Voodoo on the Bayou
Halloween is the weekend that begins all the goings on in New Orleans, although actually the goings on never seem to stop even in the dead of summer when you’d think they should. Voodoo and Halloween go together like red beans and rice, and Marie Laveau was the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans so it’s natural that around this time of year, with the first good reason to costume, in a city where the dead live side by side with us above ground, and where spirits are naturally high that Halloween would be a cause for celebration, jubilation and if you so please, inebriation.
Down the street in City Park, the stages are all set up, the food booths all lined up, and the sound systems are checked constantly because it is Voodoo Fest where young people get their fill of a music festival that was designed with them in mind. Names like Ozzy Osbourne, Weezer, Drake, Metric, and so on (okay I’ve heard of Ozzy, but that’s really about it) are headlined as the big draw, and a big draw it is, we see the police van across the bayou, always the first indication around Jazz Fest that the festivities are about to begin.
Tonight at the Pitot House will be the annual fund raiser and Voodoo on the Bayou and the tents are up, and the decorations out, for their soiree that kicks off around evening time.
Somewhere on Royal Street is the authentic Voodoo Fest where the rite of voodoo is revered and celebrated as we approach the day of the dead and all Hallow’s eve.
I can assure you there is no place to be except New Orleans at this time of year. Tonight we have to figure out if we are going to a party as clowns, pirates, the sun and the moon, a cat and a fiddle, or what have you. Tomorrow the whole family will don its pirate costumes for some neighborhood trick or treating. And then the Saints play. We wish them all the good gris gris that comes from being from a town like ours.
Trick or treat everybody.