Krewe Of New Orleans Baby Doll Ladies Homecoming

Dance has been instrumental to the development of New Orleans' jazz culture since the bourgeoning "jass" days and is a fundamental feature of the doll-masking and street-parading phenomena of the early twentieth century. Established in March 2005 by New Orleans native and choreographer Millisia White, the New Orleans Society of Dance Baby Doll Ladies provides girls and women between the ages of seventeen and sixty plus a fun, productive place to get physically active, enrich their lives, and make connections with their peers. In Krewe of New Orleans Baby Doll Ladies' Homecoming, White presents a collection of photographs and biographies painting a portrait of the Baby Doll Ladies for 2019. A brief introduction is followed by the biographies of twenty-four dancers that offer short histories of each dancer, along with a list of personal details, such as birthdate, year of induction, hobbies, favorite color, and favorite dish.

One of the first women’s organizations to “mask” in a Mardi Gras parade, the “Million Dollar Baby Dolls” redefined the New Orleans carnival tradition. Tracing their origins from Storyville brothels and dance halls to their re-emergence in post-Katrina New Orleans, author Kim Vaz uncovers the fascinating history of the “raddy-walking, shake-dancing, cigar-smoking, money-flinging” ladies that strutted their way into a predominantly male establishment. The Baby Dolls formed around 1912 as an organization for African American women who used their profits from working in New Orleans’s red-light district to compete with other black women in their profession on Mardi Gras. Part of this competition involved the tradition of masking in which carnival groups create a collective identity through costuming. Their baby doll costumes—short satin dresses, stockings with garters, and bonnets—set against their bold and provocative public behavior not only exploited stereotypes but also empowered and made visible an otherwise marginalized demographic of women. In addition to their subversive presence at Mardi Gras, the Baby Dolls helped shape the sound of jazz in the city. The Baby Dolls often worked in and patronized dance halls and honky-tonks, where they introduced new dance steps and challenged house musicians to keep up the beat. The entrepreneurial Baby Dolls also sponsored dances with live jazz bands, effectively underwriting the advancement of an art form now inseparable from New Orleans’s identity. Over time, the Baby Doll’s members diverged as different neighborhoods adopted the tradition. Groups such as the Golden Slipper Club, the Gold Diggers, the Rosebud Social and Pleasure Club, and the Satin Sinners stirred the creative imagination of middle-class Black women and men across New Orleans, from the downtown Tremé area to the uptown community of Mahalia Jackson. Vaz follows the Baby Doll phenomenon through one hundred years of photos, articles, and interviews to conclude with the birth of contemporary groups such as the modern day Antoinette K-Doe’s Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls, the New Orleans Society of Dance’s Baby Doll Ladies, and the Tremé Million Dollar Baby Dolls. Her book celebrates these organizations’ crucial contribution to Louisiana’s cultural history.

Contributions by Jennifer Atkins, Vashni Balleste, Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, Ron Bechet, Melanie Bratcher, Jerry Brock, Ann Bruce, Violet Harrington Bryan, Rachel Carrico, Sarah Anita Clunis, Phillip Colwart, Keith Duncan, Rob Florence, Pamela R. Franco, Daniele Gair, Meryt Harding, Megan Holt, DeriAnne Meilleur Honora, Marielle Jeanpierre, Ulrick Jean-Pierre, Jessica Marie Johnson, Karen La Beau, D. Lammie-Hanson, Karen Trahan Leathem, Charles Lovell, Annie Odell, Ruth Owens, Steve Prince, Nathan "Nu'Awlons Natescott" Haynes Scott, LaKisha Michelle Simmons, Tia L. Smith, Gailene McGhee St.Amand, and Kim Vaz-Deville Since 2004, the Baby Doll Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans has gone from an obscure, almost forgotten practice to a flourishing cultural force. The original Baby Dolls were groups of black women, and some men, in the early Jim Crow era who adopted New Orleans street masking tradition as a unique form of fun and self-expression against a backdrop of racial discrimination. Wearing short dresses, bloomers, bonnets, and garters with money tucked tight, they strutted, sang ribald songs, chanted, and danced on Mardi Gras Day and on St. Joseph feast night. Today's Baby Dolls continue the tradition of one of the first street women's masking and marching groups in the United States. They joyfully and unabashedly defy gender roles, claiming public space and proclaiming through their performance their right to social citizenship. Essayists draw on interviews, theoretical perspectives, archival material, and historical assessments to describe women's cultural performances that take place on the streets of New Orleans. They recount the history and contemporary resurgence of the Baby Dolls while delving into the larger cultural meaning of the phenomenon. Over 140 color photographs and personal narratives of immersive experiences provide passionate testimony of the impact of the Baby Dolls on their audiences. Fifteen artists offer statements regarding their work documenting and inspired by the tradition as it stimulates their imagination to present a practice that revitalizes the spirit.

Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s wildly original debut novel, Getting Mother’s Body, follows pregnant, unmarried Billy Beede and her down-and-out family in 1960s Texas as they search for the storied jewels buried—or were they?—with Billy’s fast-running, six-years-dead mother, Willa Mae. Getting Mother’s Body is a true spiritual successor to the work of writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker—but when it comes to bringing hard-luck characters to ingenious, uproarious life, Suzan-Lori Parks shares the stage with no one.

In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae. Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world's most creative musicians and their work. Included here are more than twenty original photographs as well as a meticulously annotated discography. The result is one of the most thoughtful, and most entertaining, investigations of contemporary music available today.

Medieval festivals such as carnival and misrule, were occasions which created a temporary and dynamic upside-down world. This text shows these occasions were highly diverse, and discusses how they were able to negotiate a range of meanings and values.

Peer behind the curtain and journey into Voodoo's hidden world. A forbidden and often misunderstood subject, Voodoo has never before been photographically depicted in this way. The people and the spirits of Voodoo are creatively conjured in 69 photos from world-renowned photographer Justice Howard, coupled with the insightful words of Voodoo Queen Bloody Mary. Subjects include Papa Legba, gatekeeper of the crossroads, and the revered priestess Marie Laveau. See the realities behind Voodoo dolls and meet graveyard rulers Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte. Voodoo priestess Bloody Mary shares intriguing background information for each of the concepts and explains the meaning of ritual items, from food offerings to libation to the misconceptions of animal sacrifice.