The muses of New Orleans

The sun glistens on the polished brass of the saxophones. April in Louisiana is baking hot and with every cocktail, the sweat flows at the Jazz & Heritage Festival on the racecourse in the north of New Orleans. While the sound of brass bands, Afrobeat musicians and gospel choirs booms out of the large tents, the atmosphere in the centre of the festival grounds is almost tranquil. This is where the Folklife Village is to be found, where visitors are guided through wooden houses showing the colourful culture of New Orleans.

One of the stalls glows in a blaze of colour. Dozens of pumps are piled up here, as if Alice in Wonderland had discovered drag for herself: plum-sized pink beads spill out of a shoe made of blue glitter fabric, while green dollar notes and dice are sewn onto another. Others show embroidered portraits of African-American women's rights activists. “Honey, do you want to design your own shoe?” shouts a woman behind the mountain of models. She is part of one of the ‘krewes’ that organise balls and parades at the most famous carnival in North America: Mardi Gras.

“An American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.” Mark Twain wrote  in a letter to his sister Pamela in 1859, after he disembarked from a Mississippi steamer as an apprentice and found himself in the middle of the parade.

The French colonisers brought the Catholic tradition of carnival to the south of the USA in the 17th century, when Louisiana still belonged to France. In New Orleans, European culture blended with the African, Caribbean and indigenous customs of the Creole population. Many of the dances and traditions that were otherwise forbidden to the brutally oppressed black slaves survived through Mardi Gras. While people of colour gradually won their rightful place in the parades after centuries of segregation, one group fell by the wayside: women.

“Women have long been ridiculed at Mardi Gras”

"Although women have been taking part in Mardi Gras for eighty years, they have always been ridiculed,” says Kathy Conklin, a woman with a brown long bob and large tortoiseshell glasses. She is sitting at her desk in the office where she works as a labour law attorney. The krewes, the carnival groups, were organised as exclusive societies for centuries and were long reserved for men only. When the first organisation of women, the ‘Krewe of Venus’, took part in a parade in 1941, it was booed by men and pelted with rotten tomatoes.

Even though more and more women took part in Mardi Gras, their parades and floats were dismissed as childish for a long time. They only took place during the day. “But the big Mardi Gras parades are in the evening,” says Conklin.

In 2000, her friend Stacy Rosenberg called her and said: "I'm starting a krewe just for women. And we're going to go out at night! Are you in?"

Rosenberg had a good connection to the mayor of the city at the time. He cleared the way. ‘We wanted to celebrate just as confidently as the men,’ says Conklin, ‘but we never thought the whole thing would explode like this.’ They called their organisation ‘The Krewe of Muses’, after the Greek patron goddesses of the arts and sciences. Empowerment was the motto.

The first parade was such a huge success in New Orleans that more and more women founded their own clubs and were also able to parade in the evening. Conklin noticed a great “hunger for equality” in carnival among women at the time. The Muses' trademark became the extravagant high heels, dozens of which each member made herself. For Conklin, the pumps are a symbol of hyper-femininity that each woman designs in her own style. Hundreds of shoes are thrown from the Muses' floats every carnival. The first in the row is always designed as a giant high-heeled shoe itself. It is traditionally ridden by a muse of honour, including stars such as Solange Knowles.

“After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the turnout was exceptionally high”

The glittering shoes of the muses have become one of the most coveted trophies of Mardi Gras. The lucky ones who get their hands on one display it prominently in their homes and offices. They are also part of the décor in many New Orleans restaurants. You can see how proud Conklin is when she talks about them. The muses have now grown into a so-called super krewe, with over 1,500 members and a long waiting list.

“After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the rush was particularly great,” says Conklin. ‘People felt the transience of everything and wanted to be part of the city and its culture, and therefore also part of Mardi Gras.’

Like other krewes, the Muses work all year round on their choreography, shoes, costumes and floats. They often take up political issues in a satirical way, such as the conservative bans on certain books in schools. The Krewes also raise money for social causes: this year, for example, for the victims of the attacker who killed 15 people in the historic centre of New Orleans on New Year's Eve.

“This has given rise to dance groups that emphasise diversity and body positivity”

But how inclusive is the Krewe of Muses really? The high fees you have to pay to become a member effectively exclude many poorer women, especially non-white women. “That's perhaps why we've made the most important change,” says Conklin. “Not only members of krewes and school orchestras are allowed to perform in our parades, but also smaller, less formal groups that don't have to pay to be there.”

This has given rise to dance groups such as the Bearded Oysters, who place particular emphasis on diversity and body positivity. Other clubs such as The Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale, which was originally reserved for African-American women, expanded this system and introduced instalment payments for their members to enable poorer members to participate. Since then, these new structures have made it much easier for young women in particular to be part of the parades.

The muses in the Folklife Village will be back at the next jazz festival. “They still make fun of me there,” laughs Conklin. She once helped set up the stand and wanted to show how to make a shoe. But the wind was blowing so hard that day that the glitter blew out of her hand and covered her from head to toe.