Mask Makers Web

Very nice informative site with great photos of these spectacular masktraditions. Mardi Gras in rural Southwestern Louisiana draws on traditions that are centuries old. Revelers go from house to house begging to obtain the ingredients for a communal meal. They wear costumes that conceal their identity and that also parody the roles of those in authority. They escape from ordinary life partly through the alcohol many consume in their festive quest, but even more through the roles they portray. As they act out their parts in a wild, gaudy pageant, they are escaping from routine existence, freed from the restraints that confine them every other day in the year. These traditions, folklorists say, go back at least as far as medieval times. The human impulse that underlies Mardi Gras has not diminished today, even if some of the traditions lapsed for decades and even if one factor in their revival by subsequent generations was a desire to enhance tourism. Anyone who has seen the procession of Mardi Gras riders brightly costumed in myriad colors advancing across the drab late-winter countryside is also likely to be swept up in the timeless moment: in rural Acadiana, Mardi Gras lives as much today as it did in centuries past.

Category: Mask tradition

Added on: Feb 11, 2003 | Hits: 4222