Mardi Gras, Creole soul, and the Big Easy
New Orleans sits in a bowl between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, a geography that shaped both its vulnerability and its stubbornness. Founded by the French in 1718 and layered with Spanish, African, and Creole influence ever since, it holds one of the most distinct cultural identities in the country. Mardi Gras is older than the parades suggest — the krewes that still roll date to 1857, and masked processions here go back further than that. Jazz was born in these streets, and so were the second line, the brass band funeral, and the po'boy, named for striking streetcar workers a restaurant fed for free in 1929. The Big Easy is a much newer name that only stuck in the 1970s, and nobody agrees on who said it first.
