New book explores spirit of Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo warriors

By Katy Reckdahl
New Orleans Advocate

On Saturday morning, Big Chief Victor “Fi Yi Yi” Harris and his mighty percussionists, the Mandingo Warriors, sent the sounds of African drumming and Mardi Gras Indian chants far across the Fair Grounds, site of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Red was the color of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi tribe this year. Nearly everyone on the Jazz & Heritage stage Saturday morning was dressed in Indian suits made with red feathers and marabou, including the chief’s shadow, granddaughter Calsey Harris, 10, who has masked since she was a toddler.
Calsey, a student at Arthur Ashe Charter School, summed up the artistic and political sensibility she’s gained by sewing for hours with her PawPaw. “He’s showing everyone our culture so that they understand how we live. But he’s also trying to make a change,” she said.

Harris and his tribe are the subject of “Fire in the Hole: The Spirit Work of Fi Yi Yi & the Mandingo Warriors,” a 190-page oral history published this year by the Neighborhood Story Project and the Backstreet Cultural Museum. The coffee table book includes many photos, some from archives and friends and others snapped over the years by cultural anthropology professor Jeffrey Ehrenreich of the University of New Orleans.

On Saturday afternoon, Victor Harris was interviewed by Maurice Martinez on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage about the book and about his 53 years of "masking Indian." Since 1984, he’s reigned as big chief of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi tribe.

But on Saturday morning, the chief walked onto the Jazz & Heritage stage wearing yet another of his acclaimed suits. Harris’ suits differ from other local Indian suits in key ways: They are made entirely of layered beads and cowrie shells, without glue, staples and the sculpted cardboard sometimes used to underpin the three-dimensional Indian suits in his native 7th Ward.

Also, instead of the feathered crowns that typically frame the faces of Indian chiefs, Harris wears an African-style mask that covers his face and gives him more of a mystical look. He sews each intricate mask with careful detail, creating elaborately outlined openings for his eyes and mouth.

This unique needlework, which Harris designs and creates along with his “committee” of sewing hands, landed him a Prospect.1 retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2009.
But on stage, his shamanic side takes over. As others from his tribe chant traditional Indian numbers like “Shallow Water,” Harris preaches; he sermonizes; he calls to people’s better instincts.
That’s classic Fi Yi Yi.

On St. Joseph’s Night, when Harris roams the streets of New Orleans with his tribe, he’ll often stop under a streetlight and unleash poetic speeches backed by the beats of the Mandingo Warriors, including drummer Wesley Phillips and sewing committee stalwart Jack Robertson, who picks up a drum whenever the tribe hits the streets.

Asked how his activism fits with being an Indian, Harris gave a puzzled look. “It’s all together,” he said, describing the revolutionary and civil-rights spirit that he said fuels every Indian he knows.

That “won’t bow down” Indian mentality is what first made him into an activist, he said, recalling how he’d marched on City Hall along with others from the Tambourine & Fan Club during the early 1970s. The group demanded, successfully, that Mayor Moon Landrieu create a park from the abandoned, untended land under Interstate 10 at St. Bernard and North Claiborne avenues.
They dubbed the new green space Hunter’s Field, after the Hunters, a nickname for the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, where Harris got his start, "running flag" under legendary chief Allison “Tootie” Montana.

The new book makes clear that Harris’ ultimate focus is his community. Before Hurricane Katrina shut down Charity Hospital, he was a food-service supervisor there and the person to call whenever anyone in the 7th Ward needed to check on a hospitalized family member.

As a young man, he coached on the newly created Hunter’s Field, becoming a beloved, widely known figure whom children called Duck because he entertained them by imitating Donald Duck and waddling across the football field.

So by the early 1980s, when he formed his own Indian tribe, Harris already had a broad base of people who supported him.

In 1983, after a misunderstanding about a credit on a record, Harris was ousted from the Yellow Pocahontas. Though he later reconciled with Montana and other members of the Yellow Pocahontas, it was a rough moment. Harris had chanted on the tune, but instead of crediting Harris by name, the record producer had labeled it “Yellow Pocahontas,” angering other Indians and leaving him tribe-less.

Then, in 1984, he said, he had a vision one night and formed the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, with a robust sewing committee to help sew his suit and a legion of children’s suits.

Over the year, deaths, sickness and arthritis have taken their toll on the committee, leaving just two. “It’s just me and Chief,” Robertson said Saturday.

Then there’s Calsey, the future of Fi Yi Yi, who plans to someday become one of the vaunted needles of the committee.

“When I’m ready, I will,” she said, with the confidence of a child who’s grown up as part of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi.

A Distant Drum Beat

On the Trail of the Mardi Gras Indians
By Chris Rose, New Orleans Magazine


So many spectacles compete to overload the senses during Mardi Gras. So many sights, sounds, colors, costumes, parades, songs, rainbows, fever dreams, unicorns and pounds of flesh to behold, light the eyes, satisfy appetites and quench every thirst.

It takes effort to stand out amidst the glitter and gold, baubles and beads, spandex and spangles, flashing lights and fairy dust. It takes money, time and commitment. Serious commitment.

It takes the Mardi Gras Indians. Those singular, mythic, mysterious and inscrutable men, women and children of color who preserve and perform a sacred 19th century ritual borne of slavery, emancipation and masquerade.

It's quite a challenge to try to describe the Indians to the uninitiated. They are tight-knit, turf-conscious, prideful working class black folks dressed up in flamboyant, meticulously hand-sewn, ceremonial Native American costumes, face paint and feathers, stalking each other through New Orleans back streets in some sort of concrete jungle war game. But instead of pretending to kill their rivals, they face-off in a ritualistic preening, drumming, dancing, chanting show-down, taunting each other and arguing over who is...prettiest.

What's not to understand about that?

How the Mardi Gras Indians came to be is a subject of much academic - and barroom - debate. It's all folklore, legend, history, mythology and braggadocio.

Are they a living tribute to local Native American tribes who sheltered their fugitive forbears from the indignities of lives waged in the fields of Confederate perdition? Or are they, as popular notion goes, a spin-off of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show from the late 19th Century? Or are they just a bunch of rowdy, ostentatious, over-the-top, half-cocked revelers who take this Mardi Gras thing...Way. Too. Seriously.

Collectively, they are the proverbial golden needle in the messy Carnival haystack. The Wild Tchoupitoulas, Wild Magnolias, Flaming Arrows, Uptown Hunters, Yellow Pocahontas, Burning Spears, Congo Nation, Guardians of the Flame, Creole Osceola, Fi-Y-Yi, Louisiana Star Choctaws and dozens more. From near extinction just four decades ago, Mardi Gras Indian culture has exploded in the new century, with new tribes forming every year to preserve this most elite, quixotic and exotic tradition.

On Mardi Gras morning, gangs of chiefs, spy boys, flag boys and wild men debut their new costumes, a year-long labor sewing, stitching and beading, memorialized in the song "New Suit," by legendary New Orleans composer Willie Tee:

Every year for Carnival Time, we make a new suit
Red, yellow, green, purple or blue, we make a new suit
They shine like diamonds and stars
Gotta be sure we’re together
‘Cause we the soul of Mardi Gras.

Indeed, they are the heart, the soul and the beat of the street. I remember the first time my kids ever saw an Indian, one Fat Tuesday afternoon many years ago, when we were driving back Uptown after spending the morning basking in the colorful revelry of the Marigny and French Quarter.

He was alone, turned out in Bimini lime feathers and mint green rhinestones, staggering erratically on the Broad Street overpass, a chief who seemed to have lost his way – and his tribe! He stumbled in front of my car, I swerved wide around him and watched from my rearview mirror as my kids asked: “Daddy, what was that?”

How do you tell someone?

Over the years, it became our Fat Tuesday tradition: We would not park down near the Quarter until we found an Indian gang wandering around the streets of the 6th, 7th or 8th Wards. And we always did.

The last time I saw a Mardi Gras Indian was last March, on St. Joseph’s night, when the gangs and thousands of spectators annually pack the streets of Central City for intimate neighborhood rituals far from the wide prying eyes and intrusive cell phones of visitors and tourists. This was a young man, junior member of his tribe, splayed out on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to the thigh.

I heard the shot. I joined the crowd of previously joyous observers now looking on in wonder, fear and despair. Everyone wondered: What happened. Who is he? Why was he shot? And: Who the hell shoots an Indian?

 Another mystery of this town. It will build you up and tear you down. It’s the ecstasy and the agony. It’s the beauty and the beast. It’s laughter and forgetting.

It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. With an ever-present menacing drumbeat out there in the distance.

And so it goes.

---

Mardi Gras Indians suit up for Super Sunday

Indians with Mayor Landrieu/Photo: Matthew Hinton, The Advocate

BY KATY RECKDAHL

SPECIAL TO THE ADVOCATE

After a 15-year hiatus from masking, a Mardi Gras Indian sewing legend and his queen hit the streets this year in a pair of stunning black suits. Big Chief Tyrone “Pie” Stevenson, 54, chose black feathers for his entire tribe: his Big Queen and life partner, Denice Smith, plus a little chief, four little queens, two flagboys and a medicine man.

On Sunday, the Monogram Hunters tribe dressed at Stevenson’s home in the Gentilly area, then piled into SUVs and pickups bound for A.L. Davis Park in Central City, the starting point for the Indians’ Sunday parade.

The gathering was jam-packed with Indians especially eager to show off their suits this year because their appearances on Mardi Gras Day had been curtailed by heavy rain.

The Uptown procession, sometimes referred to as “Uptown Super Sunday,” is presented annually by the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council on a Sunday close to March 19, St. Joseph’s Night, when the Indians come out in their suits in the evening.

This year’s parade was delayed twice because of rainstorms, putting it at the end of March on what ended up being a gloriously sunny day.

As Stevenson planned, the rays of the sun caught on the gold-metallic lace that edged many of the 3-D elements in his and Smith’s suits. They reflected off the small red mirrors sewn into the suits.

Stevenson chose the somber black feathers, he said, “in homage to everything we’ve been through and to everyone we lost,” including his former leader, Chief of Chiefs Allison “Tootie” Montana, who died in 2005, and his close friend, Big Chief Lionel Delpit, of the Black Feather tribe, who died in 2011.

Black also seemed appropriate as the backdrop for the brightly colored symbols of new life that Stevenson sewed into his suit’s three-dimensional beadwork, including springtime flowers, with petals made of oblong red-rice beads and centers of yellow stone carefully edged with sewn white pearls.

“Like a beautiful flower, that suit almost bursts open in spots,” said Ed Buckner, founding director of The Porch, a 7th Ward cultural organization. “It was as if all the years Chief Pie took off, all the creative ideas he had, all that inspiration went into that one suit.”

The suits were spectacular enough that some Indians even speculated Big Chief Pie had been slowly sewing on his own suit over a few years, creating a scorned “two-year suit” instead of one created entirely within a year’s time, as Indian tradition requires.

Stevenson denied it, saying he started making drawings and cutting cardboard for the suits just after Mardi Gras last year. He and Smith immediately began sewing beads onto the cardboard and in fact threw themselves into the sewing so enthusiastically that the suits were done a few months in advance, he said.

Several years ago, Buckner recruited Stevenson to The Porch, where the chief worked tirelessly teaching his craft to neighborhood children, for what became The Porch’s own tribe, the Red Flame Hunters. Buckner believes it was the young people who inspired Stevenson to mask again, after asking the same question for years: “When can I mask with you?”

Stevenson agreed: The young Indians from The Porch did push him to return. But so did fellow Indians, like FiYiYi Big Chief Victor Harris, who said he saw in his spirit that Stevenson was coming back.

Jerome Smith from the Tambourine and Fan organization told Stevenson he had sat out long enough. “That’s enough of a break,” Smith said to him.

Neighbors also urged him to resume making suits, said his son, Second Chief Jeremy Stevenson: “Every time we’d go to the second line, people would say, ‘You gotta dress, man. We miss you. When are you going to put your suit on?’ ”

For 22 years, like clockwork, Stevenson masked with Tootie Montana’s Yellow Pocahontas, he said, recalling the years in the late 1970s when Montana had more than 100 Indians following him. Montana had formed a tribe called the Monogram Hunters with friends early in his career. But in 1950, he took over the Yellow Pocahontas, the tribe that his great uncle, Becate Batiste, had helped to form before the turn of the 20th century. So in the early 1990s, when Stevenson was ready to form his own tribe, he requested, and received, Montana’s blessing to become the Big Chief of the Monogram Hunters.

The tribe premiered under his leadership in 1992. The following year, the Monogram Hunters marched with 23 Indians. They came out strong for several more years. Then something happened. After 1997, Stevenson quit masking.

Though he has long worked steadily in a French Quarter candy shop, he had teenagers to raise, and his finances felt too tight at that point to spend several thousand dollars on an Indian suit, he said. “It’s hard. You’re taking food off your own table to mask,” he said.

More than that, it seemed his heart wasn’t in it anymore. “I got burnt out,” he said. His nephew, Third Chief Keelian Boyd, saw what his uncle was going through. “His fire went out,” he said.

Though Stevenson wasn’t leading the tribe, the Monogram Hunters didn’t go dormant, said Jeremy Stevenson, who led the Hunters during that time, along with Boyd. “A Monogram Hunter has always hit the streets since 1992. And we always were pretty,” Jeremy Stevenson said.

But some years were tough, financially. Jeremy Stevenson remembered saving beads thrown from Mardi Gras floats and sewing them onto his suit.

At first, Big Chief Stevenson hadn’t wanted to hear about anything having to do with the Indians. But then Boyd asked his uncle to work on his suits with him. Not long afterward, Stevenson started to work with The Porch, and he began to feel a tug inside every year as Mardi Gras approached.

He’d look at the designs he was creating with children. He was proud of the work he was doing with them, and he saw that The Porch’s program was saving youths by pulling them away from the streets. But he began to ask himself, “Where is my suit?”

Last year after Mardi Gras, Smith said, she was tired of hearing people ask when he was coming back. “It’s time,” she told him. “And I’m going to come out with you.”

Soon, it seemed like old times, with pots of red beans bubbling in the kitchen as his small tribe beat tambourines and sang Indian songs together. He and Smith might leave to grab a bite to eat, but then they’d return home, eager to sew.

By Thanksgiving, their tidy Gentilly house was lined with chest plates, aprons, headpieces and feathers.

Smith, a certified nursing assistant, and Stevenson paid their bills and then used anything left to buy beads and feathers, spending nearly $9,000 in all, he estimates. They spent nearly $1,000 just on marabou, the fluffy feathers often used in boas.

He didn’t feel overwhelmed, as he had 15 years ago, when he first put his needle down. “Even if I had a bad day at work, when I touched that design, it was like therapy,” he said. Once again, he felt that he was “sewing with the spirit.”

There is no going back now. Already, Stevenson has drawn and designed next year’s suits, which he promises will be unforgettable.

There will be no more gaps, he said. “Like I told people, ‘If I put a suit on again, I’ll probably mask until I die.’ ”

Super Sunday brings out the feathers

Yesterday was Super Sunday. The Mardi Gras Indian celebration coincides with the feast of St. Joseph because, somebody told me, freed slaves hung out with Italians because they were both part of the underclass. Does this make sense? Maybe because Italians had the food and African Americans had the music.

It probably makes as much sense as an African-American dressed like a Native American except with technicolor beads and feathers.

Escaped slaves hid out in Indian villages and assimilated into their culture. Thus, Mardi Gras Indian rhythms are both African and American Indian.

You see it and hear it all on Super Sunday. In fact, now you see regular white folks in the Mardi Gras Indian entourages. And I swear I saw a guy who might have been Jewish dressed in a chief outfit.

I suppose this is all good news. We aren't fighting - except fighting over wanting to be part of the cultural mix.

Super Sunday has become a tourist attraction. Although there are a good number of police visible, nobody seems scared. The park where the parade ends is in the newly redeveloped housing project - all freshly painted townhouses. The most challenging part is taking a photo without another photographer in the way.

Mardi Gras Indians' suits created by many hands

 By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune 

For decades, Big Chief Victor Harris of the Spirit of FiYiYi sewed his Mardi Gras Indian suits with the help of a roomful of people -- his "committee," he called them. But nearly 50 years after he began, deaths, sickness and arthritis have thinned the committee's daily ranks to just two: the chief and Jack Robinson, 50, who has sewed with Harris for 25 years.

EnlargeJohn McCusker, The Times-PicayuneJohn McCusker / The Times-Picayune Jack Robinson and Victor Harris sew in Harris' garage recently.Needles are the people who sew Indian suits every year but don't mask themselves. FiYiYi Big Chief Victor Harris and number-one needle, Jack Robinson, have are sewing suits in Harris's ninth ward garage. Robinson arrives at 8 a.m. every day and the two often sew side by side for 10 to 12 hours. Robinson has sewed for FiYiYi for about 25 years and on Carnival day he plays African bass drum with the group's drummers.Mardi Gras Indians get help from invisible hands gallery (6 photos)

For the past several months, the two have sat side by side in the chief's 9th Ward garage. For 12 hours a day, they tack down feathers, stitch beaded patches and sew sequins onto the chief's elaborate, many-layered suit and six smaller children's suits, each with matching boots and crowns.

When one gets stuck on a piece, the other takes it over.

Without Robinson, the chief would consider retiring, he said. "Mr. Robinson is a true, honest committee man -- my everything, my right hand, the ace, the one," said Harris, 61, who has created a new suit annually for 48 years.

Robinson has helped create half of those suits. On Mardi Gras morning, he helps members of the FiYiYi dress and then picks up an African bass drum and joins the tribe's group of drummers.

Robinson has never worn a feather. But he's one of a multitude of unseen people who endure painful needle pricks and long hours to put the city's Indians on the streets by Mardi Gras morning.

"No Indian sews alone. If they tell you that, it's a lie," said Corey Rayford, second chief of the 7th Ward's Black Feather tribe.

Some who sew are, like Robinson, devoted to one Indian tribe or chief and work for free. A smaller group of men freelance as designers, sculptors and sketch artists, juggling four and five suits at a time for modest payments. Over the years, they've taught their art to hundreds of younger Indians.

But the backbone of the Indian tradition is family members, who often pool money and talents to create new suits annually.

The best-known needle belongs to Joyce Montana, the widow of Yellow Pocahontas Big Chief Tootie Montana, who transformed the city's Indian tradition with his weighty crowns and elaborate three-dimensional patches.

By the time Montana died in 2005, he had emerged in a new suit for 52 of his 82 years. He usually declared himself the "prettiest" Indian in the city.

But the chief shared credit, his wife said. "He'd say, 'If it weren't for Joyce, I wouldn't be able to come out like I come out.' " Without her help, her husband's suits would have had beautiful designs but not the same kind of detail, she said.

His suits' intricacies were the result of daily labor. "I was a beautician, and he was a metal lather," Joyce Montana said. "But every night after work, we'd have supper and then the children would string the beads and he and I would sit down and sew."

As Carnival approached, they'd turn down all invitations, she said. "You make sacrifices if you want to be the prettiest."

All in the family

Other help came from loyal needle-wielders like Jerome Smith, who began sewing for the chief when he was a young boy. "Tootie would come home from work and find Jerome inside the house working on his suit," Joyce Montana said.

These days, she sews for her son, Darryl Montana, who became the tribe's big chief about 15 years ago. "I'm 81, and I'm still going strong with the sewing," she said. "I sew for Darryl like I used to sew for Tootie."

Darryl Montana incorporates between 400 and 600 separate beaded pieces into each year's suit, he said. A finished suit can weigh more than 100 pounds.

Like many big chiefs, he draws the design of each piece of each suit and then distributes them to different people for sewing. This year, Montana's team includes his wife, friends, sisters and sisters-in-law.

But the chief's power duo is headquartered at the family's double shotgun in the 7th Ward: His mother lives on one side and his brother on the other. They sew together, and this year have completed more than 400 pieces.

The pieces come back to the chief for pearling and detail work, which he always does himself.

Three years ago, Montana's suit honored his mother. On his chief's stick, he beaded a portrayal of her hands sewn onto the surface of a tambourine. "Those hands kept the whole tradition going, " he said. "Because everyone was trying to beat my dad. But my mom was the engine that kept it going."

Guardians of the Flame Big Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson, who lives in the 9th Ward, has strict guidelines for her helpers. Only "people who share DNA with me" can stitch her beadwork, she said.

One of her mainstays is her mother, Herreast Harrison, 74, who sews for her children and grandchildren. "She does it with her whole heart, and you feel that," Harrison-Nelson said. "When I put it on, it's like snuggling under a warm blanket."

Architects and designers

When Indians talk about people known for crafting suits, they usually mention only two or three names.

For downtown Indians, especially those who sew three-dimensional designs, the name "Red" always comes up. So does the name Nelson, who has long worked on flat, one-dimensional suits in the 9th Ward.

Ernest "Red" Hingle, 62, who has freelanced on Indian suits for 46 years, said, "There's just a handful of guys like me."

Hingle first sewed for his younger brothers, who masked with the Yellow Pocahontas. Then he stitched for cousins and nephews. One year, he helped to make 17 suits.

He and his family took up the whole backyard, spreading out the work across picnic tables. But they soon noticed that people passing the yard would try to get a forbidden peek at the suits before Mardi Gras. So they went undercover, literally, by covering the whole yard with plastic and sewing underneath it.

Hingle still sews for family. But he's also become a go-to man for dozens of other Indians.

Melvin Reed has also worked on hundreds of suits and is known as "one of the great architects and designers in the culture," said Jerome Smith, who founded the Tambourine and Fan youth organization to teach cultural traditions to children.

Uptown, there are other names: Weasel, Abdul Shahid, Ramone. But Uptown Indians are less likely to sew with help, said "Honey" Bannister, who's been the gang flag for the Creole Wild West for 40 years. That's partly because most Uptown Indians sew flat, representational patches and assemble suits that rarely include three-dimensional construction.

From what he's seen, a typical Uptown Indian relies upon help from only one or two people, maybe a daughter or a cousin, Bannister said.

"It would hurt me to have somebody come up to me in front of all my friends and family and say, 'You see that patch? I sewed that for him,' " Bannister said.

'For the love of it'

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles also does it alone. "Nobody helps me," he said. He had a bad experience years ago, when he gave a friend a patch to sew. "I came by his house the night before Mardi Gras and he hadn't started on it," Boudreaux said, recalling how he'd cried at the time.

At his height, Boudreaux incorporated 32 beaded patches into his suits. He has fewer patches now; he prefers more streamlined old-school suits, which allow him to dance and "play Indian" as he leads his gang through Uptown streets.

"Some of the younger guys now make suits so big they can't even wear it, " Boudreaux said. "It's like buying a car and not being able to drive it.

And while Indians have different preferences when it comes to sewing technique and suit design, some approaches are generally scorned. Such slipshod practices include cannibalizing patches from old suits, "renting" pieces worn in the past by other Indians or paying someone else to sew an entire suit.

"The difference is the feeling you have once you put on that suit," Bannister said. "I stayed up all last night -- no Red Bull or nothing -- just for the love of it. That feeling won't be in no lazy-ass Indian's rent-a-suit."

Hingle notes that true craftsmen have boundaries. "I don't sew for anybody," he said. But for Indians who can't draw, Hingle will sketch designs onto cardboard. He will also assist in picking colors -- a specialty of his -- or assembling the three-dimensional suits and crowns.

"We sew on cardboard and shape it into three-dimensional shapes with cuts, folds and wire. And some Indians might not be as articulate with that as I am," Hingle said. "So if they get to a little stumbling block, they call or bring it to me."

Hingle gets paid for his work, but not nearly enough to give up his day job as a construction contractor. "Indians are working-class people, so I can't really get paid for the full value of my work, " he said. "They don't make that kind of money."

Piece work

Jerome Smith was only 14 at the time, but he recalls vividly when Big Chief Tootie Montana handed him a difficult part of his suit.

The piece was about the size of his palm, Smith said. He struggled until he got it shaped the right way, at which point the chief declared, "That's it!" and put it into his crown.

"That was my greatest moment as a youngster," Smith said.

Smith's cousin, Victor Harris, was Montana's flagboy at the time. But Smith said he never extended a hand in that direction because Harris "always had a lot of help in-house."

"The good Lord gave us many hands," Harris said as he recalled his once-large committee, which always topped a dozen.

Last year, it was down to three needles: the chief, Robinson and Collins "Coach" Lewis, whom Harris called the commissioner of his sewing committee. The two sewed together for 45 years before Lewis died of an aneurysm in August.

"Some days, as I'm sewing, I still expect Coach to arrive," said Harris, who created this year's suit in honor of Lewis, known as a curmudgeon and natural bossman who was also nicknamed "Bumpy Blue."

During the past week, Harris' garage, once quiet, began to bustle with people there for the camaraderie more than the sewing. "Before you know it, it's a congregation," Harris said. "We get the comedians, the wineheads, the guys who bring a box of chicken or a half-gallon of liquor."

And as each person spends time in the garage, they too become part of the Bumpy Blue suit, Harris said. "They put the love in my suit," he said. "When you see me, you see them."

Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3396.

© 2012 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

Another amazing night at the Ogden

This blur is a Mardi Gras Indian dancing at one of our local institutions of fine art. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art features music on Thursday nights and last week it was 101 Drummers, featuring Big Chief Monk Boudreaux.

Craziness at the museum

I could only find a tiny place to stand on the stairway ascending to the third level, which is why these pictures are out of focus.

During French colonial days, escaped slaves mixed up with the local Indians and this is the crazy concoction that resulted - vibrantly colored feathers and beads and frenzied dances to a never ending Afro-American beat. It's hard to describe, but difficult to forget.

The museum crowd went wild.

I saw a facebook friend at a recent book signing. She and I met on Mardi Gras Super Sunday, St. Joseph's Day, standing at the gate where all the tribes gather in Taylor Park in Central City. I took 200 photos; she took 300 and we could have taken even more.

Black Feather Chief gets a jazz funeral

Hundreds turn out to bid farewell to Black Feather Big Chief Lionel Delpit

 By Kari Dequine, Times Picayune 

Every tambourine in town seemed to shake in reverence on Saturday as family, friends, neighbors and fellow Indians said goodbye to Lionel Delpit, the beloved big chief of the Black Feather Mardi Gras Indian tribe.

EnlargeRusty Costanza, The Times-PicayuneRUSTY COSTANZA / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Big Queen Zina marches along side of a horse drawn buggy carrying the body of Big Chief Lionel Delpit, big chief of the Black Feather Mardi Gras Indian tribe, during a funeral procession on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans on Saturday, July 16, 2011.Big Chief Lionel Delpit gallery (7 photos)

Two white horses pulled the body of Delpit, who died July 7 at age 54, along St. Claude Avenue in a windowed carriage. The black cloth draping the casket bore a round patch of beadwork in the center like a presidential seal.

“Uptown, downtown, he was well known and respected everywhere he went,” Stacy Banks said as he watched the funeral procession pass by. “He was a good role model for the Indians.”

In front of and behind the carriage, the street seemed to dance with the brilliant pink, blue, orange, green, purple and yellow feathers of Mardi Gras Indian suits.

“He was a pretty, pretty Indian,” said Mary Moore, paying Delpit one of the best compliments for an Indian, who vie to see who is “prettiest.” Moore said she remembered meeting Delpit as a young girl.

Delpit, who was known for his soul-stirring singing voice, his dance steps and his dazzling three-dimensional suits, was also remembered for his willingness to help others, even strangers, and for his devotion to community and family.

“That’s what kept us out of trouble— those costumes,” said Bernard “Bunny” Hingle, a longtime friend who helped sew each of Delpit’s suits.

Hundreds of people, young and old, masked and unmasked, turned out for Delpit’s final march, including numerous big chiefs from other tribes.

“That’s the good thing about a jazz funeral,” said Charlie Tenner, spy boy of the 9th Ward Comanche Hunters Indian tribe. “Everybody comes together as one.”

As the procession turned onto Frenchmen Street, the carriage came to a stop in front of the home of Delpit’s father. Neighbors spilled onto front porches as the crowd squeezed into the narrow street with chants of “Chief Black Feather” and a stirring rendition of the anthem “Indian Red.”

The sun shone brightly as the procession continued down Frenchmen Street. Marchers dabbed sweaty faces with towels and brought water to those wearing the heavy Indian suits.

The carriage stopped again at Hunter’s Field, a traditional Indian gathering spot, near North Claiborne and St. Bernard avenues, and the crowd found a welcome respite from the sun under the overpass.

Attendants removed Delpit’s casket from the carriage and hoisted it in the air three times to loud cheers — “toasting” the casket before “cutting the body loose.”

The sky grew dark and the wind picked up as the casket was placed in a waiting white hearse, which would take it to a spot next to Delpit’s mother at a West Bank cemetery. As the hearse inched through the dense gathering, people reached out to touch the car, shouting final farewells.

Then the rain began to fall, but the second line continued to the beats of the Stooges Brass Band.

“He’s going home to meet the Lord,” Hingle said. “He did his thing here.”

© 2011 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

Jazz Fest reflections

Robert Plant performing with a plume.

By Keith Spera, Times-Picayune
If nothing else, the 2011 New Orleans Jazz Fest will go down as one of the best ever, weather-wise.
It also boasted its share of memorable moments both on- and off-stage.

A few more final thoughts on Jazz Fest 2011:

A feathered friend: Both Jon Bon Jovi and Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler spoke about visiting other stages at Jazz Fest. Robert Plant did more than visit. He dove in like an anthropologist.

He knows New Orleans. Back in the day, he and his Led Zeppelin cohorts hired the likes of Professor Longhair to perform at local parties. Plant also is a knowledgeable collector of Louisiana vinyl. Whenever he comes to town, he haunts music clubs and record stores, eager to tap into the musical gestalt.

In the hours before his April 29 headlining set on the Acura Stage, Plant made the rounds at the Fair Grounds in the company of bandmates Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin. They stopped in the Gospel Tent, and perused the craft area.

But what Plant really wanted to see was Mardi Gras Indians. And he didn't want to experience them from the side of the stage, or backstage. He wanted to be out front, among the crowd. Few recognized the tall, weathered guy with his long hair hidden under a knit cap as he pressed up against the barricade in front of the Jazz and Heritage Stage, taking it all in.

As he headed back to the Acura Stage to prepare for his own show, Plant asked Jazz Fest staffers to procure an Indian feather for him.

In the parlance of the Mardi Gras Indians, he was told, they are referred to as "plumes." Good enough - how about a plume?

The staffer returned to the Jazz and Heritage Stage and, with permission, collected a long green plume that had fallen off an Indian "suit." The plume was delivered to Plant backstage at Acura.

As the show began and Plant and company remade such Zeppelin classics as "Black Dog," "Gallow's Pole" and "Ramble On" as spooky Appalachian meditations, fans might have wondered about the green feather jutting from a pocket of his jeans. It was his New Orleans talisman.

Life in the fast lane: The drama with Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora entering rehab days before the band's April 30 headlining appearance on the Acura Stage caused some anxious moments for Jazz Fest staffers. Unlike a stand-alone concert, a festival date can't be rescheduled. Finding a fill-in as popular as Bon Jovi on two days' notice would have been tricky.

The irony is that, initially, the slot wasn't meant to be Bon Jovi at all. Reportedly, it was going to be the Eagles. Two weeks before the Jazz Fest lineup was unveiled, the Eagles fell through. Enter Bon Jovi, with substitute guitarist Phil "X" Xenidis.

Cross-pollination: Surprise appearances abounded. The Blind Boys of Alabama backed country outlaw Jamey Johnson, co-producer of their new album, at the Gentilly Stage. Cyndi Lauper stuck around an extra day to sing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" with Arcade Fire.

Jimmy Buffett turned up with Allen Toussaint. Amanda Shaw guested with Michael Franti. The Radiators' Jazz Fest finale featured Warren Haynes, Little Feat's Paul Barrere, BeauSoleil's Michael Doucet and the Bonerama horns.

Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews bookended his Jazz Fest with two high-profile pop-ups. He rocked Sly & the Family Stone's "Take You Higher" with Jeff Beck on the festival's opening day and then goosed Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" on closing day.

Drinking it in: The strawberry lemonade ... never was quite right, in the opinion of this connoisseur. Jazz Fest switched vendors last year under mysterious circumstances, and the popular stuff just hasn't tasted the same. Lines were long, if not as long as in years past, nonetheless.

I thought I'd found an acceptable, easy-access substitute in the Kids' Area lemonade vendor. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person to make this discovery - the supply ran dry this weekend. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, however, were in abundance.

Defining multi-talented: There are many, many examples of the versatility of local musicians. One of the most obvious? On Friday, George Porter Jr. navigated modern jazz titan John Coltrane's "Equinox" with keyboardist David Torkanowsky in the WWOZ Jazz Tent. On Saturday, Porter anchored the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars for the Cajun romp "We Make a Good Gumbo." He certainly does.

Who will it be in 2012?: Glen David Andrews may have established a new Jazz Fest tradition by closing the Gospel Tent. But the Radiators' retirement leaves the Gentilly Stage without its traditional closer.

Suggestions on Nola.com for the Rads' replacement include Cowboy Mouth, Galactic, Deacon John, Irma Thomas and Dr. John - all worthy options.

Regardless of who it is, 2012 will boast a new finale. Here's hoping the weather remains the same.

Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3470.

© 2011 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.

Mardi Gras Indians a cultural treasure

Mardi Gras Indian doc 'Bury the Hatchet' builds a reputation of its own

Published: Saturday, April 23, 2011, 5:00 AM

 By Mike Scott, The Times-Picayune 

New Orleans filmmaker Aaron Walker has proven that he "won't bow down," as the Mardi Gras Indians say in his stirring new documentary "Bury the Hatchet" (read movie review) -- but, despite his tempered demeanor, Walker can be excused if he does a little jumping for joy.

Soundman George Ingmire, left, and director Aaron Walker interview Big Chief Alfred Doucette in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, in a production still from the Mardi Gras Indians documentary 'Bury the Hatchet.'

His film, examining New Orleans' Mardi Gras Indian culture -- a film that doesn't even have a distributor yet but which opened Friday (Aprill 22) for a weeklong run at the Chalmette Movies anyway -- has been collecting awards and positive notices since even before he finished it last fall.

First came a Grand Prize and Intangible Culture Award at England's Royal Anthropological Institute Festival of Ethnographic Film after a work-in-progress screening there in July 2009. In 2010, at October's New Orleans Film Festival, Walker was named Louisiana Filmmaker of the Year for the completed film.

And now, after being handed a slot at the prestigious Hot Docs documentary film festival, which unspools later this month in Toronto, one gets the feeling this promising little film could be on the verge of something big.

"I hope," Walker said this week. "I hope it's starting to roll and snowball. It got accepted in Hot Docs, and that's one of North America's most prestigious festivals. And literally the day after it was accepted, I was getting calls and emails from distribution agents, sales agents. A guy in France called me; he's got some festivals and he wanted to see a screener. You know, all these different other festivals -- instead of me bugging them, it was like 'Oh, send us a screener and we'll waive the fee.' "

But don't mistake all that to mean "Bury the Hatchet" is an overnight success story.

This is a film that took more than six years to make.

"I guess it was in '04," Walker said, recounting the origins of "Bury the Hatchet," which started as a 20-minute profile of Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles, whom Walker had met while working on a music video in which Boudreaux had a cameo.

Big Chief Alfred Doucette shows off his Mardi Gras suit in an image from 'Bury the Hatchet.'

Walker had long been fascinated by the sheer craftsmanship of what the Indians do -- the elaborate feathered and beaded costumes they spend all year constructing before showing them off in impromptu street parades on the city's back streets on Mardi Gras morning.

"I had this idea -- because you hear this story of how the Indians get up early in the morning and finish up their suits on Mardi Gras morning -- and I just asked (Boudreaux) if I could come film it," Walker said. "He was totally open and he let me right into his world. He was like, 'Be there at 5 a.m.,' which I was.

"My mother's a folk artist, and so I'm just fascinated with the sewing and the beadwork," Walker said. "That was such a mysterious culture that I was really, really interested in."

It wasn't long afterward that Walker met Big Chief Alfred Doucette of the Flaming Arrow Warriors -- who, coincidentally, had a cameo in another music video on which Walker was working. Again, the filmmaker asked if he could shoot video of Doucette working on his suit. Again, he got a yes.

The last piece of the puzzle was Victor Harris of the Fi Ya Ya, who took a more wary approach to the project than did Doucette and Boudreaux. "I went over there the first couple of times, he was like, "Why do you want to do this? What are you up to?' " Walker said.

Eventually, though, after spending time with Fi Ya Ya members and winning their trust, he gained the same kind of access he has with the other tribes.

"At that point, I was really thinking it would be 50 minutes, right under an hour -- kind of a 'P.O.V.,' PBS type of thing," Walker said. "But then, some more dramatic events happened."

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux struts his stuff in 'Bury the Hatchet.'

First, the Indians' on-and-off butting of heads with the New Orleans Police Department flared, making headlines. Then the legendary Tootie Montana -- the biggest of the big chiefs -- dropped dead on camera while testifying before the City Council about the need for police to let the Indians do their thing.

And after that came a pivotal moment for Mardi Gras Indian culture and for everyone in New Orleans: Hurricane Katrina.

As the story developed, Walker -- who holds a master's degree in film from the University of New Orleans -- would leave behind his day job and focus on his new mission: to chronicle this quickly developing chapter in Mardi Gras Indian history.

"At a certain point, it just became what I did," he said. "Your life kind of gets wrapped in it. And I was really, really close with those guys, with the chiefs, we were just -- we still are -- just really good friends."

He would enlist help along the way: The pianist George Winston would contribute to the score. Jazz musician (and also a big chief) Donald Harrison would contribute songs to the film's layered soundtrack. Film editor Joe Bini would come on board as an editing consultant. An Australian company, Altaire Productions, would step up with the money needed to finish the project.

And the finished product? Walker says he just hopes it does justice to his new friends and their uniquely New Orleans tradition.

In addition to writing and directing 'Bury the Hatchet,' Aaron Walker, left, did the camerawork himself.

"What these guys are doing is important on so many levels," Walker said. "Artistically, I think they are creating work on a par with Picasso, except it's art you see on the street, not in a museum. And when you are lucky enough to see it, it's a spiritual experience. They are (also) giving something to children that so many other aspects of our society are not giving: a sense of history, a connection to their ancestors, which gives them a sense of self, purpose and spirituality. ... They are the community leaders in their neighborhoods, watching over the elderly neighbors and making sure the children have pencils and toilet paper for school.

"And it's all fragile. In the course of filming, I saw them take hits from so many different directions: the police, gentrification, violence among themselves, disinterested youth, lack of money to buy feathers, disaster. But they keep going. After Katrina, Doucette makes clear: 'This ain't no celebration -- this is our tradition.' They speak volumes not only of their own community, but across humanity, the strength to pick up and carry on doing what you think is important."

____________________

HAIL TO THE CHIEFS

What: The local theatrical run of "Bury the Hatchet," an award-winning documentary about New Orleans' Mardi Gras Indian tradition.

When: Screening daily at 1, 2:45 and 7 p.m., through Thursday (April 28). Director Aaron Walker will attend the 7 p.m. shows tonight (April 23) and Sunday (April 24), and discuss the film afterward.

Where: Chalmette Movies, 8700 W. Judge Perez Drive, Chalmette.

Tickets: Available at the box office.

Details: www.burythehatchetfilm.com , www.chalmettemovies.com .

Video: "Bury the Hatchet" video review

'Bury the Hatchet' this week's 'The One' selectionLocal documentary about the Mardi Gras Indians, 'Bury the Hatchet,' is movie critic Mike Scott's choice this week for 'The One.'

Related links

• Find New Orleans-area showtimes
• Follow the Twitter feed of Times-Picayune movie critic Mike Scott
• The Times-Picayune's A-to-Z movie review archive
• More movie news and reviews from The Times-Picayune movie critic Mike Scott

© 2011 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.