See Diva Run

While most of our time in New Orleans was spent on marathon related activities, we did have time to wander around a bit. Saturday afternoon, while wandering in the French Quarter, on Chartres Street we were surprised to hear music, and see a crowd of people come pouring out of the building on the corner. First out the door were members of a band, and right behind them was a wedding party. They formed a circle around the bride and groom, and danced around while waving handkerchieves in the air. I later learned that this is called a “Second Line Dance”. It was one of those “magic moments” that continues to endear New Orleans to my heart.

Our friend James captured part of it on video.

If you haven’t been to New Orleans, you really need to go!

We spent our evenings in clubs listening to Zydeco and Blues. After the marathon I was invited to “jam” with the Zydeco band as a guest washboard player. To be honest, I was pretty happy just sitting on the bench, and the prospect of walking across the bar so I could play washboard and dance didn’t totally speak to me. I showed Timmy my finisher’s medal and said “Do you know what this is?” He says yes. “And you still want me to do this?” He says yes. I hobble across the floor and make by best effort to remain on my feet while rubbing spoons up and down the washboard. I’m so tired I can only make my arms go in unison. They keep sliding off the washboard. The other guest players were great. I suck. It is a very long song, but finally it is over. Timmy looks at me and says, “so what did you do this morning?”

For some reason, Mr Diva didn’t feel like getting up off his stool to get a better shot, so we will have to make due with this one.

I love youtube! A quick search turned up a video of the Bourbon Street Cajuns taken about a month before we were there.

We also caught a great blues band, The All Purpose Blues Band while we were there. They were fabulous, and best of all they didn’t recruit me to play washboard after the marathon. We came home with lots of new CDs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Life in General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.