Happy New Year Mummers' Style

I have been away from this blog for so long because for the past several months I had another blog. Yes, I cheated.  I know I could have had another blog attached to this profile but I didn't want to blend my worlds.  But it's a new year and now I'm back here.

Last night I had dinner at a colleague-turned-friend's house.  It was a nice dinner party for 6.  We turned the TV on just minutes before midnight and watched the ball fall.  I was home and tucked in bed by 12:40-ish. 

Today I lounged around, read the newspaper, watched a movie on TV, did a run/walk/run around the high school track and ate the traditional pork dinner for good luck in the year to come.  I read something in the paper about a Philadelphia tradition called the Mummers' Parade.  If you're not familiar with this parade, it is a 101-year-old tradition of music, "the Mummers' strut," men wearing feathers and sequins (no, this is most definitely not a gay parade), comics, and lots of drinking by spectators.  It goes on from early morning to dusk. (Check out the link for more information.)

The information about the parade that was interesting to me is related to race.  Philadelphia is a minority-majority city.  More than 50% of its inhabitants are African-American.  I don't have an official statistic but I think it's very safe to say that 99% (if not 100%) of Mummers are Caucasian.  (All African-American groups - or "clubs" in Mummers'-speak - had their last strut down Broad Street in 1929.)  The reason this is of interest to me is because I know there is racial tension in this city and there are surely some Caucasian observers of and participants in this parade who would  be appalled to know what I learned today.  I find this somehow satisfying.

So what did I learn?  According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, in 1903 parade organizers adopted "O Dem Golden Slippers" as the parade's theme song.  What many of today's Mummers probably don't know is that his song was written in 1879 by "The Prince of Negro Songwriters" James A. Bland.  And that regionally famous Mummers' strut?  It was derived from the "southern plantation slave's 'Cakewalk' brought to the US by Africans in the 18th century."

While the Mummers' Parade is not representative of the city's population in both its participants and observers, it certainly has a history shaped by the majority of the city's residents.  I like the irony of that.  I also think some people may be less than pleased by that information and I like that too.  I don't want them to think that African-Americans are not part of this century-old Philadelphia tradition.

Happy New Year!