Walking Raddy

Walking Raddy
Author: Kim Vaz-Deville
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2018-05-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496817419

Contributions by Jennifer Atkins, Vashni Balleste, Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, Ron Bechet, Melanie Bratcher, Jerry Brock, Ann Bruce, Violet Harrington Bryan, Rachel Carrico, Sarah Anita Clunis, Phillip Colwart, Keith Duncan, Rob Florence, Pamela R. Franco, Daniele Gair, Meryt Harding, Megan Holt, DeriAnne Meilleur Honora, Marielle Jeanpierre, Ulrick Jean-Pierre, Jessica Marie Johnson, Karen La Beau, D. Lammie-Hanson, Karen Trahan Leathem, Charles Lovell, Annie Odell, Ruth Owens, Steve Prince, Nathan "Nu'Awlons Natescott" Haynes Scott, LaKisha Michelle Simmons, Tia L. Smith, Gailene McGhee St.Amand, and Kim Vaz-Deville Since 2004, the Baby Doll Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans has gone from an obscure, almost forgotten practice to a flourishing cultural force. The original Baby Dolls were groups of black women, and some men, in the early Jim Crow era who adopted New Orleans street masking tradition as a unique form of fun and self-expression against a backdrop of racial discrimination. Wearing short dresses, bloomers, bonnets, and garters with money tucked tight, they strutted, sang ribald songs, chanted, and danced on Mardi Gras Day and on St. Joseph feast night. Today's Baby Dolls continue the tradition of one of the first street women's masking and marching groups in the United States. They joyfully and unabashedly defy gender roles, claiming public space and proclaiming through their performance their right to social citizenship. Essayists draw on interviews, theoretical perspectives, archival material, and historical assessments to describe women's cultural performances that take place on the streets of New Orleans. They recount the history and contemporary resurgence of the Baby Dolls while delving into the larger cultural meaning of the phenomenon. Over 140 color photographs and personal narratives of immersive experiences provide passionate testimony of the impact of the Baby Dolls on their audiences. Fifteen artists offer statements regarding their work documenting and inspired by the tradition as it stimulates their imagination to present a practice that revitalizes the spirit.

The 'Baby Dolls'

The 'Baby Dolls'
Author: Kim Marie Vaz
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2013-01-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 080715072X

One of the first women's organizations to mask and perform during Mardi Gras, the Million Dollar Baby Dolls redefined the New Orleans carnival tradition. Tracing their origins from Storyville-era brothels and dance halls to their re-emergence in post-Katrina New Orleans, author Kim Marie Vaz uncovers the fascinating history of the "raddy-walking, shake-dancing, cigar-smoking, money-flinging" ladies who strutted their way into a predominantly male establishment. The Baby Dolls formed around 1912 as an organization of African American women who used their profits from working in New Orleans's red-light district to compete with other Black prostitutes on Mardi Gras. Part of this event involved the tradition of masking, in which carnival groups create a collective identity through costuming. Their baby doll costumes -- short satin dresses, stockings with garters, and bonnets -- set against a bold and provocative public behavior not only exploited stereotypes but also empowered and made visible an otherwise marginalized female demographic. Over time, different neighborhoods adopted the Baby Doll tradition, stirring the creative imagination of Black women and men across New Orleans, from the downtown Trem area to the uptown community of Mahalia Jackson. Vaz follows the Baby Doll phenomenon through one hundred years with photos, articles, and interviews and concludes with the birth of contemporary groups, emphasizing these organizations' crucial contribution to Louisiana's cultural history.

The Golden Crown

The Golden Crown
Author: Clarence Williams Jr.
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-11-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 168409755X

The Golden Crown: A Story of Black New Orleans. Henderson Brooks, the youngest of three New Orleans brothers, is a riverfront foreman with a wife and three children. He is also chief of the Downtown Warriors, a Mardi Gras Indian tribe that parades every Mardi Gras Day. His tribe is in competition with at least thirty tribes about the city for splendor and innovation in costume design. His father and grandfather were Downtown Warrior chiefs before him, and his grandfather founded the tribe in

New Orleans Carnival Krewes

New Orleans Carnival Krewes
Author: Rosary O'Neill
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2014-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1625846096

“The traditions, the secret societies and the history of how New Orleans and Mardi Gras came to be as integral to each other as red beans and rice” (Blogcritics). New Orleans is practically synonymous with Mardi Gras. Both evoke the parades, the beads, the costumes, the food—the pomp and circumstance. The carnival krewes are the backbone of this Big Easy tradition. Every year, different krewes put on extravagant parties and celebrations to commemorate the beginning of the Lenten season. Historic krewes like Comus, Rex, and Zulu that date back generations are intertwined with the greater history of New Orleans itself. Today, new krewes are inaugurated and widen a once exclusive part of New Orleans society. Through careful and detailed research of over three hundred sources, including fifty interviews with members of these organizations, author and New Orleans native Rosary O’Neill explores this storied institution, its antebellum roots and its effects in the twenty-first century. Includes photos! “[A] spirited and richly illustrated account.” —New York Theatre Wire

Roll Model

Roll Model
Author: Jill Miller
Publisher: Victory Belt Publishing
Total Pages: 790
Release: 2014-11-04
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1628600748

Pain is an epidemic. It prevents you from performing at your best because it robs you of concentration, power, and peace of mind. But most pain is preventable and treatable, and healing is within your grasp. Hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have taken life “by the balls” and circumvented a dismal future of painkillers, surgeries, and hopelessness by using Jill Miller’s groundbreaking Roll Model Method. The Roll Model gives you the tools to change the course of your life in less than 5 minutes a day. You are a fully equipped self-healing organism, and this book will guide you through easy-to-perform self-massage techniques that will erase pain and improve your performance in whatever activities you pursue. The Roll Model teaches you how to improve the quality of your life no matter your size, shape, or condition. Within these pages you will find: • Inspiring stories of people just like you who have altered the course of their lives by using the Roll Model Method • Accessible explanations of how and why this system works based on the science of your body and the physiological effects of rolling • Step-by-step rolling techniques to help awaken your body’s resilience from head to toe so that you have more energy, less stress, and greater performance Whether you’re living with constant discomfort, seeking to improve your mobility, or trying to avoid medication and surgery, this book provides empowering and effective solutions for becoming your own best Roll Model.

GUMBO YA-YA

GUMBO YA-YA
Author: Robert Tallant
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1987-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1455605441

The living folklore of Louisiana returns in this new edition of the classic Gumbo Ya-Ya. Long considered the finest collection of Louisiana folk tales and customs, Gumbo Ya-Ya chronicles the stories and legends that have emerged from the bayou country. Meet the Krewe of Zulu, New Orleans' most colorful all-black Carnival club, and the many tribes of Indians who help celebrate Mardi Gras with their fierce pageantry. Listen to the street criers entice customers to buy their goods. Produce peddlers hawk watermelon, cantaloupe, snap and butter beans, and strawberries. The charcoal man sells fuel to stoke the wash-day fires, while the kindling man offers to saw two cords for a dollar and dinner. Zabette and Rose Gla dispense the choicest coffee available in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The bottle man collects old bottles, rags, and bones, driving a hard bargain with the children who expect handfuls of peppermints, whistles, horns, and rattles for their hoards of treasure. All aspects of society are detailed in this wonderful album of Louisiana tradition: the Vieux Carr Creoles, with their strict codes of family honor; the burly Irish Channel immigrants; the lively Italians who still honor St. Joseph and St. Rosalia with all the pomp of the Old Country; and the fun-loving Cajuns, with their curious family names and spirited fais do do. There's no escaping superstition and voodoo in Louisiana. Several sections explain the customs and beliefs that have sprung up over the centuries. Always burn onion peels to ensure a steady supply of money. Sprinkle nutmeg in a woman's left shoe every night at midnight to drive her crazy. Kiss your elbow to change your sex. Gumbo Ya-Ya ( Everybody Talks at Once ) is a charming look at the legends and practices of Louisiana, particularly New Orleans. Originally written as part of the WPA's Louisiana Writers' Program, it has endured as a classic of its genre and is again available in a beautiful Pelican edition.

One Grand Noise

One Grand Noise
Author: Jerrilyn McGregory
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1496834801

For many, December 26 is more than the day after Christmas. Boxing Day is one of the world’s most celebrated cultural holidays. As a legacy of British colonialism, Boxing Day is observed throughout Africa and parts of the African diaspora, but, unlike Trinidadian Carnival and Mardi Gras, fewer know of Bermuda’s Gombey dancers, Bahamian Junkanoo, Dangriga’s Jankunú and Charikanari, St. Croix’s Crucian Christmas Festival, and St. Kitts’s Sugar Mas. One Grand Noise: Boxing Day in the Anglicized Caribbean World delivers a highly detailed, thought-provoking examination of the use of spectacular vernacular to metaphorically dramatize such tropes as “one grand noise,” “foreday morning,” and from “back o’ town.” In cultural solidarity and an obvious critique of Western values and norms, revelers engage in celebratory sounds, often donning masks, cross-dressing, and dancing with abandon along thoroughfares usually deemed anathema to them. Folklorist Jerrilyn McGregory demonstrates how the cultural producers in various island locations ritualize Boxing Day as a part of their struggles over identity, class, and gender relations in accordance with time and space. Based on ethnographic study undertaken by McGregory, One Grand Noise explores Boxing Day as part of a creolization process from slavery into the twenty-first century. McGregory traces the holiday from its Egyptian origins to today and includes chapters on the Gombey dancers of Bermuda, the evolution of Junkanoo/Jankunú in The Bahamas and Belize, and J'ouvert traditions in St. Croix and St. Kitts. Through her exploration of the holiday, McGregory negotiates the ways in which Boxing Day has expanded from small communal traditions into a common history of colonialism that keeps alive a collective spirit of resistance.

Whiskey, Women, and War

Whiskey, Women, and War
Author: Brian Altobello
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2021-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496835107

As the US entered World War I in 1917, a burst of patriotism in New Orleans collided with civil liberties. The city, due to its French heritage, shared a strong cultural tie to the Allies, and French speakers from Louisiana provided vital technical assistance to the US military during the war effort. Meanwhile, citizens of German heritage were harassed by unscrupulous, ill-trained volunteers of the American Protective League, ordained by the Justice Department to shield America from enemies within. As a major port, the wartime mobilization dramatically reshaped the cultural landscape of the city in ways that altered the national culture, especially as jazz musicians spread outward from the vice districts. Whiskey, Women, and War: How the Great War Shaped Jim Crow New Orleans surveys the various ways the city confronted the demands of World War I under the supervision of a dynamic political machine boss. Author Brian Altobello analyzes the mobilization of the local population in terms of enlistments and war bond sales and addresses the anti-vice crusade meant to safeguard the American war effort, giving attention to Prohibition and the closure of the red-light district known as Storyville. He studies the political fistfight over women’s suffrage, as New Orleans’s Gordon sisters demanded the vote predicated on the preservation of white supremacy. Finally, he examines race relations in the city, as African Americans were integrated into the city’s war effort and cultural landscape even as Jim Crow was firmly established. Ultimately, the volume brings to life this history of a city that endured World War I in its own singular style.

The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies

The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies
Author: Simon J. Bronner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1033
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0190840641

The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies surveys the materials, approaches, concepts, and applications of the field to provide a sweeping guide to American folklore and folklife, culture, history, and society. Forty-three comprehensive and diverse chapters delve into significant themes and methods of folklore and folklife study; established expressions and activities; spheres and locations of folkloric action; and shared cultures and common identities. Beyond the longstanding arenas of academic focus developed throughout the 350-year legacy of folklore and folklife study, contributors at the forefront of the field also explore exciting new areas of attention that have emerged in the twenty-first century such as the Internet, bodylore, folklore of organizations and networks, sexual orientation, neurodiverse identities, and disability groups. Encompassing a wide range of cultural traditions in the United States, from bits of slang in private conversations to massive public demonstrations, ancient beliefs to contemporary viral memes, and a simple handshake greeting to group festivals, these chapters consider the meanings in oral, social, and material genres of dance, ritual, drama, play, speech, song, and story while drawing attention to tradition-centered communities such as the Amish and Hasidim, occupational groups and their workaday worlds, and children and other age groups. Weaving together such varied and manifest traditions, this handbook pays significant attention to the cultural diversity and changing national boundaries that have always been distinctive in the American experience, reflecting on the relative youth of the nation; global connections of customs brought by immigrants; mobility of residents and their relation to an indigenous, urbanized, and racialized population; and a varied landscape and settlement pattern. Edited by leading folklore scholar Simon J. Bronner, this handbook celebrates the extraordinary richness of the American social and cultural fabric, offering a valuable resource not only for scholars and students of American studies, but also for the global study of tradition, folk arts, and cultural practice.

Play in a Covid Frame

Play in a Covid Frame
Author: Anna Beresin
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2023-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1800648944

During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19. Folklorists Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop adopt a multidisciplinary approach to this phenomenon, bringing together the insights of a geographically and demographically diverse range of scholars, practitioners, and community activists. The book begins with a focus on social and physical landscapes before moving onto more intimate portraits of play among the old and young, including coronavirus-themed games and novel toy inventions. Finally, the co-authors explore the creative shifts observed in frames of play, ranging from Zoom screens to street walls. This singular chronicle of coronavirus play will be of interest to researchers and students of developmental psychology, childhood studies, education, playwork, sociology, anthropology and folklore, as well as to toy, museum, and landscape designers. This book will also be of help to parents, professional organizations, educators, and urban planners, with a postscript of concrete suggestions advocating for the essential role of play in a post-pandemic world.