Balbancha

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
Lower Mississippi River ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins with a sketch of the pre-colonial history of the lower Mississippi River Valley, leading to a discussion of various Native populations and patterns of social life which have been neglected in the historiography of the region. Throughout the colonial period, the depth of social interaction among Native Americans, European colonists, and African Americans is revealed by their participation in musical events and spiritual practices. The complex history of peace pipe ceremonies is explored, including an analysis of how these have impacted regional musical styles, ultimately shaping the music of Mardi Gras Indians. The blended legacies of local populations are illustrated by the persistent multilingualism of New Orleans and its environs. The Native origins of Mardi Gras Indians are also evident in the etymology of “Jockomo” itself, showing how ancient regional traditions have been sustained and nurtured within the cultural practices of Mardi Gras Indians.

Poor Lo

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Wild West

While based on local families expressing their blended Native and African legacies, the development of the Mardi Gras Indian cultural system was also shaped by the stereotyped notion of the “American Indian.” Throughout the nineteenth century, as the United States expanded westward across the continent, theatrical and musical productions increasingly incorporated stereotypes of Native Americans, sometimes appearing in Wild West shows. This fell within a larger pattern of minstrelsy, a form of entertainment based on ethnic caricatures especially popular at that time. This chapter examines how minstrelsy, including the Wild West shows, influenced local enactments of “Indianness” in New Orleans. Conventional historiography has often seen the Wild West shows as the point of origin for Mardi Gras Indian traditions. This historical axiom is dispelled, however, and the nineteenth century entertainment industry is instead revealed as a phenomenon which reinforced previously existing cultural practices.

Jockomo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Language History ◽  
Regional Language ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
History Of

This book represents the very first publication to explore how Native American traditions have influenced the history of New Orleans music over the past three centuries, specifically how this connection has culminated in the Mardi Gras Indian cultural system. In addition to including the perspectives of the cultural participants themselves, this book draws upon manuscripts and archives from the earliest days of the French colony of Louisiana, providing a range of views on how the Mardi Gras Indian tradition developed. A number of linguistic analyses focus on Native terms which are significant for regional language history. By showing these Native roots, the authors give empirical evidence for a much earlier origin for the Mardi Gras Indian tradition than has previously been recognized in conventional New Orleans historiography. A series of archival images and contemporary photographs help the reader to visualize the transformations of public life in New Orleans, including musical processions in the streets of the city during Mardi Gras celebrations. The complex background of the “American Indian” icon is also recognized as a component in how Mardi Gras Indians have developed their cultural practices over time. Key political events and time periods, such as the Civil War and the Reconstruction era that followed, are indispensable to understanding how the Mardi Gras Indians emerged in New Orleans during the nineteenth century. This book features rare images, such as the first known photograph of Mardi Gras Indians, giving the reader a more complete audiovisual journey through New Orleans history.

scholarly journals Keep That Lane Open!: Race, Space, and Mardi Gras in Kansas City

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Bodily Movement

This essay explores the open-ended and complex performance of an underground Mardi Gras parade in Kansas City, MO, in 2012. The sounds, movement, and route of the parade are shaped by a network of globally circulating images of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the history of race and space in Kansas City, and the intercultural exchange involved in white performances of black cultural practices as they move from the “circum-Caribbean” city of New Orleans to the U.S. heartland of Kansas City. The parade is a partially improvised performance of a historical narrative linking Kansas City’s mostly white bohemian arts culture in the present to the city’s past as a major jazz city and center for African American culture. This narrative is told by bodily movement through urban space and through improvised sound and dance, and demonstrates the complex social relations that are highlighted when a cultural form is subject to cross-cultural communication, borrowing, and appropriation.

Coring Archaeological Sites

1986 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie K. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Mississippi River ◽  
River Sediments ◽  
Radiometric Dating ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
New Device ◽  
Culture History ◽  
Lower Mississippi River ◽  
History Of ◽  
River Deposits ◽  
Relationship Of

The history of coring and augering at archaeological sites is traced to two periods in the twentieth century. In the first period, Period I (1935-1955), the technique was used primarily to correlate archaeological deposits with river sediments for dating purposes. Rarely were the deposits containing artifacts cored or augered; rather the stratigraphic relationship of cultural to non-cultural deposits was sought. Most of this work was done in the Lower Mississippi River Delta where geologists had calculated absolute dates for river deposits. This period seems to have ended with the availability of radiometric dating and was followed by Period II (1964-present). After 1964 there is a renewed interest in coring and augering, mostly following a shift in archaeological research interests from culture history toward ecological questions. This shift coincides with the availability of a new device: a mechanical corer. During Period II, coring is utilized in many different projects, including reconstructing the environment surrounding sites, collection of samples from subsurface deposits, and locating buried archaeological sites. Following the discussion of the history of coring and augering, a description of equipment, techniques, and data potential is presented.

Ashantis in Warsaw: Notions of “Blackness” in Polish Society at the Turn of the 20th Century – A Preparatory Contribution to Polish Colonial History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Łuksza
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

The author recognizes Włodzimierz Perzyński’s comedy Aszantka as a meaningful remnant of „blackness” in the history of Polish theatre, and therefore she uses it as a point of entrance into a broader inquiry about the entanglement of Polish society into European colonial project, and the ideas, values, and cultural practices it entailed. That is why in the article the author attempts to reconstruct possible concepts and images of “blackness” which Warsaw dwellers might have shared at the end of the 19th century by analysing the reception of the performances of alleged representatives of Ashanti people in the Warsaw circus in 1888. From “Ashanti” performances on, the popularity of this type of entertainment – so called ethnographic shows or human zoos – grew in the colonized capital of the Kingdom of Poland. The author points to “savageness” and “nakedness” as constitutive traits of “blackness” which she understands as a specific human condition, experienced both by overseas colonized societies as well as subaltern social groups (to which “Aszantka” from Perzyński’s comedy belonged) in European societies.

Are Information Technologies So Dangerous for Written Culture?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asya Syrodeeva
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Sociocultural Diversity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Broad Interpretation

One of the factors that determines the current lifestyle is technology, which persistently draws the world into competition for new means and practices. As the subject of these processes, our contemporary not only takes an active part in them, but also reflexes a lot about his/her own impact. Although technology is ambivalent and multivector in its development, the humanitarian role of protecting the history of human experience, as well as creating the updated versions of cultural practices is not alien to it. Inspired by the broad interpretation of the writing practices proposed by J. Derrida, the author of the article shows how important it is for the understanding of technology not to be overloaded with alarmism. Information technologies have a democratizing effect on social life by offering new tools and formats for the writing. In particular, they support on a personal level the freedom of self-realization, while on a public scale — sociocultural diversity and interaction.

Disaster and Response in an Experiment Called New Orleans, 1700s–2000s

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Campanella
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
American Continent ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
Hazard Exposure ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban Risk

As an urbanized river-dominated delta, New Orleans, Louisiana, ranks among the most experimental of cities, a test of whether the needs of a stable human settlement can coexist with the fluidity of a deltaic environment—and what happens when they do not. That natural environment bestowed upon New Orleans numerous advantages, among them abundant fresh water, fertile soils, productive wetlands and, above all, expedient passage between maritime and continental realms. But with those advantages came exposure to potential hazards—an overflowing Mississippi River, a tempestuous Gulf of Mexico, sinking soils, eroding coasts, rising seas, biotic invasion, pestilence, political and racial discord, conflagration—made all the worse by the high levels of social vulnerability borne by all too many members of New Orleans’ population. More so than any other major metropolis on the North American continent, this history of disaster and response is about the future of New Orleans as much as it is about the past. This article examines two dozen disasters of various types and scales, with origins oftentimes traceable to anthropogenic manipulation of the natural environment, and assesses the nature of New Orleans’ responses. It frames these assessments in the “risk triangle” framework offered by David Crichton and other researchers, which views urban risk as a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. “Hazard” implies the disastrous event or trauma itself; “exposure” means human proximity to the hazard, usually in the form of settlement patterns, and “vulnerability” indicates individuals’ and communities’ ability to respond resiliently and adaptively—which itself is a function of education, income, age, race, language, social capital, and other factors—after having been exposed to a hazard.

scholarly journals De postkoloniale geschiedenis in polyfonie

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
Judyta Kuznik
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This article focuses on the book Het andere postkoloniale oog, edited by Michiel van Kempen and published in 2020 by the publishing house Verloren. This book had the goal to present never before mentioned aspects of the colonial history of the Netherlands and its influence on cultural practices of the colonised cultures within the last four centuries. Because of the numerous contributions amassed there, the article discusses in depth only a few. These contributions distinguished themselves either through an original academic approach to the topic or the positioning with regard to postcolonial theories usage. The first part of this book involves the need for the re-evaluation of the Dutch colonial history in many parts of the world, to name Suriname as an example. This re-evaluation is highly relevant, as is comes in a time when recent social movements push the mostly unknown parts of the Dutch colonial history into the spotlight. In the second part, this is followed by an attempt to answer the question whether postcolonial theories are essential for the writing bound to the colonial history of the Dutch. As is shown by some contributions, postcolonial theories can stimulate new discussions, especially in cases which do not fit the existing theoretical schemes. And yet, it seems that they are not crucial in discussions about the influence between colonised cultures, though their use might prove fruitful. The article closes with an evaluation of the analysed texts.

All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival.

1995 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 1230
Author(s):  
Frederick Barton ◽  
Reid Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
History Of
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