Saturday, March 30, 2019
New Yam Festival and Mardi Gras
A brief comparison we made in class that I appreciated was comparing the New Yam Festival and the values of the Igbo culture to Mardi Gras and New Orleans culture. Mardi Gras is definitely one of my favorite times of the year and Fat Tuesday always depends on Easter, Lent, Ash Wednesday, etc. each year. You could compare that to the New Yam Festival which annually falls based on the cycles of the August moon. Mardi Gras falls right before a new period: Lent where we are consciously giving up something of our choice for six weeks while the New Yam Festival is focused on bringing in a new time period too: a new year and work cycle. New Yam Festival is also known as an art festival filled with bright colors, dancing, and feasting. I think that goes without saying: what would Mardi Gras be without colorful floats and beads, balls to dance at, and of course crawfish to feast on.
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2 comments:
I really appreciated this connection to Farah. The Igbo people and New Orleanians are actually very similar in a lot of ways. The biggest one being we always find a reason to stop work to celebrate and live a little bit. While they have the special ceremonies and feasts to celebrate the end of the rainy season, we have the parades and the giant parties. The yams might be prized just as much there as crawfish is here! Except ours doesn't really have a symbolic meaning to it except that it tastes so so good.
I always find it really cool when what we're reading relates to our culture here at home in New Orleans. We're really lucky to live in a city that is such a melting pot for all cultures, and to be fair, this drawn comparison between New Orleanians and Igbo people is pretty uncanny for a reason. As a huge port city at the turn of the century and a location where many Africans were enslaved and working on property, New Orleans is a haven for African culture. Don't forget, y'all: Jambalaya is African!
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