Women Artists Recycling the Skull: New Bone Gang Traditions in Post-Katrina New Orleans
2015; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 74; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-811X
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoThis essay gives attention to the recycling and transportation of folkloric material in the cultural fomentation of post-Katrina New Orleans. The study focuses on Gras street performance, involving the dance of skull and bones, which holds particular emblematic significance given the death/rebirth narrative the has experienced over the course of the last decade. Though the rightly champions its recovery, the new incarnations of the skull and bones illustrate the dense interweaving of complex and often ironic identities and outlooks that have operated in negotiation during this recovery period. In his All on Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival, Reid Mitchell casts the history of carnival in New Orleans chronicle of contestations, with different groups and interests competing at different times for pride of place and authority-between Creole and American, American and immigrant, etc. (Mitchell 1995:3). This essay places similar emphasis on carnival's contestatory, though not necessarily adversarial, energies and examines how the practices of the New Orleans skull and bone gangs, continued by generations of the city's African-American residents, have recently been reconstituted and resituated.Highlighting an African-American folkloric practice that may date back two hundred years, my analysis draws upon the work of Richard Schechner and his famous understanding of ritualistic performance twice-behaved behavior or restored behavior (Schechner 1981:84). As Schechner points out, patterns are repeated and reenacted, effecting group cohesion and continuity; each iteration, however, allows for variance depending on the contingent needs and participants of any given moment. This resituation of performance is also explored in the recent book Folklore Recycled: Old Traditions in New Contexts, in which Frank de Caro examines how folklore becomes transmuted or transported (3). Importantly, de Caro emphasizes that attention to the resituation of folkoric activity can be as important the study of folklore's prime contexts themselves (de Caro 2013:4). Attention to the skull and bone gangs demonstrates fascinating instances of such reiterations, this African-American folkloric practice has been taken up and reconstituted by white female artists, in particular in the post-Katrina work of Joy Gauss and Claudia Mardi Claw Gehrke, resituation that introduces provocative questions of rivalry and alliance, affirmation and appropriation.While New Orleans has continued to mourn in the wake of Katrina and still struggles with wide-ranging problems, (inadequate public services, racial inequities, disparities of wealth, decaying infrastructure, etc.) rather than experiencing death spiral, the has witnessed surprising upsurge and recovery, which has been heralded post-Katrina renaissance. New Orleans has become one of the fastest-growing population centers in the country. Tourism has risen to pre-Katrina levels. The city's economy, moreover, has experienced unprecedented diversification and productivity. A recent Atlantic article noted this upturn in the city's fortunes:In the last five years, the has won an astounding number of awards, but many of them are variation on the improved player theme. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal named it the most improved metro. Forbes has dubbed it the Number-1 metro for IT job growth ... Just last week, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy program named it the number one recovery in the country (Thompson 2013).A new year's editorial in the local Times-Picayune newspaper trumpeted these welcome trends worthy of celebration, highlighting the new optimism of the city, citing testament visiting columnist's characterization of the recovery a magnificent comeback by truly great American city (Wrapping up good year 2013).The recovery certainly has resulted from complex of factors, though there is merit in the argument that the city's unique cultural life-perhaps its greatest capital-has been instrumental in bringing the back from the brink of extinction. …
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