Saturday Morning Storytelling (Sylvester Francis)
The Backstreet Cultural Museum is in New Orleans in the Tremé, a poor, historic, black neighborhood, right outside of the French Quarter. Back in town for a friend's wedding, I visited the museum in July 2006, two months after leaving New Orleans to live in New York.
When we drove up, it was damp and overcast, maybe misting a bit at that point, the museum didn't look like a museum, it looked like some guy's house -- regular, old, sort of rundown, white flaky paint, low income neighborhood, three or four men in their forties/fifties were hanging out on the front porch. Inside wasn't air-conditioned. Ceiling fans circulated some air. Lots of artifacts on the walls. The rooms were filled. Photographs. Costumes. Memorabilia. Articles to read. Small space. Two large front rooms filled. One small kitchen filled in the back. End museum. Pretty humble.
But then, a man began talking to us about ten or fifteen minutes after we'd walked inside. No one had taken our $5 admission money at that point. He spoke about how the different tribes meticulously construct these costumes, these feathered and beaded, colorful Mardi Gras Indian costumes that can weigh upwards of fifty or sixty pounds out of thousands of these incredibly tiny beads. They work on them all year round to wear them twice: Mardi Gras Day and the Sunday nearest to St. Joseph's Day. He said they'd wear them to other occassions, like Jazz Fest or to Jazz funerals, but "those don't count," i.e. they're made for just two days out of the year, wearing it at any other event is up to individual discretion. He explained how his friend is Big Cheif of the Fi Yi Yi tribe and his daughter is his First Queen but goes to school in Atlanta now and didn't mask last year and won't mask next year and thus will give up her title as First Queen to his friend's daughter. He said tribes do run in families and friend circles but are not restricted to that, most of all you have to have the interest or else you're not going to be in a tribe. All that's needed to start a new tribe is having an indian who is strong enough and can get others to follow him, then he forms his own tribe, with his own first queen, second cheif and such.
The name of the man who spoke with us (for over an hour) that rainy friday afternoon is Sylvester Francis.
The most stunning fact he gave us was that no suit can be created for under $4000. I still haven't come to an understanding of how that can be. It was at that point that I realized how devoted these people were to this craft, this culture, this behavior -- how much of themselves they were willing to give. He said most suits ran anywhere from 10 to 20 thousand dollars.
He then took us in the other room where he explained how the tribes began as social organizations. You'd pay your dues, the organization would act as a modern day insurance company does, helping you out if something goes wrong and the organization would take care of all the expenses of your funeral, your jazz funeral, which is a huge event, with brass bands, mardi gras indians, singing and dancing in the streets. Such organizations faded away as people got their own private insurance companies in recent decades.
He told us all the color photos in the building were his. He doesn't like to blow them up. He calls them house photos. He likes them small. He has thousands of photographs of over 500 jazz funerals. Then, we learned, that's what this building is, or was: a funeral parlor. He showed us the inset where the coffins were placed and the door they were processed out from. We learned that he is an employee of Rhodes Funeral Homes. He then drew our attention to the Rhodes t-shirt he's been wearing. This funeral home was closed over a decade ago and sat vacant for years before Rhodes gave the museum to Sylvester to use to house cultural artifacts and promote the culture.
Before we left, he showed us the story of the white buffalo. Back in 1994, a white buffalo calf named Miracle was born in Wisconsin. The Sioux tribes people consider this an event of great sacred significance. Sylvester then told us of the day the leader, the Big Chief, of the Sioux came to the Backstreet Cultural Museum and gave all the children of the Tremé a blessing. He told us of how the Fi Yi Yi, his indian tribe, has gone to South Dakota to meet with the Big Chief of the Sioux and to learn about their culture, and how they've met several times in Arizona as well, and they try now to meet every year. He also spoke of the historical significance of the relationship between blacks and indians, how indians had sheltered runaway slaves back in slavery days and how blacks dressed and lived among the indians to evade capture. A writing on the wall told of how the Buffalo Bill performances in the wintertime of 1884 in New Orleans inspired many blacks to take on the tradition of parading as indians.
All in all, he was very open, very inviting, asked us to come and play conga drums with them on sundays and gave us such a wealth of information, so much more than is written here. He made sure to tell us anyone can have a jazz funeral, white, black, rich, poor, they even gave a pit bull a jazz funeral once. How good you're sent away is according to how you live. A local store owner was given the biggest and best funeral, even though he wasn't rich or famous, he was a well-liked guy in the neighborhood whom everyone knew. Poor people get the best jazz funerals, he told us.
So, if you ever find yourself in New Orleans, go visit Sylvester Francis at 1116 St Claude Ave.
Mardi Gras Indians
All images found by Google Image Search, "Mardi Gras Indians."
Have any of you seen Spike Lee's documentary When The Levees Broke?