CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY It's Mardi Gras . . . people have got the Ghost, screaming out of their heads and jumping ecstatic, and it hits me that this is African ceremonial magic — voodoo, or something very close to it. wood©©, Sex & Walk On The Water Popeye’s Bar is Wild Oleanders territory, uptown New Orleans. This is the night before Fat Tuesday, the final chance to get it together before the last day of Mardi Gras, and even on the street in front of Popeye’s you can feel the energy building. The Oleanders are Black Indians, one of 30 or so tribes of working-class blacks who celebrate Mardi Gras (and a few other special occasions) by dressing themselves in elaborate dream-Indian costumes of plumes and sparkle — and whose street chants and dancing may go back hundreds of years to the earliest slave gatherings in New Orleans’ Congo Square. Dressing in costume is not just a silly Carnival game for the Black Indians; it’s a religious act, a mystical tie with their past. It’s the central fact of their lives. When they perform for white folks, the Oleanders are sophisticated, even slick — but tonight is Mardi Gras rehearsal, for members only. Cars are pulling in and out like pistons in front of Popeye’s — pimp- mobiles and funkytown jalopies, letting out dancing crowds of black people dressed variously in fancy rags and down-home threads, all of whom swirl around on the sidewalk, talking and jiving and second-lining to the drumming from inside. (The second- line is a New Orleans dance in which you plant your feet and move what your mama gave you. When you can second-line standing still, you’re ready to try it in motion — following a marching band, or a parade of Wild Oleanders.) The door to the bar is open, but inside people are packed so tightly that you have to dance your way in. Getting from the door to the bar is like making love to 15 strangers of both sexes, and getting a drink at the bar is the supreme test of cool under pressure. It’s about 110 degrees, and you can hear the drumming with your stomach. There are three giant congas, assorted smaller drums, bongos and tambourines scattered throughout the room, and everyone is dancing and yelling and getting crazy. There are at least 300 people inside a room big enough for 100, they’re all drunk, and only four of them are white — but it doesn’t feel threatening. Not in terms of color, anyway. You can catch a few bits of rhyming Mardi Gras chant through the roar ( “ Flag Boy com ing/Spy Boy humming...’’) and what might be fragments of a leftover field holler (“ Walk on the water/Walk on the river...” ) but the. one chant that’s easy to make out is a repeated, four- syllable “ Firewater!” that circles the room along with a tambourine full of money, and if you don’t want trouble you better kick in at least $.50 to buy whiskey for the drummers. The heat, the pressure, the drummed polyrhythms are completely over-powering; it’s not something you breathe instead of oxygen. Here and there people have got the Ghost, screaming out of their heads and jumping ecstatic, and it hits me that this is African ceremonial magic — voodoo, or something very close to it. Suddenly I’m terrified. I ’ve loved black music all my life — chased after it, studied it, learned from it. But I’ve never hit it so pure or powerful before. This is no pale shadow of a ghostly blues song — it’s alive. My heart starts pounding, there’s pressure behind my eyes, my hands are numb, I ’m dizzy. If I don’t get outside I’m going to fall down. On the street it’s an hour short of midnight, and the scene is still jumping. I cool off for five minutes, start back inside, stop. I t’s serious in there. From all reports, Congo Square was serious too. I want it so bad I can taste it. It scares me so bad I’m shaking. I’ve got to give up to it, I’ve got to give it up — and I can’t. Tomorrow I’ll be ready. Hey La Bas! Eh Legba! Illustration by Bob Gardiner 29
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