Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is a Christian holiday and popular cultural phenomenon, Mardi Gras dates back thousands of years to pagan spring and fertility rites. Also known as Carnival, it is celebrated in many countries around the world–mainly those with large Roman Catholic populations–on the day before the religious season of Lent begins. Brazil, Venice and New Orleans play host to some of the holiday’s most famous public festivities, drawing thousands of tourists and revelers every year. According to historians, Mardi Gras dates back thousands of years to pagan celebrations of spring and fertility, including the raucous Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Lupercalia. When Christianity arrived in Rome, religious leaders decided to incorporate

Although the participants may not be aware of it, there is a sociopolitical component to the sexually charged proceedings, and it's more affirmative of societal norms than rebellious. At least, that's what Wesley Shrum and John Kilburn of Louisiana State University argued in a 1996 paper focusing on the festival's public displays of nudity."A practice that seems to be mere debauchery," they wrote in the journal Social Forces, "is an expression of moral commitment to the market economy, as well as conventional notions of gender and hierarchy."They describe the traditional Mardi Gras parade as a class-based ritual, noting it features "masked aristocrats, riding through thousands of people on raised platforms, casting beads, doubloons and other tokens into the crowd. In this allegory, the upper class — the hereditary elite of an agrarian social order — offers gifts to the shouting, scrambling

Most of these festivals were considered competitions between musician and sports. Later, during the Middle ages, competitions evolved into showcases specifically for musicians. The Newport Jazz Festival was one of the first recorded music festivals of the 20th century beginning in 1954. The Newport Folk festival was the second ever recorded US music festival takin place in 1959. It was designed as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival to include music lovers of all kinds. These two were very similar due to New Orleans being the birth place of jazz music, so the connection between the two are very