Mardi Gras Music

"We parade at the drop of a hat for just about any event you can imagine...," New Orleans scholar and clarinetist Michael White once observed on a radio program. "And people get out and dance; that's what the spirit is all about." This spirit of joie de vivre—i.e., the Mardi Gras spirit—is almost a precondition of the "happy-times music" for which the Crescent City became famous. Mardi Gras music makes you want to tap your feet, clap your hands, get up and "shake your butt until your butt is funky."

And the same spirit that prompts revelers to shed inhibitions and seek ritual transformation has a way of encouraging playfulness and spontaneity on the bandstand, resulting in countless renditions of old Carnival favorites such as "Carnival Time," "Mardi Gras Mambo," "Second Line," "Go to the Mardi Gras" and "Big Chief." What's more, every year brings the release of new contenders for jukebox immortality. more