I’m wearing an octopus-shaped hat and clutching a beer when I hear a drumbeat strike up alongside a wailing sax. Ahead of me, a troupe of musicians in bright, feathered costumes with plumage nearly as wide as the narrow street attempts to clear a space and perform a quick number. The crowd surges all around, freely drinking in the open and casually walking up and down to watch the different ensembles in this informal parade. Every house along the way has a front row seat and partiers lean out of windows or cluster on balconies to take in the scene below.
I could be at Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnival in cities across Brazil. But instead of a sultry tropical party, it’s freezing cold on New Year’s Day and I’m on Second Street, ground zero of Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade. An annual folk tradition in the City of Brotherly Love for more than a century with roots in old European customs brought to the New World, the Mummers take over the streets every January 1st for a parade down Broad Street, the city’s main drag. It later becomes a street party in South Philadelphia on “2 Street,” as it’s known locally, in a tightly packed neighborhood of row homes. Many of them double as club houses for the dozens of “brigades” that will spend the better part of the year stitching costumes, designing elaborate floats, brainstorming skits, choreographing routines and rehearsing over and over for their short spotlight in front of Philly’s City Hall.
The Mummers Parade has all the trappings of a carnival, which is a huge global industry for tourism and entertainment. Rubadiri Victor, a Trinidadian arts activist, estimates that Caribbean-style carnivals alone are worth $15 billion. But the homegrown Mummers Parade is very much a local affair — by Philadelphians, for Philadelphians — with deep roots in several of the city’s largely white, working-class neighborhoods.
Like so many civic institutions, the Mummers come with their share of cultural baggage.
To read the full article by Gregory Scruggs, please click here.
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