July 19–25, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 7
Bayou bash D’town
Mardi Gras Indian band blasts N’awlins sound
A Mardi Gras Indian band will
transport lunchtime listeners from
Downtown’s MetroTech Commons to
the pulsing streets of the French Quarter
on July 25, by blasting the sounds
of New Orleans streets at a free afternoon
concert hosted by the Brooklyn
Academy of Music.
The eight-piece band Cha Wa will
perform its upbeat blend of funk and
brass-filled jazz, while its two singers
draw the eye with feathered Native
American outfits that honor their
home city’s rich heritage, according to
one of the group’s founders.
“It’s a lot of pageantry along with
a deep musical tradition,” said drummer
Joe Gelini.
The group, whose name is Indian
vernacular for “we’re comin’ for ya,”
formed around Gelini, along with lead
singer J’Wan Boudreaux and his uncle
Joseph Boudreaux, Jr., who are
the grandson and son, respectively,
of “Monk” Boudreaux, the Big Chief
of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indian
tribe.
The tribe is one of dozens that trace
their origins to the intermingling of escaped
African slaves and Native Americans
in the New Orleans region.
J’Wan is second-in-command of the
Golden Eagles tribe, known as a “Spyboy”
— also the name of Cha Wa’s
Grammy-nominated 2018 album.
He and Joseph Jr., who both have
black, Choctaw, and Cherokee heritage,
spend most of the year crafting
traditional outfits out of canvas,
beads, and feathers, which they debut
each year during Mardi Gras, according
to Gelini.
“It’s a very personal and detailed
piece of artwork,” he said.
The group was inspired by Monk
Boudreaux’s performances with the
Wild Magnolias, a Mardi Gras Indian
tribe that also performed as a funk band
in the early 1970s. Cha Wa honors that
tradition by including musical elements
like call-and-response rhythms, while
its horn section adds in brass sounds in
the vein of New Orleans jazz.
The band’s music is infectiously upbeat,
but the lyrics often highlight the
Crescent City’s issues with racism. The
track “Visible Means of Support” references
a Jim Crow-era vagrancy law
Take it Big Easy: New Orleans outfit Cha Wa will bring its Mardi Gras
Indian funk and brass sounds to MetroTech Commons on July 25.
that allowed police to fine black men
for loitering if they could not prove
they had “a visible means of support,”
or were looking for a job.
“It was like a modern day stop-andfrisk,”
Gelini said.
The band is set to release a new single
this summer, followed by a fulllength
record next spring.
Cha Wa at MetroTech Commons
Myrtle Avenue between Lawrence
and Bridge streets Downtown, (718)
636–4100, www.bam.org. July 25 at
noon. Free.
2020
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
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