Big Chief Andrew Justin

Big Chief Andrew Justin began preparing for Mardi Gras 2000 on February 28, 1998—just after returning to Los Angeles from the place he calls “home”: New Orleans. Four days earlier, he’d taken to the streets on Fat Tuesday, leading a one-two punch in the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club parade—The Wild Tremé Mardi Gras Indians and The New Orleans Shake ‘Em Down Second Liners. His own costume, intricately beaded and elaborately plumed in lime green, included a “crown,” or headdress, measuring 15 feet across. His boots were made from snow-white fox pelts imported from Antarctica. Talk about  a pretty, pretty big chief. Chief Drew returned to Los Angeles, where he has lived since 1976, knowing that the combo’s next Mardi Gras outing wouldn’t be until the millennium. Most of the members are transplanted New Orleanians living in the Los Angeles area; due to the cost of regalia and travel, they can only afford to make the pilgrimage every other year. So you’d think that Chief Drew, who founded both groups and produces much of their attire, might have wanted to give the needle and thread a rest.

No way. “You know, I like doin’ this. I feel like a junkie sometimes,” he confides. “If I can’t be sewin’ or designin’, then I feel lost. I feel like I lost my best friend.”

For Mardi Gras 2000, Chief Drew returned home as a Mardi Gras Indian version of a Zulu warrior, masking once again in the Zulu parade. Costing approximately $18,000, his “suit,” as Mardi Gras Indian costumes are known, was almost certainly the most expensive, if not the most elaborate, ever made.

In the days leading up to Fat Tuesday, the guest house in New Orleans where Chief Drew and his family were staying, in the Tremé neighborhood, bustled with activity—and anxiety. Chief Drew, who has a history of knee problems, was limping. His left knee had become inflamed, and he’d left his medicine in Los Angeles. The upshot: He’d have to ride in a convertible for at least part of the parade, an arrangement that was subject to a flurry of last-minute negotiations with Zulu officials.

Meanwhile, Chief Drew was receiving a steady stream of visitors: the word had spread about  “the man from the West Coast” and his drop-dead-gorgeous regalia.

Mardi Gras Indian chiefs tend to have a gift for braggadocio, and Chief Drew is no exception. Offering a preview of his Mardi Gras 2000 finery, he declares: “There’s no Indians down here [in New Orleans who] sew like this. And I’m gonna brag. You know why? Because I’m the prettiest.”

No question: The chief had created a vividly detailed storybook of a suit with symbols and images depicting, among other subjects, the historical connections between Africans and Native Americans, and the plight they endured under slavery and colonialism. Included among the designs were specific references to his personal ancestry, a fascinating mixture of European, African and Native American bloodlines.   Ivory-colored ruffles made of 100% virgin silk trimmed the shoulders, cuffs and Egyptian-style collar. Pieces of African ivory, mirrors and hand-made satin roses accentuated the beadwork; 1000 yards of ivory satin ribbon hung from the cuffs and apron; and four pounds of ostrich plumes beautified his crown and staff stick. Accessorizing the crown were a troika of feathered peacocks and a beaded portrait of the legendary Zulu warrior Shaka.

Chief Drew’s footwear—festooned with ruffles, roses and marabou (ostrich down), and studded with a pair of large crystals in the shape of teardrops—was also something to behold. Sewn onto the front of each boot was a beaded tableau, or “patch”—one depicting an African warrior, the other an African woman. The details, upon closer inspection, suggested their procreative powers.

Perhaps most striking, though, was the suit’s glittering multitude of diamond-like glass crystals—Chief Drew calls them Aurora Borealis, or “AB,” stones—and larger, colored stones—Italian crystals, as they’re known in the trade. Little wonder the entire suit, including the staff stick, weighed in at over 130 pounds. 

“You know, if you want to be pretty,” explains the chief, “you gotta be heavy.”

An old hand with the needle and thread, Andrew Jude Martin de Porres Justin learned to sew from his mother and his paternal grandmother, Geneva Llopice, who owned a funeral home in New Orleans, Carr and Llopice. He recalls his mother bellowing, when his clothes needed mending, “ ‘Boy! Get that needle and thread. This is how you do it.’ ”

Chief Drew still peppers his conversation with the patois he spoke as a child. He grew up in Tremé, and his familial ancestry is in many ways a mirror image of that neighborhood’s ethnic heritage.

His grandfather, Adrian Guillemet, hailed from Bordeaux, France. He married Pauline Robinson, a native of West Indies. One of their daughters, Anna, married Chief Drew's father, Maurice Lionel Justin, a New Orleanian of French descent. Also figuring into Chief Drew’s hereditary mix: Spanish, African-American and Native American bloodlines. “I’m telling ya,” he says, “I’m all mixed up.”

Anna and her sister Pauline Guillemet were Baby Dolls. A sisterhood of promiscuous maskers who cavorted on Fat Tuesday in the first half of the 20th century, Baby Dolls wore skimpy pink outfits—short skirts, bloomers, satin blouses and bonnets tied under their chins with ribbons. They were, recalls Chief Drew, a rough-and-tumble bunch: "Kick a man in his ass."

Jazz funerals were a part of Chief Drew’s life as far back as he can remember. A first cousin, Harold Dejan, the legendary trumpet player who founded Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band, performed in many of these processions. It was Dejan who first put a saxophone in the hands of Chief Drew’s late father, who went on to become a professional musician—playing in street parades and at Preservation Hall, among other venues. Maurice Justin's brother George, now residing in Chicago, also played a mean sax.

Papa Justin insisted that his children study music—Chief Drew remembers not being allowed to go outside to play Cowboys and Indians until he was through practicing vocal scales and the clarinet. Perhaps because his father was such a demanding musical taskmaster, Chief Drew, who liked to tap dance on the sidewalks, shied away from taking up a “serious” instrument, gravitating instead toward percussion. He fashioned “bongo” drums out of oatmeal boxes and Community Coffee cans. “Put tape on ’em—that was my bongos,” he says. 

At age five, Chief Drew began second lining with The Square Deals Social and Pleasure Club. Maurice Justin’s brother Theodore “Teddy” Justin served as the original vice president of the club, under founder Dooky Chase. Chief Drew remembers watching the members assemble festive outfits for their neighborhood street processions, or second lines, in the garage of his grandmother’s funeral home (formerly the Lyons Club, the old headquarters of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club).

Second lining grew out of traditional African-American parades—specifically, jazz funerals. Strictly speaking, the "second line" refers to the mass of people—uninvited guests whom everyone expects to show up—who join in the processions, following behind the mourners and musicians (i.e., the "first line"). More generally, the term denotes a parade involving a brass band, Mardi Gras Indian gang or second-line club. It’s also the name for the dance inspired by the distinctive syncopated rhythm—the so-called second-line beat—characteristic of the music associated with such events.

“I used to love to second line,“ says Chief Drew. So much so that he‘d often play hooky from school so as not to miss out on the action.

Back in the 1950s, the intersection of Dumaine and Claiborne—the site of the Carr and Llopice funeral home—was a hot spot not only for second lining, but Mardi Gras Indian activity as well. On Fat Tuesday, tribes, or “gangs,” from different neighborhoods would meet up there and have at one another. Their rivalries—which often escalated into acts of violence involving straight razors, knives, guns and hatchets—fascinated Chief Drew. “I was inspired,” he says, “because I used to watch ’em fight.”

Back then, inflicting pain on a rival was how a Mardi Gras Indian earned a name for himself. “Whether you was runnin’ pretty or not,” says Chief Drew, “you was highly respected. But now, it’s all about runnin’ pretty.” In other words, the rivalries tend to revolve around who has the prettiest suit, as well as the aesthetics of singing and dancing.

Chief Drew “masked Indian” as a kid, but never did affiliate himself with any one gang. He was, in Mardi Gras Indian parlance, a “rebel”—freelancing with different gangs when the opportunity arose, a  practice also known as “runnin’ renegade.” Recalls Chief Drew, “I used to jump in with different gangs, man, because I knew how to dance, sing [and] sew.”

One of these gangs was the Creole Wild West, originally formed in the late 1800s. Its late chief, Robert Sam Tillman Jr., also known as “Brother Timber” or “Brother Tillman,” frowned on Chief Drew’s renegade ways. “When he used to see me,” Chief Drew recalls, “he would call me ‘snotty nose.’ He said, ‘Man, when you gonna join this gang and stop runnin’ like that?’ ”

The fact that Chief Drew’s family was relatively well off—Uncle Teddy would pay to have Mardi Gras Indian regalia made for his nephew—probably didn’t help to endear the young upstart to the likes of the rough-hewn Tillman. But alas, nothing in Chief Drew’s charmed pre-teen life could have prepared him for the abrupt turn of events triggered by the break-up of his family. (next page)