Ware - Marketing Mardi Gras

Marketing Mardi Gras: "Heritage Tourism in Rural Acadiana"
Author(s): Carolyn E. Ware

Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Summer, 2003), pp. 157-187
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
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Marketing
Mardi Gras
Heritage
Tourism
In Rural Acadiana
CAROLYN E. WARE
Cultural tourism in Acadiana has
generally lagged
behind better-known
parts
of the
state.1
Barry
Ancelet commented a decade
ago
that New
Orleans and
plantation country
have dominated Louisiana
tourism,
but
"Cajun country just
next door has
only recently begun
to
gear up
its
tourism
potential"
(Ancelet 1992, 256).Thus,
in the
past,
Mardi Gras
pro-
motions centered
mainly
on New Orleans'
public parades,
while other
Mardi Gras traditions maintained lower tourism
profiles.
Mardi Gras
is,
in
fact,
big
business for Louisiana's tourism
industry.
As the state's
signature
festival,
Mardi Gras has
long
been an
important
tourist attraction and source of income.
According
to the Baton
Rouge
Advocate,
the festival's statewide economic
impact
exceeds a billion
dollars a
year (January
7, 2003).
New Orleans accounts for much of this
intake,
but recent
years
have seen a shift in Mardi Gras
promotion
and
tourism. Acadiana's rural
courirs
de Mardi Gras
(Mardi
Gras
runs)
now
offer visitors an alternative to
big-city parades,
and the
region
has seen a
steady
rise in
country
Mardi Gras tourism over the last two decades.
Flyers, glossy
brochures,
web
sites,
and
printed
visitor
guides
all seek
to attract-and to various
degrees
educate-a broad audience. Some
materials are
produced by
state or
parish
tourism
offices,
others
by
travel
agents, journalists,
festival
promoters,
chambers of
commerce,
and a
community college.
Mardi Gras tourism has been a financial boon to
small towns in Acadiana.
Many
French Louisianians feel that tourism
has also
helped
stimulate local interest in the
country
Mardi Gras and
improved
its
public image.
On the other
hand,
Shane Bernard
suggests
that some
Cajuns
have reacted to the "incursion" of tourists
by
withdraw-
ing
from local Mardi Gras festivities
(2003).
Mardi
Gras,
like all traditional
festivals,
is
dynamic
as well as conserva-
tive
(Toelken 1996).
Courirs
de Mardi Gras are
elastic,
constantly adapt-
ing
to new
circumstances,
and tourism is
just
one such circumstance.
However,
the
impetus
for tourism often comes from town officials and
Western Folklore 62:3
(Summer 2003):157-187. Copyright
?
2004,
California Folklore
Society
158 CAROLYN E. WARE
entrepreneurs,
not Mardi Gras maskers and their
captains.
As tourism
introduces Mardi Gras runs to a new
audience,
issues of
public presenta-
tion,
cultural
conservation,
and
guardianship
of tradition
inevitably
sur-
face
(Ware 2003).
These
questions,
as Frank de Caro
notes,
are "much
on
people's
minds these
days
and are concerns not
only
of scholars"
(1991:1-2).
Tourism
authorities,
municipal
officials,
community orga-
nizers,
and Mardi Gras
participants
all work to find a balance between
promoting community-based
courirs
and
overwhelming
them.
This
essay explores
the
possibilities
and tensions between tourism
and Mardi Gras
runs,
and how the tradition is
being
redefined for the
tourist market. I first look at how tourism literature constructs a distinc-
tive
image
for the rural Mardi Gras
by contrasting
it to the New Orleans
Carnival,
its main
competitor.
Next,
I turn to the
development
of Mardi
Gras tourism in two Acadiana
towns,
Eunice and
Iota.
In both
places,
organizers
fashion
specific
identities and tourism niches
by promoting
selected
aspects
of their local courirs.
Often,
they oppose
their own
events not
only
to urban
parades,
but to other
Cajun
runs.
Cultural tourism has
played
an
important part
in
my
own involve-
ment with the
country
Mardi Gras tradition. I was first introduced
to the celebration in 1988 as a
graduate
folklore student
visiting
the
University
of Louisiana at
Lafayette.
When the Tee
Mamou-Iota
Mardi
Gras Folklife
Festival,
then
entering
its second
year,
received
grant
fund-
ing
to enhance cultural
interpretation,
I was hired to conduct fieldwork
on Acadia Parish Mardi Gras
traditions,
write text for a festival
guide,
and
program
narrative
stage
sessions. Fifteen
years
later,
I still make
frequent
fieldwork visits to
Acadiana,
follow rural Mardi Gras runs each
year,
and collaborate with
Cajun
Mardi Gras
participants
on
public pro-
grams. Many
of
my
interviews over the
years
have touched on dilemmas
of
public representation.
I've heard a
range
of attitudes voiced about
Mardi Gras
tourism,
and
my
own
feelings
are often ambivalent. In this
essay,
I draw on interviews with Mardi Gras
captains,
riders,
and tourism
presenters,
from 1988 to the
present.
THE COURIR DE MARDI GRAS IN SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA
On the
prairies
of French
Louisiana,
Mardi Gras holds several mean-
ings.
It refers not
only
to the
day
before Ash
Wednesday,
but to the
local tradition of
"running"
Mardi Gras.
Groups
of costumed riders on
horseback or in trucks roam
country neighborhoods
and small
towns,
stopping
at homes and businesses
along
their routes. If a homeowner
Marketing
Mardi Gras 159
grants permission
to
visit,
the maskers dismount to
sing,
dance,
clown
and
play pranks.
Before
leaving, they beg
for live or frozen
chickens,
rice,
sausage,
and
money,
and then invite their hosts to share a
gumbo
that
evening.
Unmasked leaders
(capitaines) keep
the celebrants in
line,
making
sure
they
offer an
entertaining
show without
seriously
offend-
ing
their hosts or
damaging
their
property.
An individual masker is
called a Mardi Gras: as a
group they
are les Mardi Gras
or,
in
English,
the
Mardi Gras
(pronouncing
the
"s.")
A
community
run is also
commonly
referred to
simply
as Mardi
Gras,
as in "the Eunice Mardi Gras."
Twenty
or more Mardi Gras runs
may
take
place
in a
given year,
but the celebrations take
very
different
shape
in different communi-
ties. Each
community negotiates
its own sense of
tradition,
designating
certain
aspects
as essential. Some runs still take
place
on
horses,
while
others have made the transition to truck-drawn trailers or
"wagons."
(In
reality,
even horseback courirs
usually
include a
wagon
for
non-eques-
trians.)
In some
community
courirs,
members still
sing
their chanson de
Mardi Gras for householders at each
stop;
in
others,
a band of musicians
or a
recording
has taken over this
performance. Many
runs allow
only
male riders and
captains,
but a few communities include women and
men
together,
or
stage separate
women's courirs. Children's Mardi Gras
runs,
though
not a new
concept,
are
increasingly popular
on the week-
end before Mardi Gras.
One
thing
that has not
changed
in recent
years
is the custom of
racially
segregated
Mardi Gras runs. Both
Cajuns
and
Afro-French
Creoles in
Acadiana's
prairie parishes
run Mardi
Gras,
but
virtually
never
together
(Spitzer
1986,
Ancelet
1999).2
Creole runs have
generally
received less
scholarly
and
public
attention than
Cajun
runs,
perhaps
because
they
are
typically
smaller,
less
formally organized,
less
publicized,
and more
sporadic
than
many Cajun
runs.3 As
Spitzer
(1986)
and Sexton
(1999)
have
pointed
out,
many
rural Creole
neighborhoods
have
emptied
out
as men move to Lake Charles and other cities for
jobs,
and thus local
runs
disappear
or are
transplanted
to
larger
cities. The handful of
Creole runs that do still take
place
are
relatively private, community-
centered
events,
and
rarely
seek media or tourist attention. Mardi Gras
tourism
literature,
which seems to
target
a
largely
white
audience,
often
lists
only
the better-known
Cajun
Mardi Gras runs.
(A
brochure aimed at
African
American visitors to
Lafayette
and Lake Charles mentions Mardi
Gras
parades
but no Mardi Gras
runs.)
In this
essay, then,
I discuss Mardi
Gras tourism in terms of
Cajun
events.
160 CAROLYN E. WARE
Many Cajuns,
marketers,
and tourists now associate Mardi Gras runs
exclusively
with
Cajun
culture,
in what Sexton calls the
"Cajunization"of
Mardi Gras
(1999).
Running
Mardi Gras connotes
Cajun identity,
although
for some
participants seeking
to
"express
their
'Cajunness'"
once a
year
(Bernard 2003:149-150),
this
may
be
largely
a
symbolic
eth-
nicity.
Moreover,
running
Mardi Gras
represents
a
specifically regional
way
of life:
prairie Cajunness.
Mardi Gras tourism in
Acadiana, then,
is
closely
entwined with efforts to
define, revitalize,
and
interpret
tradi-
tional culture.
The
emergence
of Mardi Gras courirs as
symbols
of ethnic
pride,
however,
is recent
(Ware 1994,
Sexton
1999,
Ware
2003).
For much of
the twentieth
century, Cajuns striving
for Americanization tended to
dismiss French Louisiana
culture,
and Mardi Gras runs in
particular,
as
backward and
"country"
(Dormon 1983,
Bernard
2003).
By
the 1930s
and
1940s,
community acceptance
of Mardi Gras runs-too often asso-
ciated with drunkenness and
fighting-had
waned,
and World War
II
suspended
most
surviving
runs
(Ancelet
et al.
1989).
Many, though
not
all,
community
courirs
died out
altogether.
The town of Mamou was the first to
self-consciously
refashion its
Mardi Gras
identity
in the
early
1950s. A
group
of local cultural activ-
ists,
guided by
a "deliberate sense of tradition"
(Ancelet
and Edmonds
1989:34),
decided to revive and rehabilitate Mamou's dormant
courir,
making
it more
respectable
and less
dangerous
than in the
past.
The
Mamou run soon became
widely-known,
the first courir to draw
large
crowds of visitors.
Still,
most
community
runs continued to
struggle
for
survival and
community acceptance throughout
the next few decades.
Long-time participants
in other
courirs
recall
police turning
Mardi Gras
riders
away
from
towns,
and local club owners
refusing
to host the mask-
ers' Mardi Gras dance
(Durio 1992,
LeJeune
1992).
The advent of what Nicholas
Spitzer
calls a "romantic cultural revival"
(1986:7)
began changing
the
public image
of French Louisiana culture
in the late 1960s and
early
1970s.
Cajuns
took new
pride
in their French
music,
language,
and other traditions.
Heritage
tourism followed in the
1980s in the wake of two trends: a national craze for
Cajun
food and
music,
and a serious recession in the
region's
oil-based
economy
follow-
ing
an oil
glut. Community
leaders
"began desperately
to look around
for other ideas to
develop
and diversification became the buzz word of
the decade"
(Ancelet 1992:257).
Their solution was to
promote
their
own
heritage, especially
music and food.
Today,
Mardi Gras also is an
important
seasonal attraction.
Marketing
Mardi Gras 161
ADVERTISING IMAGES
Advertising
on
local,
parish,
and state levels has
played
a crucial
part
in
transforming
the
Cajun
Mardi Gras into what Barbara Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett calls a "destination." Places become
destinations,
she
suggests,
through
the
"production
of difference"
(1998:152).
Promoters distin-
guish
their
place,
or
festival,
from others
by establishing
its
uniqueness.
Marketing
for the
Cajun
courir
de Mardi Gras
employs
a few central
motifs to create an
identity
based on
apartness-from
the rest of the
country,
from the
quotidian,
from
modernity,
and
especially
from New
Orleans. Advertisements define the
Cajun
Mardi Gras
against
the
big
city
Carnival,
using
a series of
binary oppositions
such as historical versus
modern,
personal
versus
impersonal,
wholesome versus
debauched,
and
authentic versus
spurious
or commercialized.
The most
pervasive image
is a tradition
forgotten by
time. French
Louisiana as a whole is often seen as
quaint,
isolated
by geography
and
culture,
and in
Barry
Ancelet's
words,
"part
of 'lost America"'
(1992:256-257).
Mardi Gras
advertising
builds on this sense of
quaint-
ness,
stressing
the
courir's
deep
connections to a rural
past.
A Louisiana
Office of Tourism Mardi Gras brochure characterizes the event as a kind
of
living history, suggesting
that "in rural communities ... 'the
running
of the Mardi Gras'-takes a 19th
century
flavor" as horseback riders
go
from farm to farm
(Louisana
Office of Tourism
1991).
Photographs
reinforce this
message
of an idealized
pastoral setting.
Most show male
riders on horseback
against
a
hazy backdrop
of
prairie countryside,
although
some
present-day
runs use
trucks,
include
women,
or make
stops
in
town,
and
captains
and riders
carry
cell
phones.
Paradoxically,
modern web sites are
among
the most effective dis-
seminators of the
living history image
of Mardi Gras. The Louisiana State
University
at Eunice site offers
perhaps
the most
comprehensive
online
information,
with a
description
of the
country
Mardi Gras tradition and
its
history, annually updated photographs
of a dozen
community
runs
(including
one Creole
run),
and a menu of Mardi Gras activities. Text
explains
that "Mardi Gras in southwest Louisiana draws on traditions that
are centuries
old,"
and visitors are
"swept up
in the timeless moment: in
rural
Acadiana,
Mardi Gras lives as much
today
as it did in centuries
past"
(http://www.lsue.edu/acadgate/mardmain.htm)
October
7, 2001).
Other
promotional
literature takes us much farther back in
history
to medieval roots. The Louisiana Official Tour Guide
promises
vacation-
ers to Acadiana
"tiny villages
with Mardi Gras traditions
dating
back to
the Middle
Ages" (2001:107),
and a Vermilionville brochure
presents
162 CAROLYN E. WARE
the
contemporary
Mardi Gras run as a survival of "ancient
pagan
fertil-
ity
rites"
(Vermillionville
Historic Foundation
1997).
To visit a
country
Mardi Gras
run, then,
is to take a
step
back in
time,
or into several differ-
ent eras and
places-nineteenth-century
Louisiana and a more
ancient,
European past. Being
the oldest or the most traditional Mardi Gras run
becomes a
point
of
competition among
communities. The Tee Mamou-
Iota
Folklife Festival stresses that the local Mardi Gras riders still
sing
a centuries-old
song
in French
(Tee Mamou-Iota
Mardi Gras Folklife
Festival Association
1989),
and the
nearby
Mamou
courir
is billed as the
"oldest traditional Mardi Gras run"
(Advocate
February
25, 2003).
This
retrospective process,
which Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls "time
travel,"
is
hardly unique
to the
Cajun
Mardi Gras. Helen
Regis, writing
about
African-Americanjazz
funerals in New
Orleans,
notes the
"antiqui-
fication of... cultural
practices" (Regis
2001:767)
that
gives modern-day
performances
an aura of exotic Otherness. Seen as a remnant of the
past,
rare and
valuable,
the event becomes
"ripe
for commodification"
(ibid. 767).
It
belongs
not to
today's participants,
but to the
past,
and
thus to
everyone.4
A second theme in
Cajun
Mardi Gras tourism is the
ritual,
almost
sacramental nature of the Mardi Gras
run.5 Promoters,
borrowing
folklorists'
descriptions,
thus
ground
and validate
practices
that
might
otherwise be viewed as drunken disorder
(Ancelet 1990,
Lindahl
1996).
Begging,
then,
is described as "ceremonial"
(Lafayette
Convention and
Visitors Bureau
1991),
and the custom itself is derived from a "medieval
ritual,"
according
to the LSUE website
(http://www.lsue.edu/acadgate/
mardmain.htm October
7, 2001).
Advertising
also accentuates the festival's carefree
side,
its liminal
quality,
and the visual
impact
of dozens or hundreds of multicolored
masks and costumes: the run is a "wild
escape
from the
ordinary
cares
of life" and a
"wild,
gaudy pageant"
(ibid.
October
7, 2001).
The
country
Mardi Gras run is not too
wild,
though.
If
Cajun
Mardi
Gras
advertising depicts
rural celebrations as
deeply
rooted
rituals,
it
presents
the urban Carnival as uncontrolled bacchanalia. Mardi
Gras in New Orleans is described as
"plastic
hedonism"
(ibid. 2001)
and-in the case of French
Quarter
exhibitionism-"utter abandon-
ment"
(http://www.louisanatravel.com
October
7, 2001). According
to
the
Savvy
Traveler web
site, "Alcohol, plastic
bead
necklaces,
and bare-
chested men and women make
[the New Orleans] Mardi Gras look
like the first
stop
on MTV's
Spring
Break Tour."
Fortunately,
we're
told,
"There is another
place
we can look.
Just
west of the
city,
in Louisiana's
Marketing
Mardi Gras 163
Cajun country,
residents have their own
special way
of
celebrating"
(ibid.
2001).-presumably
far less debauched than the
big city's.
Another
recurring
motif is that of transformation. Tourism
experts
point
out that most
people
want to visit an
experience,
not
simply
a
place,
and
Barry
Ancelet observes that vacationers often visit Louisiana
seeking
an "exotic out-of-culture
experience"
(1992:256).
The
Cajun
Mardi
Gras,
according
to
promoters,
offers tourists an encounter that
may change
them forever. A
flyer printed by
the
City
of Eunice
promises
a
"sight
one will not soon
forget!" (City
of Eunice
1992).
The Louisiana
Office of Tourism's 2001
slogan urged
visitors to "Come as
you
are,
leave
different,"
and its tour
guide pledges
"Wherever
you go,
we
promise
you'll
be
changed by
the
experience"
(Louisiana
Official Tour Guide
2001:1).
Still another theme is the face-to-face nature of the
Cajun
Mardi
Gras,
the antithesis of New Orleans'
grand-scale, impersonal,
and
dangerous
spectacles.
The St.
Landry
Parish Visitor's Guide
suggests
that the coun-
tryside
offers a
"great
alternative to the
congested
New Orleans celebra-
tion"
(2001). Likewise,
the town of Mamou offers the "warmth of a small
town" in contrast to the "mammoth New Orleans
parades,"
Louisiana
Travel
says (http://savvytraveler.org/show/features/2001/2001-223/
mardigras.html
October
7, 2001).
(Anyone
who's
actually
been in
Mamou on Mardi Gras
day may disagree
with this. It is such a mob scene
that residents have considered
fencing
off the town
during
Mardi Gras
and
charging
admission.
Undoubtedly, years
of
promotion
have contrib-
uted to the
overcrowding.)
Eunice
goes
one
step
further and offers tour-
ists an
intensely personal experience;
the chance to
put
on a costume
and
participate
in the run
itself,
as well as associated activities.
Regina
Bendix notes that tourists are
"always
in search of the authen-
tic
experience"
(1989:133),
which
always
lies elsewhere-in other cul-
tures,
the
past,
or in
"purer, simpler lifestyles"
(McCannell
in Staub
1988:172).
Tourism
promoters,
in
response,
market certain destinations
or events as a locus of
authenticity
(Bendix 1994).
A 1989 brochure for
the Tee
Mamou-Iota
Mardi Gras Folklife Festival
promises
vacationers an
"authentic
Cajun
Cultural
Experience,"
for
example.
Efforts to essential-
ize and
commodify country
Mardi Gras runs
rely heavily
on the relative
absence of commercialization.
Descriptions
of
Cajuns'
colorful home-
made, one-of-a kind (and thus
authentic)
costumes are
juxtaposed
with
New Orleans'
mass-produced plastic
beads and artificial
glitz, conjuring
up images
of an exotic but down-home event not
yet spoiled by
com-
mercialism. These
advertising messages converge
to
suggest
the
country
164 CAROLYN E. WARE
Mardi Gras run as the "ideal folk
community"
as folklorists and others
once
imagined
it; rural, isolated,
and
pre-industrial, holding
fast to its
pure
traditions
(Becker 1998,
Bendix
1997).
Unlike New Orleans
parades,
the
Cajun
Mardi Gras run must be
discovered,
and this makes it all the more attractive to
today's sophisti-
cated tourists. The Travel
Agent
web site advises that Acadiana
"may
be
the
perfect
recommendation for the
repeat
client who has seen Mardi
Gras New
Orleans-style,
and who is now
ready
to
experience something
a little different"
(2001).
New Orleans is for
beginners;
the
country
Mardi Gras attracts the more
discerning,
somewhat
jaded
traveler seek-
ing
untamed
authenticity.
In
reality,
Mardi Gras
participants,
local
promoters,
and state tour-
ism officials alike
recognize
that Mardi Gras runs cannot
easily
absorb
hordes of
tourists,
and tour buses would soon overwhelm
any
courir.
Cajun
folklorist and cultural activist
Barry
Ancelet notes that unless the
flow of "casual visitors who want
only
a brief brush with the
Cajun experi-
ence" is
carefully
channeled,
tourists "end
up
in real
places"
(1992:258)
like
community
Mardi Gras
runs,
where
they may displace
locals. Shane
Bernard
(2003)
describes an incident in Mamou in which a busload of
tourists
unknowingly disrupted
a local Mardi Gras
dance;
as
they
took
over the dance
floor,
they
marveled that so few locals were
dancing.
Bruce
Morgan
has served as head of communications at the Louisiana
Office of Tourism for the last
twenty-seven years,
and much of his
job
involves
orienting
travel
journalists
to Louisiana culture. He feels
strongly
that tourism
agencies
should
play
a "cultural conservator
role,"
in his words. He calls cultural
promotion
a
"very
narrow line
you
walk,"
and
remarks,
'You don't want to over
promote
or
you
don't want to over-
stimulate those who are
being promoted" (Morgan
9-25-01). Otherwise,
he
says,
'"You
end
up distorting
the
product
itself,
as well as
having
either
an adverse effect or an unintended effect on the culture that
you're sup-
posedly trying
to
help."
Mr.
Morgan
comments that he sees Mardi Gras
courirs
as
essentially private
events with
strong community support.
He
says,
"I don't think that this was ever intended to be a
public
show. So
why
make it a
public
show? What's the
point
of
creating
a tourist attrac-
tion out of
something
that is not
public?
That would be to me the same
thing
as
having paparazzi
come to a mass"
(ibid.).
On the other
hand,
he feels that Mardi Gras festivals and fairs
purposely
created as
public
events are a
positive development.
A number of rural communities have structured
just
such tourist-
friendly public
events around their Mardi Gras runs. Street
dances, fairs,
Marketing
Mardi Gras 165
jam
sessions,
and other activities offer visitors a limited and mediated
brush with the celebration. Most Mardi Gras runs leave town
early
in
the
morning,
wind
through
the
countryside
for
many
hours,
and return
to town that afternoon to
parade
on
foot, horseback,
or in
wagons.
Downtown events
keep
tourists
occupied-and spending money
on
food, drink,
and souvenirs-until the
courir
returns. Visitors can then
enjoy
a
parade
of the
"real
thing"
as maskers
pull
them into a dance and
beg
from them
(Ancelet 1992).
These events not
only
make Mardi Gras
more accessible to
tourists,
they
act as buffers for the runs.
They
are,
as
Ancelet
observes,
"ingenious ways
of
keeping
[visitors]
out of the
way
of
what is
going
on" in the
country
(1992:260).
For
years,
horseback Mardi Gras runs in Mamou and Church Point
publicly represented
the
Cajun
Mardi Gras celebration.
Recently,
other
communities have also carved out their own Mardi Gras identities
and become tourist destinations. Eunice and
Iota
are two
prominent
examples. Organizers
in both communities see Mardi Gras tourism as
a source of
income,
but also as a chance to
engage
and educate locals.
The
specific
contours of tourism in each
place
are
shaped by organizers'
motivations, resources, choices,
and visions of the event.
MARDI GRAS IN EUNICE
Eunice,
a St.
Landry
Parish
city ofjust
under twelve thousand
people,
is
recognized
as one of the
region's heritage
tourism success stories.
Curtis
Joubert
is a
primary
architect of Eunice's transformation into
Louisiana's "Prairie
Cajun Capital,"
known worldwide for its
music,
food,
and Mardi Gras. Mr.
Joubert,
a former educator and state
legisla-
tor who
grew up
in
nearby
Lawtell,
has lived in Eunice for
many years
and served as its
mayor
for thirteen and a half
years.6
He recalls that when he was first elected
mayor
in
1980,
Eunice was an
"oil related town" whose
economy
was devastated almost
overnight.
He
says
he felt that he "had to find some
way
to boost the
economy"
and
pro-
vide
leadership
that
encouraged people
"to feel
good
about themselves
and their
community."
Industries had little interest in
coming
to
Eunice,
he
says,
"So we came
up
with the idea of cultural tourism." He comments
that at that
point,
French Louisiana "wasn't
really
into
tourism."
Eunice's tourism
campaign began by celebrating
local music and food-
ways.
The town
purchased
and renovated the abandoned
Liberty
Theatre
and
eventually began producing
Rendez-vous des
Cadiens, a live radio
and television show of
Cajun
and
zydeco music,
there
every Saturday
night.
For
many years,
Eunice's other main showcase was its World
166 CAROLYN E. WARE
Championship
Crawfish Etouff6
Cook-off,
held
every
March. When the
National Park Service announced
plans
to create three
interpretive
cen-
ters in
Acadiana,
Mayor Joubert
lobbied hard for Eunice as a host site
(Ancelet 1992).
Today,
the Prairie Acadian Culture Center
adjoins
the
Liberty
Theatre and
presents regular public
folklife
programming.
Eventually,
Mardi Gras became another cornerstone of the
city's
tourism initiative. Since the town's
founding
in the
1880s,
the
nearby
countryside
had hosted a Mardi Gras run that
regularly
visited town
(http://www.Eunice-la.com/festivals.html
October
7, 2001,
March
17,
2003),
and at some
point
it became known as the Eunice run. Like most
Cajun
runs,
it waxed and waned over the
years.
The late Hillman Smith
joined
the
(then all-male)
run in 1934 at the
age
of
fourteen,
later
became a
capitaine,
and remained involved until his death more than six
decades later. In a 1997
publication,
Mr. Smith
provided
a remarkable
perspective
on the run's
history.
He recalled that in
pre-World
War
II
years,
"The
biggest
Mardi Gras run that we had ... had
seventy-eight
riders,
all on horseback and all men"
(Langley
et al.
1997:13).
The war
disrupted
the local
run,
but as members returned from mili-
tary
service,
they regrouped
to run Mardi Gras. At
first,
the
group
was
small;
in
1946,
it consisted of six maskers and a
captain.
The run
gradu-
ally grew,
but
struggled
for survival at times. Curtis
Joubert,
who does
not run Mardi
Gras,
recalls the run when it consisted
of,
he
says, "maybe
fifteen or
twenty
old-timers who would have a little
neighborhood
run."
He notes its
poor public image
then,
and remembers that the riders
"were
not even allowed to
stop
in town.
And
... in
fact,
the
schools,
they
made the kids look the other
way,
and that kind of stuff. It
really
left a
lot to be desired."
By
the
1970s,
so few men were interested in
running
Mardi Gras that
they
invited a local women's run to
join
them. This
merger
increased the number of riders and
helped
ensure the run's
survival,
and
today
women and men run Mardi Gras
together
in
Eunice,
on horses or in trailers
(Personal
Interview: October
9, 2001).
In the
1980s,
under
Mayor Joubert's leadership,
civic leaders
began
considering
the tourism
potential
of Eunice's still
loosely-organized
run.
Mr.
Joubert
remembers,
"Then we
[said], 'Well,
let's continue
on,
we're
doing pretty
well with this
[cultural tourism].'
And we
figured
that our
little
neighboring
towns of Mamou and Church
Point,
they
had success-
ful Mardi Gras... that
brought quite
a few
people
and we
figured, 'Well,
let's
try
this in Eunice.'"
In what he calls "a new
beginning"
for
Cajun
culture and Mardi
Gras,
Curtis
Joubert
and others crafted a new vision for the local celebration.
Marketing
Mardi Gras 167
Many community
runs had
reputations
as drunken and
dangerous
events;
Eunice would take a different
direction,
reinventing
the run as
a
"family
oriented" event with less
drinking,
more law
enforcement,
and
greater safety.
Mr.
Joubert says,
"So we decided . .. that we would be a
little bold and
courageous,
and we would start
featuring
the traditional
Mardi Gras but
inviting
the
[sic]
entire families to come and call it a
family-oriented-as
much as
you
can-a
family-oriented
Mardi Gras."
Bringing
tax revenues into the
city's
coffers was one
goal.
Another
motive,
according
to Mr.
Joubert,
was
"creat[ing]
a different
image"
of
Mardi Gras and
Cajun
culture;
he wanted to correct
negative public-
ity
and
stereotypes.
Mr.
Joubert says, "Being
a native of this ...
area,
I'm
fairly
familiar
with
... the
image
I felt we
portrayed
on a national
level around Mardi Gras. Which was a terrible
image
in
my opinion."
Journalists
tended to
depict
the rural Mardi Gras as
(in
his
words)
'just
a time to
get
drunk and fall off of horses and imitate the national
media and
try
to shock them." He
says,
"Then
they'd go
back and wrote
all
kind[s]
of bad stories about us in Louisiana .... And worst of
all,
I think
they
kind of
figured
that the
Cajuns
were
prone
to that
type
of
thing
... as
uneducated,
partying people
who
really
didn't amount to
too much."
One
step
in
redefining
the Eunice Mardi Gras was
creating
child-cen-
tered activities. Mr.
Joubert says
that a downtown
"walking parade"
for
young
children and their
parents
was an immediate success.
He
remem-
bers,
"We had mothers
pushing
strollers,
and little
babies,
and I
said,
'Well,
I think this
thing might
work,
you
know,
people having enough
faith in the
activity
and
enough
faith that it's safe for the whole
family."
As families came to
parade,
other
people
started
coming
to watch.
Mr.
Joubert says,
"And we started
serving
...
gumbo
and boiled crawfish
and boudin
[a
pork
and rice
sausage]
. .. You know the
indigenous
foods in this
area,
and
really
made it kind of a little cultural
thing
for
us."
He
suggests
that the
city's
new
concept
of a
family-centered
event
filled a void for local residents and out-of-town visitors. In
Eunice,
"you
could come with the whole
family
and
young boys, young girls,
babies,
grandmas, grandpas, they
could walk
by
in
safety, they
could
go actually
eat
gumbo.
It was kind of like a church bazaar
you
could
say,
or a com-
munity gathering." Gradually,
Mardi Gras-related events
expanded
to fill
four
days,
and Mr.
Joubert recalls,
"It
just exploded
to where we started
having people
from all
over."
In the
mid-1990s,
the children's
walking parade
became a chil-
dren's Mardi Gras
run,
which takes
place
on the
Sunday
before Ash
168 CAROLYN E. WARE
Wednesday.
The children travel on trailers rather than on
horses,
but
their run
(like
the adult
courir)
ends with a
parade
down Second Street.
Mr.
Joubert says,
"We have four or five hundred kids on that
[parade].
And
they're
all in flatbeds and the
parents
are allowed to ride on
it,
like
a
hay
ride."
A second tactic in
creating
a new
identity
was to make the event
educational as well as
entertaining. Organizers
wanted to counteract
negative images
of
Cajun
culture and Mardi Gras
by teaching
local
people,
the
media,
and visitors more about its
history
and
significance.
So,
Mr.
Joubert says,
the
city began scheduling
"cultural
presentations,
stories about Mardi
Gras,
and
getting
the learned
people-like
Dr.
Barry
Ancelet-to come and have a lecture ... about
tracing
the
history
and
what ... was the
meaning
of Mardi Gras."
Today,
the
emphasis
on edu-
cational
programs
continues.
Throughout
the
holiday,
Eunice Museum
presents
Mardi Gras-related exhibits and
films,
and the Prairie Acadian
Culture Center
sponsors
a series of
cooking
and craft
demonstrations,
musical
performances,
slide
shows,
and
workshops.
A third twist was
opening
the adult run to outsiders. The Eunice Mardi
Gras run is
promoted
as
open
to
everyone
who masks and
pays
associa-
tion fees. A 1994
flyer
states "Tourists
encouraged
to
participate
in all
events" and adds that costumes are available for sale
locally.
As a
result,
the run has
rapidly
swelled over the last decade. Recent
years
have seen
as
many
as two thousand
riders,
a mixture of Eunice
residents,
other
Louisianians,
and out-of-state and international tourists.
(The
town now
offers a
trophy
to the rider who has traveled farthest to
participate,
and
the 1992 winner was from
Denmark.) (Mardi
Gras in Eunice
1992).
These numbers make Eunice's the
largest
Mardi Gras run in the
region,
where a few
community
courirs
include
many
more than a hun-
dred maskers. The
city
has
proudly
laid claim to this
distinction,
which
(along
with its
family-oriented style)
has become central to its
identity.
Just
as Mamou is billed as "the oldest traditional Mardi Gras
run,"
Eunice is
promoted
as "the
largest
traditional Mardi Gras in America"
(October 9, 2001).
Curtis
Joubert suggests
that the
presence
of women
has "added a lot of class to our whole
parade
and the whole
thing,"
helping
to reinforce the Eunice run's
image
as a
relatively orderly
and
cleaned-up event. The riders' behavior, he feels, is "aided
tremendously
by having
women on the run. Let's face
it,
the ladies are there and the
men have to
adjust
their behavior
accordingly."
The
city
also created a truck
parade
to mark the
courir's customary
return to town. Locals and tourists who wanted to
mask,
but didn't want
Marketing
Mardi Gras 169
to run all
day
in the
countryside,
could ride down Second Street on
decorated flatbed
trailers,
half an hour before the horsemen's arrival.
The
Liberty
truck
parade,
headed
by
the
mayor,
is still a
popular
feature
of Eunice's festivities. Mr.
Joubert says participants
are
"mostly
locals but
anybody
can ride."
Although Cajun
Mardi Gras runs are defined in
opposition
to New
Orleans,
many courirs
have in fact absorbed elements of the urban
Carnival,
especially
in their downtown
parades.
Mr.
Joubert
first makes
a
point
of
distinguishing
the Eunice
parade
from
big-city parades, say-
ing,
"We don't throw a lot of
trinkets,
we don't throw a lot of Mardi Gras
beads." But
immediately
he
adds,
"Now it's
getting
more and more that
people
throw
[beads],
but that's not the
purpose
of it.
They just
do
it,
when
they get
back in town
they get
a
bag
of beads and throw it from the
horses and
everything."
He
jokes,
"We frown on that but. . .
you'd
have
to shoot them
[to
stop
them.]"
Eunice's new
identity
as a
family-oriented
Mardi Gras
was,
Mr.
Joubert
says,
"how we did it
differently
than
[other towns.]
We were not
compet-
ing against anybody,
we
just
wanted to offer
something
else and
try
to
bring people
to our town so
they
would fill our little-at the time I think
we had one motel." He
comments,
"And it looked like we hit the nail on
the head because it worked.
And
... we never had
any major problems,
[and]
people
had fun."
Although
the
city
had a different twist on the Mardi Gras
tradition,
initially they
had no
money
to
promote
it.
Organizers adopted
a
very
grass-roots approach
to
publicity, calling
on networks
they
had created
over the
years.
Mr.
Joubert
recalls that
they
sent
press
releases to
every-
one
they
could think
of,
and
appeared
on
every
available
morning
tele-
vision and radio show.
They
also mailed
taped
invitations to out-of-state
acquaintances, asking
them to find radio
airplay.
Today,
the Eunice Mardi Gras celebration is one of the
region's
best-
known and
well-attended;
as
many
as
50,000
people
visit the
city during
its four
days
of Mardi Gras events. But
Eunice,
not
wealthy by any
means,
still has no real
budget
for
promotion. City-produced publicity
runs to
simple,
xeroxed
flyers(ibid.) inviting
readers to
'Join
the thousands of
people
in
Eunice, LA
for a
Family
Oriented Mardi Gras Celebration!"
(Indeed,
this
low-budget approach
is
part
of the
city's
charm,
and
proba-
bly
contributes to its aura of
authenticity.)
However,
Eunice's Mardi Gras
festivities receive a
great
deal of
inexpensive
or free
publicity through
newspaper
event
listings,
the
city's
own web site and other internet sites,
and local and national television
coverage. MrJoubert says,
"We've been
170 CAROLYN E. WARE
lucky,
we've been on
every
national television
[broadcast
company]."
NBC once sent a news team to Eunice for three
days
to cover Mardi
Gras,
for
example.
The St.
Landry
Parish Tourism
Commission,
whose
director is a Eunice
native,
also
helps promote
the Eunice run
through
its brochures and tourist
guides.
Eunice offers visitors
many ways
to
experience
French Louisiana
life and Mardi Gras.
Throughout
the
four-day
weekend,
public
festivi-
ties take over downtown Eunice.
Shops along
Second Street decorate
their windows and
open
their
doors,
play Cajun
music,
and sell Mardi
Gras suits and masks from sidewalk racks. Music and
dancing provide
easy
access to local culture.
Cajun
music
jam
sessions and street dances
abound
during
Mardi
Gras,
and an extra
Saturday night performance
of
the Rendez-vous des
Cajuns
show is
always
sold out. Food
presents
another
way
to
participate.
On
Sunday,
the
city sponsors
a demonstration of an
"Old Time Boucherie"
(hog butchering)
and
cochon
de lait
(pig
roast)
in
front of
City
Hall,
and visitors can
sample
traditional
pork
dishes made
on-site.
Other activities are more
directly
related to Mardi Gras. Vacationers
can mask and
compete
for
prizes
at a
Saturday-night
Mardi Gras dance
sponsored by
St. Thomas More Catholic Church.
They
can
join
the
Mardi Gras riders on
Tuesday,
or
stay
in town to
enjoy
live music on
three
stages,
food, crafts,
and other activities while
they
await the Mardi
Gras'
re-entry.
Local volunteers dressed in screen masks and Mardi
Gras suits add another
layer
of
interaction,
as
they
roam the streets to
dance, clown,
and
gently "pick
at"
(tease)
visitors.
Many
tourists,
as well
as local
residents,
wear their own festive
holiday
outfits,
usually heavily
influenced
by
New Orleans
symbols: striped
shirts in Carnival's
green,
gold
and
purple colors, jesters'
hats,
and
strings
of oversized Mardi Gras
beads.
Many
vacationers travel to Eunice
every year
for Mardi Gras. A num-
ber are 'Yankees"
(almost
anyone
not from south
Louisiana)
or interna-
tional
tourists,
but Mr.
Joubert points
out that Eunice also attracts New
Orleans residents. He
comments,
"And that's
interesting.
And
you
know
in New
Orleans,
they
love .
..
their Mardi Gras. But
they
discover the
rural area and
they just get away
from the helter skelter over there and
come down here and
really
feel relaxed."7
Mardi Gras tourism has
obviously brought
economic benefits to
the
community.
Its success-and that of cultural tourism in
gen-
eral-is evident in the
growth
of Eunice's
hospitality industry,
which
now includes a number of bed-and-breakfast businesses and four
hotels,
Marketing
Mardi Gras 171
including
a Best Western. The
city keeps
no exact
figures
on Mardi
Gras income and has never "ran the scientific formula" on its
effects,
according
to Mr.
Joubert.
(In contrast,
economists calculate the income
generated by
the New Orleans Carnival
every year.)
Instead,
Eunice offi-
cials measure Mardi Gras'
impact informally, by asking
business owners
if
they
did well over the
holiday. Usually,
hotels are
completely
booked
for the Mardi Gras
holiday
months in advance. Mr.
Joubert points
out
that cultural tourism in
general "kept
our
city
afloat,
I can tell
you
that
... We
kept
afloat,
we never had to raise taxes. And it became a
place
to
visit,
to
go
to."
Tourism has also achieved a second
goal: changing
how the national
press,
and
many
local
people,
think about
Cajuns.
Curtis
Joubert says,
"Mardi Gras still has its celebrated misbehavior
type things.
[But]
you
don't have
[the media]
pinpointing
rural south Louisiana and show-
ing
the same feel that
they
used to. This is
my opinion... People
don't
talk down about the
Cajun people anymore, they
don't look down on
them." He
adds,
"Our
objectives
have been met
many, many
times
over,
in
ways
that we never envisioned. We didn't have the vision to think that
it would be that
great.
... So
[tourism has]
brought
us so
many
wonder-
ful
things."
But what
impact
has tourism had on the Eunice Mardi Gras run itself?
The most obvious
change
is its
rapid growth-from
fewer than a hun-
dred riders
years ago
to two thousand in the 2001 run. With each rider
paying
dues of about
twenty
dollars,
this
obviously
means more income
for the Eunice Mardi Gras Association.
Many
of the Eunice residents I
know,
including
some who run Mardi Gras
regularly,
take
pride
in hav-
ing
the
region's largest
Mardi Gras
run;
they enjoy introducing
their
tradition to newcomers. In some
ways,
then,
tourism has
given
new life
to local
tradition,
and the
present-day
run is an
impressive public display
of cultural
pride.
Hillman Smith
devotedly
headed the Mardi Gras run
every year
because,
as he
put
it,
"I
really
love the Mardi Gras
run,
regardless
of the
changes" (Langley
et al.
1997:17).
His remarks
suggest
some ambiva-
lence,
though,
as he
commented,
"The unfortunate
part
of all this is we
are
losing
some of what we wanted to
preserve" (Langley
et al.
1997:17).
The number of riders makes it
impossible
for
everyone
to
dismount,
sing, dance, chase
chickens,
and clown at
houses,
so most remain on the
wagons
or horses
throughout.
Instead of
making
dozens of house
visits,
Mr. Smith said, "we
mostly
ride in the
countryside." (In
more recent
years, young
riders have
begun
their own alternative
traditions,
such as
172 CAROLYN E. WARE
diving
into the mud
along
their
route.)
As a
consequence, according
to
Mr.
Smith,
"the run is
becoming
more like a trail ride than a traditional
Mardi Gras run."
That,
he
commented,
is "a shame because we still want
to
keep
the old traditions alive"
(Langley
et al.
1997:17).
Even tourism's
strongest proponents recognize
that
change
is not
always good
for the Eunice run. The event now
requires military-like
precision
to
organize,
for
example.
Mr.
Joubert
comments on its com-
plex logistics:
"It takes almost a whole
regiment
to
keep
[the riders]
on
time and do this
....
It's like an
army
now,
moving through
the coun-
tryside. Confidentially,
it's almost too
big."
The Eunice run also has critics
among
Eunice residents and
neigh-
boring
towns,
who cite it as an
example
of excessive
growth
and com-
mercialism. For
instance,
Marc
Savoy,
a world-renowned
Cajun
musician
and accordion
maker,
stopped performing
for the Eunice Mardi Gras
some
years ago
because he felt the event had
strayed
too far from tradi-
tion.
(He
and his wife Ann
Savoy
continue
play
for the annual Mardi
Gras dance at St. Thomas More
Hall,
though.)
Members of
other,
smaller
community
runs are
especially
vocal.
They
consider
running
Mardi Gras an art
form,
learned
by watching, listening
to,
and
emulating
seasoned riders. Most tourists and other newcomers to
the Eunice run have little
understanding
of the
custom,
and the
group's
performance
suffers as a
consequence
(Bernard 2003).
Some critics
sug-
gest
that the Eunice Mardi Gras has become a demonstration for visitors
first and
foremost,
and
only secondarily
a
community performance.
The
most common criticism is that the run has lost its
identity
and become
just
another trail ride.
(The
Eunice
News,
citing
Mardi Gras
officials,
reminds readers that the Mardi Gras celebration is "a traditional one...
and is not to be confused with a trail
ride,"
and that
throwing
beads is
"not
in
keeping
with the true rural Mardi Gras"
[February
27, 1992].)
Welcoming
outsiders into the run has
occasionally brought
other
unforeseen
consequences.
In the mid
1990s,
an African-American visi-
tor from
Kentucky sought
to
register
with the Mardi Gras Association
and
join Cajun
friends on the
courir,
but was turned
away
because of
his race.
Barry
Ancelet
reports
that the visitor chose not to
protest
his
exclusion,
but "his white
Cajun
friends were embarrassed and did
protest.
The
press reported
this unfortunate and
ugly
incident,
but it
remained unresolved"
(1999:23).
The incident forced the Eunice Mardi
Gras Association to "face issues
deeper
than first
expected,"
Ancelet
notes, and some members "found themselves
wondering
about the
wisdom of
extending
a
wide-open
invitation to
participate
in the ritual
Marketing
Mardi Gras 173
and
explored
what other
neighboring
communities have done to assure
appropriate,
local
participation"
(ibid.).
Today,
the Eunice
run,
like
virtually
all
Cajun
Mardi Gras
runs,
still includes
only
white
riders,
and
as far as I
know,
the
implicit
rule that Mardi Gras runs are
segregated
events has not been tested
again
in Eunice.
Its
rapid growth
has affected the Eunice run in other
ways.
Curtis
Joubert
remarks that as
mayor,
he had to resist efforts to commercialize
and
homogenize
the
celebration,
not
always easy
in a small town where
"we're
all friends."
Community groups pressed
to sell raffle
tickets,
and
the street
parade
of horses and decorated flatbed trailers
posed par-
ticular
problems.
He
recalls,
"Everybody
wanted to start
putting
com-
mercial
floats,
and
every
kind of
gimmick you
can
imagine
was tried."
Mr.
Joubert
feels
strongly
that leaders must
"keep
a lid" on
change,
in
his words. He
says,
"It's
very
hard to
keep
it
pure
and to see the real
thing.
Because
well-meaning people
are not aware of what
you're trying
to do and
you
have these clashes." He
cautions,
'You
always
have to be
aware that
people
want to commercialize it to where it's
going
to soon
disappear.
That it's
going
to be taken over
by people
who,
for financial
reasons,
are
going
to abandon what
you
tried to do." Commercialization
is liable to "encroach on
you
so
slowly,
when
you
know
something
it will
be too late and
you
won't be able to undo
it,"
he
says. Community
lead-
ers,
he
believes,
must
always
be on
guard,
because
"People
come here to
experience
the real
thing, [they]
don't want the same
thing
as at a state
fair."
He
feels that the town can still
keep
the run "close to what it used
to be"
by preserving
certain essential
elements,
notably Cajun
music and
chicken chases.
Despite
its
drawbacks,
Mr.
Joubert
sees Mardi Gras tourism as a form
of cultural revival and maintenance.
During
his
tenure,
he
says,
"We
were
using
our
culture,
keeping
it
pure,
not
getting
it as a sideshow but
where
people
could come and have a
pleasant experience
and real life
experience.
And we tried to
keep
it that
way."
He continues, "I'm
sure
we screwed
up
in a lot of instances. But we
really
tried
....
We were all
doing
it for love of the culture."
TEE MAMOU-IOTA FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL
Iota,
about sixteen miles southwest of Eunice in Acadia
Parish,
is a
former railroad town of
perhaps
eleven hundred
people-a
tenth of
Eunice's
population.
While Eunice has the
Liberty Theatre,
the Prairie
Acadian Culture
Center,
and
weekly
cultural
events, downtown
Iota
has little to interest most tourists. But the area
surrounding Iota,
like
174 CAROLYN E. WARE
Eunice,
has a
long history
of Mardi Gras runs. Iota is
traditionally
the last
stop
for a
courir
based in Tee Mamou
(Little Mamou,
not to be confused
with the town of
Mamou,
or "Grand
Mamou"),
a
country neighborhood
nearby.
Fifteen
years ago,
the town created an annual Mardi Gras festival
around the Tee Mamou
run,
and
today
the festival is
Iota's
main draw
for tourists.
In
many ways,
the
history
of the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras run
paral-
lels Eunice's. One
distinction,
according
to
participants,
is that the Tee
Mamou run continued
uninterrupted throughout
the World War
II
years. By
that
time,
the run had switched from horses to a farm truck.
Like
many
other
Cajun
runs,
the small Tee Mamou
group
was
stigma-
tized
during
the
post-war years.
In the late
1950s,
for
example,
Iota's
police
chief turned the riders
away
because a
couple
of maskers were
about to
fight.
Claude
Durio,
a
long-time co-captain,
remembers the
group being
booted out of town and notes the
irony
that "Now
today,
you
see, [Iota is]
promoting
a
big, big
Mardi Gras
thing.
But
things
change
in a few
years"(1992).
The
courir's
image gradually began improving
after Gerald
Frug6
became head
captain
in 1968. Gerald is
generally
credited with
saving
and
revising
the all-male run
by instituting changes
that included
strong
leadership,
written
rules,
better
organization,
and
greater
accountabil-
ity.
In
addition,
he
helped organize-and
for
many years
led-a
separate
women's run,
which still takes
place
on the weekend before Mardi Gras
(Lindahl
and Ware
1997,
Ware
1994,
Ware
1995,
Ware
2001). Still,
core
members of the run had to work hard for
many years
to reform the run's
image.
The Tee
Mamou-Iota
Folklife
Festival,
some
suggest,
has both
capitalized
on and boosted the run's transformation to a local cultural
icon.
Since Gerald
Frug6's
death in
1998,
his son Todd has led Tee
Mamou's men's and women's
runs,
assisted
by eight
or so
co-captains,
or
assistants. Both runs thrive
today,
with the women's run
attracting any-
where from
thirty
five to
sixty
maskers,
and the men's
typically drawing
seventy
to a hundred.
Here,
as in most
Cajun
Mardi Gras
communities,
Mardi Gras riders
pay
modest dues to
join
the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras
Association and take
part
in the run.
Iota's
development
of Mardi Gras tourism trailed Eunice's
by
a few
years.
Local
people
had
long gathered
downtown to watch the Mardi
Gras arrive downtown and
beg
from local businesses.
Twenty years ago,
as Claude Durio
says,
most
spectators
were
"people
in the
neighborhood,
and all
neighbors
in
town, people they
knew."
(Personal Interview:
June
Marketing
Mardi Gras 175
16, 1992).
By
the late
1980s,
downtown crowds had
grown,
and
Iota's
mayor, police
chief,
and
city
council decided to build a Mardi Gras fes-
tival around the informal
procession. They
created the
non-profit
Tee
Mamou-Iota
Mardi Gras Folklife Festival Association
(later,
"Mardi Gras"
was
dropped)
and
began planning
a
one-day
festival for 1988. From the
beginning,
the festival was conceived as a
public
event for outsiders as
well as insiders.
Iota,
like
Eunice,
saw Mardi Gras as a chance for eco-
nomic
development during
a time when tax revenues had declined.
Larry
Miller,
an
Iota native,
has been an
important
force in
shap-
ing
the festival and its
identity.8
A retired
educator,
Larry
now makes
accordions,
plays Cajun
music,
and is active in the
Cajun
French Music
Association. With his wife
Jackie,
a Mardi Gras mask
maker,
he demon-
strates folk crafts at various Louisiana festivals.
Larry
and
Jackie
do not
run Mardi Gras
(he
tried it once for the
experience),
but other mem-
bers of their
family
do. Several sons and
grandchildren
are
regulars
in
the Tee Mamou men's and children's
runs,
and a
daughter-in-law helps
organize
the children's run.
When we
spoke
over the
phone
in
2001,
Larry
recalled
hearing
in
1987 that a few
townspeople
had
approached capitaine
Gerald
Frug6
about
having
a Mardi Gras festival to "do
something"
for
Iota's
economy.
Larry
was concerned that cultural
preservation might
be sacrificed to
promotion,
and that town officials "didn't have
any
idea how to
protect
the cultural
aspects"
of the local Mardi Gras tradition. He
immediately
asked to take
part
in festival
planning. City
Councilman
Joel
Cart was
elected festival
president; Larry
Miller became the festival's folklife
director and served on its board for eleven
years.
Knowing
that
Iota's
festival would have to
compete
with
Lafayette
and
other towns for
holiday
visitors,
Mr. Miller
argued
that the event should
be "as
unique
as
possible."
He
suggested
the town define its festival as a
"folklife-type
festival" and "work in as
many
folklife elements as
possible"
to
distinguish
it from other Mardi Gras street dances and fairs. The
Mardi Gras run itself would be
only
one
component.
Larry
and
Jackie,
both folklife festival
veterans,
drafted a consti-
tution and
bylaws
for the
Iota
festival and handed out
copies
at the
association's next
planning meeting.
Their
proposal
was
accepted
with
only
a few minor
changes.
The event would follow a formula familiar to
most folklorists: demonstrations of
regional crafts, preparation
and sales
of local
foodways,
and
performances
of
Cajun
and
zydeco
music. The
only
"bone of
contention,"
he
says,
was the Millers'
stipulation
that all
food should be "the true authentic stuff." This
suggestion
was
dropped
176 CAROLYN E. WARE
because
planners
feared that sales would suffer if visitors couldn't
buy
hamburgers
and other
customary
festival foods.
Conserving
the local Mardi Gras tradition was
key
to his vision for
the
festival,
Larry
Miller
says.
Planners were resolved to "do
nothing
that
would ... alter the traditions of the Tee Mamou Mardi
Gras"-they
were
"not
going
to let the tail
wag
the
dog." They
decided to include a
repre-
sentative of the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras Association
among
seven
voting
members of the festival's Board of
Directors,
to ensure their
plans
would
not harm the run.
Initially
this rule concerned some board
members,
who-according
to Mr. Miller-worried that the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras
association
might try
to control the festival.
Clearly,
town officials and
business
people
saw this as their event and were determined to retain
command.
The Tee Mamou-Iota Mardi Gras Folklife Festival debuted in 1988
and was such a success that food vendors ran out of food.
Organizers
later estimated that the first festival drew almost
8,000
people, including
a thousand to fifteen hundred out-of-state visitors.9 Fifteen
years
later,
the
festival,
which
charges
no
admission,
remains
popular
and follows
much the same format as the
inaugural
event. It
begins
at 8:30 on Mardi
Gras
morning
with an official
welcome, invocation,
and introduction of
Mardi Gras Festival Association
officials,
Iota's town
officials,
and the
festival's tee shirt
designer.
Three music
stages
offer music
by Cajun
and
zydeco
bands
throughout
the
day
and occasional
performances by
dance
troupes.
True to
original planning,
the
present-day
Tee
Mamou-Iota
Folklife
Festival features an assortment of folk traditions. Food booths offer local
dishes such as
barbecue,
crawfish
etouff6, cracklins,
jambalaya, gumbo,
fried
alligator,
and
syrup pies,
most sold
by community groups-churches,
the 4-H
club,
Lions
Club,
the
Boy
Scouts,
and so on. Crafts are far more
prominent
than at most Mardi Gras
fairs,
and
Iota's
festival has
opened
up
a new market for
regional
artists.
Craftspeople display
and sell corn
husk
dolls,
white oak
baskets, chairs,
palmetto
hats,
Cajun
sunbonnets,
and
accordions,
alongside
less traditional arts and crafts such as drift-
wood
sculptures
and face
painting
(Arts
and Crafts
2003).
Cajun
Mardi
Gras souvenirs are
especially popular: Jackie
Miller's wire screen
masks,
and Mardi Gras
pins
and dolls made
by
several other local women.
Many
of the
music, food,
and craft traditions showcased have little
connection to Mardi
Gras; they
reflect
everyday prairie culture,
or an
old-time version of it. The Tee Mamou Mardi Gras
run, however, pro-
vides the festival's central
symbols
and
images,
and remains its
strongest
Marketing
Mardi Gras 177
selling point.
The festival
logo
is a masked
figure chasing
a
chicken,
and brochures feature color
photographs
of Tee Mamou maskers on
their
wagon
and
begging
from
spectators.
Some festival
organizers
and
musicians set a festive tone
by dressing
in
fringed
Mardi Gras suits and
capuchons,
but
usually
don't mask. The 1994 festival featured the wed-
ding
of a
couple
who had met there several
years
earlier,
with the
groom,
best
man,
and
officiating judge
(who
doubles as a
Cajun
musician)
in
Mardi Gras costumes. It
seems, then,
that on this
day,
Mardi Gras takes
symbolic precedence
over the
marriage ceremony
and other rituals.
A
relatively
new addition is a festival
performance by
the Tee Mamou
children's
run,
early
in the afternoon. But the
centerpiece
remains the
Tee Mamou Mardi Gras' arrival in town. The
Tuesday countryside
run
includes
only
male
riders,
but members of the Tee Mamou women's
run now
join
them for the
parade along
Iota's
Main Street. From their
painted wagons,
the maskers toss
candy
to the crowds before dismount-
ing
at the main music
stage.
There
they
climb onto a raised dance
floor,
sing
their Mardi Gras
song
into a
microphone,
dance with each
other,
and then
mingle
with the
spectators
to
beg
from,
clown
for,
and dance
with them. The
group's
arrival in town has
become,
in a literal
sense,
a
staged performance,
but one that allows some interaction between
maskers and observers.
Defining
Iota's
festival as an
interpretive
folklife event was one tactic
in its
production
of difference. Another was
asserting
the Tee Mamou
Mardi Gras run itself
(and
thus its festival
performance)
as
older,
more
authentic,
and more traditional than its
neighbors.
The Tee Mamou run
is
presented
as a rare and valuable
survival,
the "last of the
totally
tra-
ditional Prairie
Cajun
Mardi Gras
groups," according
to a 1989 festival
brochure
(1989).
This claim lies
partly
in the
group's requirement
that
all members dress in handmade
masks,
capuchons,
and Mardi Gras
suits,
while most other runs allow a
variety
of
disguises.
Festival brochures
advertise Tee Mamou as the "last
remaining Cajun group
so dressed!"
(1989).
Another claim to
authenticity
is the
antiquity
of its Mardi Gras
song,
or chanson de Mardi Gras. A 1989 festival brochure
promotes
the
Tee Mamou variant as a "300+
year
old chant in French."
The
Iota
festival,
like
Eunice,
aims to educate as well as entertain.
The festival's
strong interpretive
slant
during
its first two or three
years
reflected the
townspeople's "pride
in our
heritage," Larry
Miller
says.
Grant
funding
enabled
Iota
to create
exhibits,
a
newsprint
festival
guide
full of articles on Mardi
Gras, and narrative
stage
discussions of Acadia
Parish folklife. The Tee Mamou Mardi Gras Association edited home
178 CAROLYN E. WARE
videos and
put together
a film of their run for the 1988 festival. All of
these features were directed at local
people
as much as at outsiders.
Barry
Ancelet
(1992),
Carl
Lindahl (1991),
and others have
pointed
out that
public
Mardi Gras events can "re-educate"
Cajuns
about their
own
tradition,
rejuvenate
local
interest,
and
inspire young people
to
run Mardi Gras. Carl Lindahl
argues
that in
Iota
and
Eunice,
"the fairs
accompanying
the celebration
provide
not
only
entertainment for the
tourists,
but also a re-education for the
community
itself .... Both func-
tions draw
tourists,
but are aimed
equally
inward,
in the
spirit
of com-
munity
self-celebration"
(1991:8).
Today,
limited
funding
means fewer educational
elements,
but the
festival continues to reach out to
young people,
and a children's tent
with crafts and
Cajun
music is a
popular
feature. Admission is
free,
so
the festival
depends largely
on
support
from various
sponsors.10
The
festival association's web site lists
forty-two sponsors
for the 2003
event,
including
individual
residents,
elected
officials,
local
businesses,
and the
Coushatta Tribe of
Louisiana,
which owns a casino not far from
Iota.
Marketing
has
always played
an
important part
in
constructing
and
reinforcing
the festival's
identity
as "An Authentic
Cajun
Cultural
Experience." 1 Organizers
use full-color
brochures, t-shirts,
flyers,
and
newspaper
event
listings
to
promote
the event. A more recent tool is a
festival association web
site,
with
photographs
of the Tee Mamou run
and
previous
festivals,
a schedule of
events,
a list of festival
officers,
and
an online
guest
book.
Iota,
like
Eunice,
also receives television
coverage
and other free
advertising.
Iota,
like
Eunice,
has
gained
from Mardi Gras tourism. The festival
has
brought
some financial
benefits,
though perhaps
not as
many
as
organizers originally hoped.
As a
one-day, once-a-year
event,
the festival
has not had a tremendous economic
impact,
Miller
says.
For one
thing,
many
local businesses are closed on Mardi Gras
day.
And unlike
Eunice,
Iota
has no motels.
However,
festival visitors do
spend money
on
food,
drink,
and crafts downtown. The town
keeps
no exact attendance sta-
tistics,
but
Larry
Miller
guesses
that about
sixty percent
of
Iota's
festival
visitors come from outside the immediate area-from Baton
Rouge,
Lafayette,
Lake
Charles,
or outside Louisiana. The
event,
he
says,
has
made many more people aware of Iota, and some of these people might
return to
shop
there.
Other, less
tangible
benefits include
positive
attention for both
Iota
and the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras run.
This,
Larry
Miller
suggests,
is the
festival's most
significant legacy.
He
says,
"The
big thing
is
community
Marketing
Mardi Gras 179
pride-it's
been a focus on
Iota."
The festival has become a
community
reunion of
sorts,
as "all of these former
graduates
who had to move
[away]...
to find work" return home to visit.
Usually,
he
says, they spend
several
days
in the
area,
and some decide to move back home after
being
reminded of its
"non-monetary good
life." Comments entered in the
festival's on-line
guest
book
suggest
that the event does indeed boost
local
pride.
In a
typical message,
an
Iota
native
remarks,
"For such a little
town, Iota
is
big
in one
thing
and it is
definitely
Mardi Gras"
(http://
www.iotamardigras.com/fsguestbook.html
March
15, 2003).
Effects on the Tee Mamou run are harder to
gauge, although they
are
certainly
less dramatic than in Eunice. Tee Mamou does not invite
tourists to mask and
run,
and
consequently
the
courir's
size has not
mushroomed. Members of the Tee Mamou
run,
both women and
men,
seem to
enjoy performing
at the
festival,
and the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras
Association
keeps
the coins and dollars bills
they
solicit from festival
spectators.
This
money,
sometimes a
couple
hundred
dollars,
helps
off-
set some of the run's
expenses.
Asked whether the festival has been
good
or bad for the Tee Mamou
run,
a
co-captain
concludes that the
growing
crowd of
strangers
downtown is "one of the
changes
...
I
guess
we can
accept.
You
see,
it's
helping
Iota."
He adds
jokingly
that some visitors
may
"leave sober
enough
to remember what
they
saw that
day
there. It's
probably helping
the
Cajun
culture a little bit."
The festival
association,
which
plans
and
produces
the festival and
controls its
images,
and the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras
Association,
which
organizes
the run
itself,
appear
to have a
friendly
but tenuous connec-
tion to each other.
Larry
Miller remarks that
they
"co-exist
very
well and
cooperate very
well."
Still,
the Mardi Gras Association remains
pretty
much on the sidelines in festival
politics.
Mardi Gras and
captains
seem
more like festival
performers
than full
partners.
In a 1988
interview,
for
example,
a former Tee Mamou
co-captainjoked
that "We're
just
another
booth" at the festival
(Fruge
et
al.1988).
Bruce
Morgan
of the Louisiana Office of Tourism
praises
the
Iota
fes-
tival as non-invasive Mardi Gras tourism. The
event,
he
suggests,
"takes
the
private
event
[the run]
and
gives
it a culmination in a
public
celebra-
tion" without
changing
the run itself. He
suggests,
"It's
just
that
they've
included outsiders,
and
given
a
way
for outsiders to come in and
enjoy
the total
community
event"
(September
25, 2001).
However,
the festival has altered Tee Mamou's
performance
and
route to some extent. The run can no
longer operate solely
on its own
internal
rhythms;
the festival
imposes
an external timetable. The courir
180 CAROLYN E. WARE
once arrived in Iota sometime in the late
afternoon,
but now members
line
up
in time to
begin
their
parade promptly
at
2:00,
to better mesh
with the music
stage
schedule.
Accordingly,
the run's
captains
have rear-
ranged
and shortened their schedule of house visits. Some households
choose to watch the riders at the festival instead of
receiving
them at
their
home,
eliminating
several
customary stops.
The
Tuesday
festival also had an
impact
on the Tee Mamou women's
Saturday
run,
which
customarily
ended in
Iota.
The women's visit was
dropped
soon after the festival's debut to focus attention on the men's
Tuesday parade. According
to Suson
Launey,
a member for over
twenty
years,
the women then demanded to
join
the men's
parade
because "we
are
part
of the Tee Mamou Mardi Gras"
(May
25, 1998).
Everyone
seems
fairly
satisfied with the current
solution,
having
men and women
parade
through
town on
separate
trailers.
Perhaps
the most
significant change
is the event's
shifting
audience
(Ware 2003). What
was once
mainly
an insider event has become a
public
event in
Iota,
if not in the
countryside.
Downtown,
strangers
often outnumber friends and
neighbors.
Claude
Durio
comments that
the festival
brings
"more
people
than
Iota
ever sees" and this
"changed
our run in town a lot." With the
throngs,
the
parade through
town has
become more a
spectacle
than a
reciprocal performance.
A
broader,
more diverse Mardi Gras audience also
opens
the local tradition to more
intense outside
scrutiny,
and as Ancelet
comments,
forces Mardi Gras
communities to "come to terms with themselves
publicly
in a
way
that
they
have not done
privately"
(1999:23-24).
In
Iota,
like
Eunice,
racial
relationships
have been one focus of this
scrutiny.
The
presence
of Tee Mamou's
neg'
and
nigresse,
a
pair
of tradi-
tional comic
figures played by Cajun
men
wearing
blackface
make-up,
is
increasingly
controversial as more tourists flock to the festival
(Ancelet
1999,
Lindahl
2001,
Ware
2003).12
Tee Mamou now
compromises by
including
the
neg
and
negresse
for
country
visits but not in
town,
though
some members resent the
change.
It also seems that the town-based festival has blurred the
identity
of
the
country
run to some extent.
Many
outsiders and some locals now call
the Tee Mamou run the
Iota run,
because of the festival's
prominence.
Indeed,
the town's festival association website
incorrectly
refers to the
courir as the Tee
Mamou-Iota
Mardi Gras. This subtle
appropriation
has
always
disturbed
me,
as it does some Tee Mamou runners and
captains.
Contemporary folklorists
have
convincingly argued
that tourism need
not be seen
simply
as "an intrusive
agent destroying cultures"(Bendix
Marketing
Mardi Gras 181
1989:133).
Ethnic
groups continually
invent,
reinterpret,
and
negoti-
ate their own notions of tradition and its boundaries
(Handler
and
Linnekin
1984,
Hobsbawm and
Ranger
1983),
and tourism is
only
one
of
many
forces in this
process.
Communities find their own
meanings
in
public display
events
seemingly
directed at non-natives
(Bendix 1989),
as members
appropriate
and
reshape
external notions of tradition and
authenticity
to fit their own aesthetics and
needs.13
Larry
Danielson,
for
example,
observes that the revived and reinvented St. Lucia festival
in
Lindsborg,
Kansas "relocates an ethnic tradition from a
private
to a
public
context,
self-consciously displays
several ethnic folk traditions.
..,
encourages
the
development
of
tourism,
and affirms to local and nonlo-
cal observers the cultural distinctiveness of the
community"
(1991:188).
This is
equally
true of Mardi Gras festivities in Eunice and
Iota,
where
country
Mardi Gras traditions are
reinterpreted
and
presented
to an
audience of
Cajuns
and
non-Cajuns.
In both
places,
Mardi Gras tourism
has
obviously brought many
benefits: a much-needed economic
infusion,
improved public images
of the
country
Mardi Gras and
Cajun
culture,
renewed interest in
running
Mardi Gras
among
locals,
and a sense of com-
munity pride.
These
gains
come at a
cost, however,
as tourism
changes
Mardi Gras runs in obvious
ways,
as in Eunice's
mega-run,
or in more sub-
tle
ways
such as Tee Mamou's
changed
route and schedule. Rural Mardi
Gras
runs,
once
largely community-centered
events,
have become the
focus of touristic
scrutiny.
As a
result,
they
sometimes face
unanticipated
controversies-over
practices
such as racial and
gender segregation, pub-
lic
drinking,
and comic
play
that sometimes offends visitors.
The
politics
of Mardi Gras tourism remain
largely unexplored, espe-
cially
issues of
class,
gender,
and
authority. Cajun
scholar
Barry
Ancelet
is adamant that French Louisiana communities should take an active
role in
deciding
how
they
are
represented;
he
rightly proposes,
"If we
are
going
to
open
ourselves to the
outside,
we should at least
try
to do it
well and in our own terms"
(1992:264).
But whose terms are we
talking
about in Mardi Gras tourism? Does the tradition
belong only
to those
who take
part every year,
or to the entire
community?
What voices are
reflected in
public representations
of
community
tradition,
and who
determines
acceptable
boundaries of
change? Perhaps
the central
ques-
tion is whether local Mardi Gras associations,
which absorb most of the
cultural
cost, also
reap
most of the rewards. To me, it
appears
that often
they
do not.
Actively including
Mardi Gras associations in tourism
plan-
ning,
it seems, is the difference between a successful
partnership
and
appropriation
of tradition.
182 CAROLYN E. WARE
NOTES
1.
Twenty-two parishes
of south Louisiana are now
designated
as
Acadiana,
or
sometimes more
informally
as
"Cajun Country."
2.
Barry
Ancelet
(1999)
suggests
that,
to his
knowledge,
the lone
exception
is a run in LeBleu
Settlement,
where blacks and whites run Mardi Gras
together.
3. A notable
exception
is Nicholas
Spitzer's exemplary
work on Creole Mardi
Gras runs.
4.
Many
of these romantic
images
also
appear
in folklorists'
descriptions
of
the
Cajun
Mardi
Gras,
including my
own.
(See
Oster
1964,
Oster and Reed
1960,
among
others.) Indeed,
identical
phrases
often
appear
in
promo-
tional materials and
scholarly writings,
and some of us
produce
both kinds
of
writing. Regina
Bendix
explores
the
"linkage
between
tourism,
authentic-
ity,
and folklore and folklife scholars in their role as students and
analysts
of culture"
(1994:67)
in several works. Mardi Gras communities themselves
also tend to
emphasize
the
unchanging
nature of their celebration
(Spitzer
1986,
Ware
1994).
Potic Rider of
Basile,
for
example, says
that the com-
munity
Mardi Gras run is an
expression
of cultural
history:
"To
me,
we're
trying
to show our
heritage. Trying
to show
people
what
they
did a
long
time
ago"
(Rider 2000).
Clearly,
the idea of a timeless and authentic custom is attractive to
tourists,
Mardi Gras
participants,
and scholars alike. But
depicting
a mod-
ern-day
celebration as
trapped
in the
past,
Helen
Regis points
out,
denies
its
dynamic
nature and the
importance
of human
agency
(2001).
David
Whisnant has also
forcefully argued
that such
nostalgic
views of
minority
cultures can reinforce cultural
stereotypes
and
marginality
(Whisnant 1983,
Whisnant
1988).
5. The word "ritual" seems to be used
interchangeably
with "festival" in
pro-
motional materials.
Roger
Abrahams notes that American
English
often
opposes
ritual and
festival,
reserving
"ritual"
mainly
for activities in sacral-
ized
spaces,
and festival to refer to the
"playful
and
profane
domain"
(1987:177).
Although
both involve
transformation,
the
changes
involved in
ritual are "for
real;"
in
festivals,
they
are
playful
and
temporary.
6.
CurtisJoubert
was also
my
boss when I directed the Louisiana Folklife Festival
in Eunice in
1989,
and
again
in
1991; hence,
he was a natural choice to inter-
view about Mardi Gras tourism a decade later. All
quotes by CurtisJoubert
are
from an interview
taped
at his home in Eunice on October
9,
2001.
7. Asked
why
he thinks tourists come to Eunice for Mardi
Gras,
Mr.
Joubert
mentions
many
of the features
promoted
in the
region's marketing
cam-
paigns.
He sees the small-town
experience
as
safer,
more
friendly,
more
engaging,
more
genuine
and less
staged
than
big-city
events. As he
says,
'You
can
really
feel like
you get
the real life
experience-nothing's staged
for
you
per
se." He also touches on notions of
"going
back in
history"
to
experience
an older way of life. Part of Acadiana's allure for outsiders
(including visi-
tors from other
parts
of the state, he
suggests,
is its exotic Frenchness. He
Marketing
Mardi Gras 183
says,
"And it's ... almost a cultural shock. But it's the excitement of the cul-
tural
shock,
that this
[speaking
French,
running
Mardi
Gras]
is still
going
on in Louisiana .... I think it's a total
package,
it's an attitude."
People
are
discovering
rural
Louisiana,
he
notes,
particularly
at Mardi Gras-and he is
not
surprised.
Mr.
Joubert
comments,
"It's a real
experience.
If I was travel-
ing
and could find a
place
like
Louisiana,
I would
go
to it."
8.
Larry
Miller was also
my
"culture broker" in
1988;
he took me around the
Tee Mamou
countryside
and
together
we interviewed Mardi Gras riders and
captains, past
and
present.
All
quotes
here are from a
phone
interview on
October
9,
2001.
9. The
figure
of
8,000
visitors comes from a
City
of
Iota
grant application
in
1988,
months after the first festival. In our 2001
interview,
Larry
Miller's
estimate of the first
year's
crowd was
smaller,
three thousand to four thou-
sand;
he said it doubled in size the second
year.
10. A 1988
grant application by
Iota
City
Government mentions that the
city
did not
financially sponsor
the festival in its first
year
but
supported
it as
much as
possible
"within the current
budgetary
restraints."
11. As
Rocky
Sexton
(1999)
points
out,
the festival includes several cultural
groups
as demonstrators and
musicians,
but its
promotions emphasize
the
Cajun
culture almost
exclusively.
12. The
neg'
et
n'gresse
are stock comic
figures
in a number of
Cajun
Mardi Gras
runs,
dating
back at least to the 1940s and fifties. Iota's festival visitors have
questioned
their
presence
and
meaning
so often that the festival associa-
tion
created a
printed
brochure to
explain
their
history
(From
France to Tee
Mamou 1996).
See Lindahl 2001 for more
thoughts
on these
figures
and the
reactions
they provoke.
13. There
is,
of
course,
a
huge body
of literature on
ethnicity
and its
public
expression. Especially
useful in this case are recent
publications
on "cre-
ative
ethnicity"
and the
purposeful manipulation
of ethnic
symbols
in
pub-
lic
display
events. See for
example
Danielson and Toelken's
essays
in Creative
Ethnicity: Symbols
and
Strategies of Contemporary
Ethnic
Life
(199 1),
and
Tuleja's
Usable Pasts: Traditions and
Group Expressions
in North
America
(1997).
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