In this photo, McKinley Ceasar Sr. is leading the call-response chant in Creole French during the 2008 Soileau Mardi Gras Courir. I do not know the exact year I made my recording, but he was not leading the chant that year.
Click here for a recording of the Creole Mardi Gras call-response chant.
Creole Mardi Gras Chant
Recorded in Soileau
in 2000
When I first photographed the Creole Mardi Gras in Soileau in 2000, I was very pleased to discover that some of the Mardi Gras still sang an old call-response Mardi Gras chant. Nick Spitzer recorded a version of it in 1976 and included it on the LP/cassette Zodico: Louisiana Creole Music. For more information on Creole Mardi Gras traditions and the L'Anse de 'Prien Noir Mardi Gras (the Soileau run is an offshoot of this earlier run), see Nicholas R. Spitzer's article "Mardi Gras in L'Anse de 'Prien Noir" in James H. Dormon, ed.,Creoles of Color in the Gulf South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), 87-125. The essay includes a transcription of some words from the Creole Mardi Gras chant. Barry Jean Ancelet also has a transcription of the chant in his book From Behind the Mask: Essays on South Louisiana Mardi Gras Runs, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2023.
I don't know who is leading the chant in the recording I made. The late McKinley Ceasar Sr. of Basile carried a handheld megaphone for the chant on a few of the runs I witnessed over the years, but I don't believe he is the singer in this recording. As the chant ends, you can hear the Cajun "La chanson de Mardi Gras" playing from a sound truck that accompanied the runners.