dylanjames67, Feb 10, 2016
Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi, the most African inspired of the
many Mardi Gras Indian tribes of New Orleans. Big Chief Victor Harris.
-snip-
"Fi Yi Yi" is pronounced to rhyme with the first syllable in the word English "fire". "Fi Yi Yi" also rhymes with the English words "by", "cry", "high". etc.
Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series about
Part I also presents two online excerpts about this subject..
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/02/spirit-of-fi-yi-yi-mardi-gras-indian.html for Part II of this series. Part II showcases two videos of the Fi Yi Yo and Mandingo Warriors.
The content of this post is presented for cultural and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all the Mardi Gras Indians. Thanks to all those who are showcased in these YouTube examples and thanks to the publishers of these YouTube examples.
-snip-
Disclaimer: This post doesn't mean to imply that Spirit Of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors are the only Mardi Gras Indians whose suits and music instrumentation reflect increased African aesthetics.
Note added Feb. 23, 2021- If I understand what I have read correctly, The Spirit of FiYiYI is the chief and Mandingo Warriors is the name of the Mardi Gras Indian tribe. That said, both are Spirit of FiYiYi (aka FiYiYI) and Mandingo Warriors are included in the list of Mardi Gras Indian tribes on on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras_Indians retrieved on Feb. 23, 2021 (although that list may not have been correct and probably isn't complete or otherwise correct at this time.)
-end of added note-
-snip-
In addition to this showcased video, click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K32hFhc8Hhg&t=673s&ab_channel=BlackMaskingInjuns for the video entitled "42 Tribes Week 7: Big Chief Victor Harris Fi Yi Yi".
EXCERPTS ABOUT MARDI GRAS INDIANS' INCREASED AFRICAN AESTHETICS
Excerpt #1
New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians: Mediating Racial Politics from the Backstreets to Main Street
Cynthia Becker
African Arts
Vol. 46, No. 2, Performing Africa in New Orleans (Summer
2013), pp. 36-49 (14 pages)
Published By: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43306146
page 36
[Preview]
In November 2008, the Mardi Gras Indian Victor Harris, from
the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, was invited to display some of
his hand made costumes, referred locally as “suits”, in New Orleans first
biennial arts exhibit Prospect 1 (Figure .1).
Harris is among the many African American men and women who, on Mardi
Gras day, St. Joseph’s Day, and other occasions perform wearing beaded and
feathered suits, accompanied by friends and neighbors, and family who
constitute the so-called second line.
The catalogue accompanying the Prospect .1 exhibition characterizes
Harris’ suit as displaying “a highly personalized style with an African
inflection.” (Tancons 2009:59). Harris’
suits, unlike those of other Mardi Gras Indians who more explicitly reference
Native American culture, also incorporates materials associated with African
art, such as raffia, kente cloth, cowrie shells, and includes face masks and
African-inspired shields.
For all its well-intentioned efforts to focus attention on a neglected art form, Prospect .1, like other catalogues and exhibitions of its kind, failed to historicize Black Indian aesthetics. For example, there is no discussion of how the suits made by Victor Harris differed from the suits worn by earlier New Orleans ‘ Black Indians. In the nineteenth century, Mardi Gras Indians, restricted to New Orleans working class African American neighborhoods and never featured in museums, made less ornate suits, using discarded beads, turkey feathers, and fish scales as their primary artistic media (Fig 2). As racial politics changed and Mardi Gras Indians gradually migrated into the wider public realm, the suits became increasingly more elaborate. In the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, they began to be featured in documentary films and to perform at numerous New Orleans music festivals. By the 1990s, Indians were consciously trying to outdo each other’s creative skills as images of Indians appeared in glossy photograph books and postcards.(See Breunlin this issue, Breunlin and Lewis, 2009). In recent years, some Indians, such as Victor Harris, have displayed highly personalized handcrafted suits internationally and are striving to make a name for themselves as contemporary artists’”…
****
Excerpt #2
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2020/02/28/new-orleanss-best-hidden-treasure-is-its-mardi-gras-indians/ New Orleans’s best hidden treasure is its Mardi Gras Indians
By Natalie B. Compton, February 28, 2020
…”In 2018, the Neighborhood Story Project published “Fire in the Hole,” a
collective oral history from Harris and other voices within the Mandingo
Warriors tribe. The book is one of the only ones to be created by Mardi Gras
Indians themselves, and profits from its sales go back to support their
collective art.
It was through Breunlin that I met Harris. On our way to Harris’s home, Breunlin explained that while the ideal would be that a Mardi Gras Indian can sing, dance and sew a spectacular suit, they can still earn respect for standing out in any one of those individual categories.
[…]
When Harris created the Mandingo Warriors tribe, in 1984, he
broke away from Mardi Gras Indian tradition by creating a suit to identify with
his African ancestry instead of using Native American aesthetics. His suits now
feature materials like raffia, grass and shells.”….
This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams post.
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