Writing from Louisiana, Ingrid Marie Jensen gives us a rough guide to the sound of one of the world’s biggest parties.
Music is the heart and soul of Louisiana. It is our religion, and naturally, it is the lifeblood of Mardi Gras. From bounce to crunk to jazz standards, the season’s flamboyant revels are fueled by the music as much as they are fueled by king cakes, moon pies, gumbo, and incessant drinking. Music sets the mood, keeps the tempo, and summons the spirits. Here are 12 essential playlist standards to celebrate the holiday wherever you are in the world, running the gamut from tracks by old-school blues masters like Henry Gray, to the bounce sensation Big Freedia, to the second-line collective Rebirth Brass Band.
1.’Fell in Love at the Second Line’ by Flagboy Giz and Kango Slim (2023)
‘Fell in Love at the Second Line’ is a bonafide 21st century classic, with just enough electronic edge and bounce to suit the club as well as the street—although, on Mardi Gras, the street is superior in every way, to any club, anywhere. (For those who haven’t spent time in the Crescent City, a “second line,” is the “unofficial,” part of the parade, where those who wish to join in, fall into line to dance and sing along the route.)
2. ‘Third Ward Bounce’ by Big Freedia ft. Erica Falls (2018)
One of the city’s most beloved and flamboyant performers, Big Freedia’s track “Third Ward Bounce,” is a celebration of the eponymous New Orleans neighborhood. The Third Ward is famous for the many fine musicians who hail from it, among them the rappers Juvenile, Master P, Birdman, and Soulja Slim, the jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Dr John, and, of course, Big Freedia.
3. ‘Iko Iko’ by the Dixie Cups (1965)
Since 1964, this song has provided the majority of what most out-of-towners know about the traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians—when “tribes,” dressed in gorgeous, elaborately beaded and embroidered handmade costumes of endless variety, some with flowing feather headdresses, some in skeletal Voodoo masks—hit the streets for special parades and mock-fights during the carnival season. Since its release in 1965, this cover by the Dixie Cups has been the accepted standard.
4. ‘Hey Hey (Indian Comin’)’ by the Wild Tchoupitoulas (1976)
(That’s pronounced, “chop-a-tool-as.” See? Easy.) The Wild Tchoupitoulas were a storied tribe of Mardi Gras Indians, formed in 1970. Their music was a family affair, as it so often is in New Orleans: the group’s founder, Big Chief Jolly Landry, was the Neville Brothers’ uncle. The Neville Brothers appear on the Wild Tchoupitoulas’ eponymous 1976 album, which was produced by Allen Toussaint.
5. ‘Egyptian Fantasy’ by Sidney Bechet and his New Orleans Feetwarmers (1941)
No Mardi Gras music line-up would be complete without a track or two (or eight) by Sidney Bechet. The storied clarinetist spent much of his career in Paris, but his legend still looms large in New Orleans, the city of his birth and the place where he learned his art.
6. ‘Allons A Grand Coteau’ by Clifton Chenier (1975)
Roughly translated, the track title means “Let’s Go to Grand Coteau,” an itty-bitty little old town in St. Landry Parish. (Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. that uses the parishes instead of counties, and that’s courtesy of Napoleon, cher.) Clifton Chenier, a singer and accordion player dubbed the “King of Zydeco,” and the “King of the South,” is a landmark figure in southern music, whose work has influenced rock n’ roll, blues, country and zydeco musicians alike for generations.
7. ‘Bayou Noir/ Back of Town Two-Step’ by Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys (1993)
Mamou, “the Cajun Music Capital of the World,” is where the traditional courir de Mardi Gras is held. I won’t explain the courir de Mardi Gras here; Anthony Bourdain has already done a very fine job of it, on a visit to Mamou in season eleven of ‘Parts Unknown’, so I’ll just point you thither.
8. ‘La danse de Mardi Gras’ by Les Frères Balfa (1990)
The Balfa brothers were bastions of the fight to preserve Cajun culture and heritage in the 1960s, when much of it had been lost due to a ban on the use of Cajun French in schools that was instated in 1921. The five brothers recorded seven albums of the best traditional Cajun music extant and appeared briefly in two Les Blank documentaries (‘Spend it All’ and ‘Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers’).
9. ‘Everything I Do Gohn be Funky’ by Lee Dorsey (1969)
While the legendary New Orleans pianist and music producer Allen Toussaint’s excellent rendition is the better known of the two, Dorsey’s version has a particularly gorgeous mellifluousness to it that has to be heard to be believed. It encapsulates the spirit of the city, and the season, beautifully.
10. ‘Henry’s Bounce’ by Henry Gray (2008)
Blues piano par excellence by the master himself—Mr. Gray played with everyone from Little Walter and Jimmy Reed to Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson. He was Howlin’ Wolf’s pianist for a dozen years, as well as the only person Howlin’ Wolf trusted to manage things in his band besides himself. If you know your blues history, you know what tremendous import that infers.
11. ‘Do Whatcha Wanna, Pt. 3’ by the Rebirth Brass Band (1991)
Rebirth formed from a group of high school friends who met in Tremé. To this day they are some of the most stalwart pillars of the New Orleans music scene, playing beautiful, brassy, bouncy, marching music of the kind that you just don’t ever want to stop.
12. ‘Whambam Medicine Man’ by Big Chief Monk Boudreaux (2009)
This track is gloriously frenetic and wild and dirty, all the things Mardi Gras can be and often is. Big Chief Monk Boudreaux is the Big Chief of the Golden Eagles tribe and was formerly a member of the tribe the Wild Magnolias (with whom he played at the inaugural New Orleans Jazz Fest).