NEW ORLEANS FETE

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1930, Page 3

NEW ORLEANS FETE

NEGROES MAKE MERRY.

We had been stirred to only a lukewarm interest in Mardi Gras, even though ’New Orleans was fluttering with carnival flags and surging with visitors, writes a correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian'’ from New Orleans. The prospects of seeing processions on which thousands of dollars, had been spent scarcely compensated us for the discomforts we were to suffer —our darkie cook Mongolia was going to take a holiday, and not only would she deprive us of pancakes, but she was expecting us to go ourselves to see the processions. “You sho never has Seen nothinglike them parades,” she told us impressively as she whisked the wafflebatter. “Mrs Lapgale’s yard-man was telling me he wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Bernadine wasn’t gwine be queen dis yar. . . . Oh-huh! I sho remembers de time Miss Mario was queen of carnival. Yes, mam, she said to me, ‘Magnolia, you got to come and see my dress and help fix me up for de ball.’ .... All bead's and satin her dress was, and her train painted with peacocks. Her pa did spend some money on dat gal.” We sighed at our unworthiness. As

white folk we realised that we came far short of Magnolia’s usual standard, for she had been nursemaid and cook in the principal families of New Orleans, and could quote to us a long list of masters who had been Kir# Rex and young mistresses who had been queen of carnival balls. All her stories had as their main theme the richness of carnival and most of them

had dollars as refrain. “You sho will like the parade. Every one of dem masquers wears satin, three dollar a yard, and dey has presents in a bag and throws them to de crowdsl remember de year Miss Eulalie was queen. One of de dukes throwed an em’rald ring to his gal that .was sitting on a balcony. . . . and someone else caught it, and dat girl was made. Yes, mam, she never would speak to him after dat. Dat’s de truth —I heard it from de chauffeur at Miss Eulalie’s, and he sho said dat ring was worth hundreds of dollar. ...”

We began to be a little sceptical over the much-advertised spirit of Mardi Gras. The train-loads of tourists kept pouring in, the antique shops in Frenchtown, put up their prices, the department stores flooded their windows with carnivalia of all types from clown suits to evening cloaks, street hawkers pressed a King Rex streamei’ on every automobile —somehow the carefree spirit of carnival seemed to be firmly launched by the efficiency of modern salesmanship. Everything about Mardi Gras morning confirmed our sceptical view of the carefree carnival spirit. Correct society was moving down the avenues in its limousines to the correct clubs, from whose balconies it would look down at the parade of New Orleans’s richest citizens in masquers’ costumes. Sober families had their automobiles decorated with carnival colours, and the children dressed up in pierrot suits on the back seats, while mother and father on the front seat in ordinary dress looked out earnestly at the spirit of carnival. There was the same conscious seeking of the carefree spirit about the crowds who piled on to the street cars and even about the troops of college students and shopgirls who yelled from decorated trucks or did serpentine dances down the centre of the streets.

THE ZULU KING

And it was not until we got caught in a traffic jam on our dismal way. to She the Queen of Carfiival hand cake and wine to Ki fig Rex thht we accidentally came upon another side of Mardi Gras. Down one of the side streets came the sound of beating tomtoils and a single file of masquers who were listening to rhythms that the earnest carnival-seekers did hot catch—war paint; was daubed over African features v.and Red •. Indian feathers waved from 'head to whist** but these were • unmistakably negro masquers,. Ohly from them could dome this ecstatic burst of drama *as '.they swept . down ' the paved American street whirling tomahawks and shrieking in strange harmony to the broken rhythm. .

They were, making for the' canfil, and we followed them blindly, giving up all aspirations to see the formal white carnival and only desiring to know what the darkies kvere doiiig. “What’s going on there?” we asked a darkie girl in a pink doinino. “De Zulu king’s cornin’ in. You-all better hurry if you want to see him,” she told us excitedly, and we followed.lief through the crowd to one of the shellheaps near the canal. There with stout liegresses and wailing piccaninnies surging around us we stared down at the boat that was coming iii. . In the prow stood a startling figure —the Zulu king himself, a huge negro, his arms bare, his brown skin daubed over with war paint, feathers and flaming-coloured beads swinging about him as he waved at the yelling crowds on the bank. - We had a glimpse of his pontifical loftiness as he strutted down the gang-plank with a huge cigar in his mouth —then the spectators on the shell-heap surged down to the street and we were swept down with them. The Zulu parade was forming—half a dozen “dukes” on horseback were making a way down the centre of the street, their costume a strange anachronism, for they wore rod military coats' over Zulu fringe aiid feathers. From the painful position agaifist a lamp-post into which We had been wedged by a wiry old negress and her laundry basket we gathered that there was some difficulty about starting the parade as the king was being besieged by all the autograph-hunters of darkie-town, who were getting him to autograph coconuts. At last the cavalcade got into motion, the mounted dukes grinning over their cigars and throwing souvenirs from bags to the piccaninnies who scrambled under the horses’ hoofs with shrill cries of “Mardi Gras.” Then came the floats —gilde dstructures of papier mache that gleamed in the semi-tropical sun. On the first was the Zulu king between two negro queens, both superbly conscious of their public glory, staring proudly at the crowd from behind the cannibal cauldrons from which peeped piccaninnies. Behind this first float came the two or three lesser ones with the kings of previous years, one of them lolling back regally, another waving and grinning at the crowd. “Will you look at that no-count nigger Cato?” gasped the wiry negress near us, “he sho is drunk as he c'fftr be, Hq was. a torch-barm jn de

parade last night, and he sho drunk all dat dollar he got paid.”

REVIVALIST PREACHERS

We were carried along the street in the rush that followed the floats and the Red Indians marching clubs, and found ourselves gasping in a side street in darkie-town. There were perpetual shrieks of laughter, wails, and bursts of music from the darkies in the street and from the open windows all along. Tinpan bands were pushing their way through the masquers and

starting up a dance tune until the darkies poured out on to all the balconies above the street —mulattos with whites of eyes flashing down, stout mammies who looked as if they would break the shaky iron framework, loose-hung negro boys who executed dance steps while the crowd shrieked up at them encouragingly. There was perpetual shifting colour and movement, and. as undertone to the laughter came the occasional wail of a revivalist preacher threatening the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah to New Orleans during carnival —even tho masquers pausing, as they drifted by, to chime in the moaning responses. “Dat’s true. Lord!” “Amen!” “You said it, brudder!” When Magnolia arrived next morning we told her enthusiastically that we had seen the darkie Zulu parade. She stiffened visibly. “I sho wouldn’t make a show of myself like those noco'Unt niggers,” she commented, darkly. “I doesn’t associate with dem low lives. Cato’s gals wanted me to go with fhem t and dress up like ShakeBabies. . . .dey got dresses dat’s a disgrace, pink satin, with tinsel ten cents a yard, and gift, shoes. But I tole ’em, like Ise telling you, I ain’t no time for such foolishness. No, mam, I went to the Rex parade good and early. . . .got under de balcony where Miss Bernadine was siting. .. . . dat

silo was a mighty pretty dress she had on. . . you’d see how she was queen, I dare say?” Apologetically we admitted that we had not seen the white parade or the king 'and queen, and we retr'eated before the reproach in Magnolia’s liquid eyes. Next day she told us that she was leaving us. to go back to be cook at Miss Bernadine’s, and we realised how deeply Magnolia had felt our fallings off from the standard she set her “white folks.” We were low-lives who at carnival had listened to the beating of tom-tonms instead of to the rustle of society pages.