Any­one who knows any­thing can tell you, in a few short descrip­tive words, what Mardi Gras is all about. Party. Beads. Hur­ri­canes. Floats. A really big frickin’ parade.

Par­tial nudity and mad­ness are also words that may or may not be used, but that depends on what kind of per­son you are.

Mardi Gras is most cer­tainly the biggest parade in New Orleans, but def­i­nitely not the only one — not even close. One of the things I learned on my trip was how New Orleans is so steeped in a regional cul­tural all unto itself — more so than any other state, region, or city in the U.S.. New Orleans res­i­dents are so unique and pas­sion­ately soaked in local cul­ture, as seen through their music, his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, numer­ous land­marks, food, reli­gious influ­ences, and most evi­dently so — in parades.

Now let’s talk parade as cul­ture. I mean, if parades are part daily life around these parts, can you blame res­i­dents for not being so com­pletely pas­sion­ate about their city??!

The Sec­ond Line is an event, a parade, that fre­quently take place in neigh­bor­hoods around town. Usu­ally on Sun­days, mostly dur­ing Mardi Gras sea­son but also sched­uled through­out the year in rel­a­tive degrees of pop­u­lar­ity, dif­fer­ent groups of dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ics parade through streets cel­e­brat­ing life and music in var­i­ous coör­di­nated out­fits and cos­tumes. There’s a sec­ond line that cel­e­brates Star Wars and its parade maraud­ers are dressed up as Star Wars char­ac­ters, I’m told. But that’s some­thing of a com­pletely dif­fer­ent cul­tural his­tory that I’m not going to delve into.

The term ‘Sec­ond Line’ comes from a tra­di­tion of funeral pro­ces­sions, which is rumored to have descended from West African her­itage and tra­di­tion. Fol­low­ing the cas­ket would be a brass band, and fol­low­ing the band would be those cel­e­brat­ing the life of the deceased. Today, there are still actual sec­ond line funeral pro­ces­sions that take place — par­tic­u­larly when notable fig­ures in town pass away. On the flip side, sec­ond line pro­ces­sions have also become pop­u­lar at wed­dings in New Orleans.

Every year in Novem­ber, my friends’ favorite sec­ond line troupe holds their biggest fête. The Lady Buck­jumpers are a promi­nent social group in town, and we were able to catch up at the end point of the parade to wit­ness some of the magic. Groups of young girl­friends in coör­di­nated out­fits (bright col­or­ful span­dex and faux leather vests seemed to be a pop­u­lar choice among the urban youth of New Orleans) paraded in the line, after band mem­bers pump­ing out brass music while wear­ing bright orange and pur­ple zoot suits and top hats. Younger kids danced around (the troupe has a younger divi­sion called the junior buck­jumpers), and masses of friends and fam­i­lies walked past yelling and hol­ler­ing and one another.

We were, in our skinny jeans and designer t-shirts, slightly out of place. But the thing was, in the parade atmos­phere, where every­one is cel­e­brat­ing and walk­ing to the music, no one ever feels totally excluded.

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