Uptown, 13th Ward

Last week DLubbert posted a couple of items from the Wild Tchoupitoulas and The Meters. I'd asked him to talk a bit about the connection between these two groups and the Neville Brothers, and he gave a pretty good response.In their live performances, the Neville Brothers often make references to this musical connection. In the opening bars of Shake Your Tambourine from Live on Planet Earth you can hear one of the brothers, calling out, "Uptown. 13th Ward. Home of the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras indians."The first video here, featuring both the Neville Brothers and the Meters doing Fire on the Bayou, shows the direct connection between the two groups. After a short break near the end, the band plays a short bit of Hey Pocky A Way.In the second video, from the Sessions at West 54th program, there's a point where Aaron Neville makes explicit reference to "Uptown, 13th Ward." Later in the tune, Art sings about "Wild Tchoupitoulas from the big 13". Hey Pocky A Way is a version of one of the chants that the Wild Tchoupitoulas would use in their "battles".I was first clued in to this connection by DLuebbert himself. He and I worked together some years ago writing software for the Mac. He'd renamed his Mac's hard disk to "Wild Tchoupitoulas," and I'd asked him about it. Thus began my education about the world of Mardi Gras indians.As for why they refer to themselves as "Indians," that is a long bit of history involving West African slaves joining ranks with Native Americans in the New Orleans area. In particular, Native American tribes offered safe haven to escaped West African slaves.