beautiful
and popular parades on the streets; hiring professional float and prop
builders (where previously everything they presented on the streets and at
the balls had been fashioned and imported from France), costumers,
theatrical designers, and prop-makers. From 1890 onward, the number of
parading and ball organizations has steadily grown; some existing only a
short time, others having histories extending back decades and even a
century and a half (in the case of Comus).
Krewes had handed parade favors to certain individuals at selected points
along their routes, but Rex began the practice of tossing beads and toys
to parade goers in 1920. Every organization since has followed through
with the practice and adapted each new trinket, with Rex introducing
doubloons in 1960. Cups began to be thrown in the 1980s, along with the
increasingly popular medallion beads.
*What are the Krewes actually about?
How did they start and how do they still flourish today?* The krewes are
the actual carnival society organizations. The membership pay in dues to
maintain the society, finance the krewe's activities including parading,
organizing and staging the carnival balls, and funding the construction of
their costumes and props. Some krewes only stage their own carnival balls,
since parading with floats is a mighty expensive proposition, and some
groups prefer the more dignified celebration characteristic of the upper
strata of society. It is not unusual, for example, for debutantes to be
presented at the balls, and the older krewes are composed of some of the
riches and most socially and politically connected families in New
Orleans. To be even a maid at the ball of Comus, for example, is to have
attained one of the highest social honors imaginable in New Orleans --the
equivalent of the debs' ball in most other cities. There are some 70
separate carnival organizations in the New Orleans metro area, 10 of
which, at the least, have been in continuous operation for over 100 years.
In addition, there are several marching organizations, such as Pete
Fountain's Half-Fast Walking Club and the Jefferson City Buzzards, and the
various Mardi Gras Indian tribes, which have been an Afro-American
carnival tradition going back a century and having its roots both in the
local voudoun religion and the long history of amity between black and
Indians extending back to the days of slavery. These people will spend
their days year round --every spare moment-- sewing together some of the
most elaborate and beautiful Indian costumes to be seen anywhere; outfits
which rival the splendor of the court costumes at any of the carnival
balls. Every Mardi Gras, they are to be found marching through the streets
of the Treme neighbourhood, and photographs don't quite do them justice
for the spectacle they present on Carnival day and on any other days they
field a march during the year. The deaths of any of the chiefs of these
groups are celebrated with full jazz funerals. Of course, no discussion of
black carnival can be complete without Zulu. In the days of Jim Crow, when
blacks were shut out of all meaningful intercourse in white society, the
black community proceeded to create societies and traditions of their own.
From the turn of the 20th century, there had already been the Original
Illinois Club, an organization which was not only was the first major
black carnival group to hold an annual ball, but also a venue to educate
blacks in the etiquette of polite society. In 1916, a group of black
businessmen and jazz musicians, along with working-class individuals,
formed the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which existed in part to
satirize white carnival and the whole structure of the traditional
organizations. Whereas Rex, in the old Lundi Gras tradition, arrived at
the foot of Canal St. aboard a Coast Guard cutter to be handed the keys of
the city at noon on the day before Mardi Gras, Zulu mocked Rex by having
their king arrive on an oyster lugger docking at the downtown jetty of the
New Basin Canal (filled in around 1956). They decked out in parody tribal
dress, mocked the blackface makeup of the minstrel show entertainers by
painting their eyes and mouths white, and after a while fielded
deliberately crude floats fashioned out of junk and festooned with
palmetto fronds, moss, and palm leaves. Their particular carnival favor
became that signature favor of the Mardi Gras season, the Zulu coconut.
Eventually, the parade became much more elaborate, fielding more
traditional floats, though they fashion them less around the nominal theme
and more around the continued mockery of the structure of carnival
societies. The one and only time Zulu has ever had a celebrity king was
when Louis Armstrong took the honor in 1949. In answer to your other
questions: The present media image of Mardi Gras has much more to do with
laziness on the part of the reporters covering our celebration than the
actual acts, which are fewer and farther between than has been portrayed.
Though there are those who seem to regard Mardi Gras as little more than a
larger-scale frat party, the reality is that there are several different
ways to celebrate the Carnival, all taking place simultaneously. You can
have Mardi Gras in the form that best suits your temperament and
particular taste; from going to the parades to finding the various
carnival parties with open invitations. You can go into the Quarter to
catch the wildness there or walk through to sample everything that takes
place --from the wildness of those flashing body parts for beads to seeing
all the many and varied forms of costume to catching the drag-queen
costume contests in the gay sections of the Quarter, to catching the
marchers parading through the Bywater and lower French Quarter streets to
finding carnival on Basin Street and the processions of the Indians. The
locals all have their own little traditions, most involving parties with
friends which have been going in the same spots and with the same groups
for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. You can even form a marching group of your own
and parade on Mardi Gras day, or join one of the many sub-krewes of the
amateur and satirical Krewe du Vieux parade, which usually rolls/marches
twenty days after the beginning of the season on Twelfth Night (January
6th). Bourbon Street is a focus of party activity because of the number of
music and strip clubs and bars to be found on the street, and their
central proximity to the other clubs, pubs, and eateries to be found in
the Quarter. If you want to do more in-depth research on the topic, I can
recommend the very excellent books on Mardi Gras and golden-age carnival
float, invitation, and costume design by Henri Schindler, available from
Pelican Books. Also Robert Tallant's Mardi Gras As It Was, and Leonard V.
Huber's Mardi Gras.