Courir de Mardi Gras

In Acadiana, popular practices include wearing masks and costumes, overturning social conventions, dancing, drinking alcohol, begging, trail riding, feasting, and whipping.

[2] Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras, a documentary by filmmaker Pat Mire, provides insight into the history and evolution of this cultural tradition.

In popular culture, two HBO series (the crime drama True Detective and the post Hurricane Katrina themed Treme) also make reference to the tradition.

[3] Barry Jean Ancelet, Cajun folklorist and retired professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, has explained the origins of the Courir in rural medieval France: In a nutshell, the country Mardi Gras comes from the way Mardi Gras was celebrated in France in the rural section as opposed to the urban carnival.

Examples include the use of the burlap whip and the tune on which the Chanson de Mardi Gras are based, both of which are traced back to Brittany, a Celtic enclave on the Northwestern French coast near where the original settlers of Acadia were from.

[6] In the mid to late 18th century when the Acadian settlers of the Canadian Maritimes were forcibly deported by the English, many made their way to South Louisiana, settling what would become known as the Acadiana region.

[10] Although the tradition never died out, during the 1930s and 1940s it had begun to fade away, especially during the World War II era as many of the young men who participated were away serving in the armed forces.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s the tradition began to be revived and in the 1960s got a major boost with the "Cajun renaissance", a grassroots effort to promote the unique local food, culture, music and language of the area.

In 1993, documentary filmmaker Pat Mire chronicled the tradition with his film Dance for a Chicken: The Cajun Mardi Gras.

[19][20][21][22][23] In 2014 the HBO crime drama True Detective included images of courir participants and created a cult group whose roots lay partially in the rural Mardi Gras traditions.

[26] In the early morning the riders or runners or Mardi Gras (as the troop and its individual members are known)[27] gather in a central meeting place.

They are used by the captain and his subordinates [co-captains] onlyThe whips are designed to be flexible and not to inflict any serious damage onto their victims, but do produce a loud noise for the edification of onlookers.

[29] Once they are on the property, the revelers play a variety of pranks on the farmers and beg for food[26] for the communal gumbo that lies at the end of the route.

A prize ingredient is a live chicken, which is usually thrown into the air for the drunken Mardi Gras to chase through the muddy yards and fields.

[33] Many other musicians have recorded versions of the song, with notable artists being Zachary Richard,[34] Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys,[35] BeauSoleil,[36] Cedric Watson,[37] and Hozier.

The name capuchon comes from the same root word, cappa in Latin, meaning a cape or hood, that gives us cap in English and chapeau in French.

[28] The masks are made by taking ordinary wire mesh window screen and attaching large protruding noses and painting on features such as eyes and mouths.

Although there are many variations, most still practice the time honored tradition with Le Capitaine leading masked revelers on horseback to gather ingredients for making the communal gumbo.

The pickup trucks carry the Mardis Gras from one residential section to another where they chase the children of the town, and make them recite Catholic prayers before giving them their pre-Lenten flogging with willow tree branches or sometimes with the flexible end of a fishing pole.

Elton Richard and Senator Paul Tate of Mamou flipped a coin to see who would have their official courir on Mardi Gras Day.

[43][44][45][46] In Duralde, an unincorporated village between the towns of Mamou and Basile on the southwestern prairies of Louisiana, is one of the Creole Mardi Gras.

Participants at times wear "white face", a way that the Mardi Gras runners dress as "the other" and overturn social conventions and the world for a day.

The roughly 2000 participants, both male and female, assemble at the National Guard Armory at the corner of South 9th Street and Maple Avenue at 6 am, and start the run 8 am.

Unlike other Cajun Mardi Gras celebrations, the Gheens event features teenaged boys and men dressed as ghouls riding in pickup trucks.

[51] After the morning parades the group meets behind the local church, where costumes are donned and the ground rules are laid out by the veteran runners to the newly initiated.

According to the account published in the Crowley Post Signal on 27 January 2002, the run dates from the earliest days of the L'Anse LeJeune settlement until it disbanded in the 1950s.

They hold their run on the Monday before Mardi Gras, with its starting point at Andrew Cezar's sulky racing track.

[56] Traditional Mardi Gras courirs have been held in Creole and Grand Chenier, small towns in southern Cameron Parish, since the beginning of the 20th century.

The Mardi Gras stop at multiple houses and business in and around the towns of Creole and Grand Chenier to dance, drink, play tricks, chase chickens, and gather ingredients for their communal gumbo that night.

Iota has an organized event, with Cajun and Zydeco bands playing on the main stage throughout Mardi Gras day.

Medieval French peasants enjoying a meal
Chasing a chicken through a muddy field
2017 Children's Courir de Mardi Gras in Church Point
Mamou courir in the late 1990s
Two Mardi Gras "stealing" a child's bicycle at the South Cameron Courir