(C) Verite News New Orleans This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . ‘I’m going on another journey’: Longtime Big Chief to retire from masking after Mardi Gras [1] ['Bobbi-Jeanne Misick', 'More Bobbi-Jeanne Misick', 'Verite News'] Date: 2024-02-12 On Mardi Gras Day We meet everybody Everywhere we go Fi Yi Yi’s gonna come out the door – Lyrics, “Fi Yi Yi (On Mardi Gras Day)” By The Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi, Mandingo Warriors Victor Harris paced around his 9th Ward home, trying to find a comfortable place to sit down for an interview last week. There wasn’t much space for him. Large patches of bead work covered every piece of furniture in his living room. Mardi Gras was fast approaching, and he had been diligently sewing his 58th suit as a Mardi Gras Indian. This year will be his 41st year as Big Chief of the Mandingo Warriors, one of the most recognizable tribes in New Orleans. “This one coming up is very special,” said Harris, who is perhaps better known as the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi. “More special than all of them to that point. … I’m going on another journey.” This Mardi Gras will be the last that Harris puts on his suit and leads his tribe. Stepping down alongside him are master suit designer Jack Robertson and master drummer Wesley Phillips. Harris, Robertson and Phillips, along with their now-deceased friend Collins “Coach” Lewis, collectively built the signature Mandingo Warrior look and sound. Wesley Phillips Credit: Bobbi-Jeanne Misick / Verite News On Mardi Gras day, Harris will officially retire and pass the Fi Yi Yi torch to his son, Victor Harris, Jr., who will lead the next generation of the tribe. But the elder Harris won’t disappear. “People think because I’m retiring from masking on Mardi Gras that I won’t be seen again. No that’s not the truth,” he said. Harris takes his ceremonial duties seriously. Hanging on his wall is a mud cloth suit he wears during funeral parades for Mardi Gras Indian leaders. He said he’ll continue to put it on when he’s called to and to perform as the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi. And he and Robertson have expressed an interest in teaching young New Orleaneans to bead and sew in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition. “We fight with the needle and thread,” Harris said. Because on Mardi Gras day, it’s all about who put in the most work and whose suit is the prettiest. The birth of the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi Harris said he learned the value of a beautiful suit from his former Big Chief, Allison “Tootie” Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas, based in the Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods. Harris began as a flag boy at age 15, carrying a staff with a feathered and beaded tribe flag. He stuck with the Yellow Pocahontas until 1984 when he and “Coach” Lewis were unexpectedly told they could not mask. Harris became animated as he told the story of how the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi was born. (The full story — as told by Harris, Lewis and Sylvester Francis, founder of the Backstreet Cultural Museum — is available in the book “Fire in the Hole,” an ethnography about the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors.) The spirit came to him shortly after he and Lewis were ousted from the Yellow Pocahontas. Following Carnival that year, Harris wrestled with feelings of anger, wondering what was next for him. Eventually he retreated to a long night of silent prayer and tears. Harris expanded his arms and widened his eyes as he retold the moment that he became the spirit, the next morning: “When I got up I started stretching and flexing and I’m hearing ‘aah-yaah’ — it’s not a word yet, but I’m hearing it — I’m hearing something say ‘Ay-yah-yah’ and I said ‘Wow!’ And I said —” Here, Harris dropped to a whisper: “Fi-Yah-Yah.” “And then I said it the second time with a little more confidence and that third time I clenched my fist and I squeezed it tight with all my might and I’m in the house all alone and I said: ‘Fi-Yah-Yaaaaaaaaah!’” “‘From that moment I became the spirit of Fi Yi Yi,” Harris said. “I know God did speak to me. He fortified me. He gave me my given spiritual, cultural name.” Big Chief Victor Harris poses with a former suit and other pieces that he’s carried into the streets on Mardi Gras past. Credit: Minh Ha / Verite News Harris gathered neighbors and family members and they sewed furiously to prepare for that St. Joseph’s Night – when Mardi Gras Indians roam their local streets to greet other tribes in song and competitive banter. He walked out of his home on Annette Street as the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi in a black suit decorated with beads and grass-colored straw and a small beaded mask covering his entire face. “Back then, I think it was a very public statement,” ethnographer and University of New Orleans professor Rachel Breunlin said. “People had not seen someone wearing a full facial mask like that in Carnival.” Breunlin is the founder of the Neighborhood Story Project and collaborated with the Backstreet Museum, where many of Harris’ retired suits are displayed, and members of the Mandingo Warriors, to produce “Fire in the Hole.” She said it was more typical for traditional Big Chiefs to wear a large crown of feathers with a beaded headband, but Harris wanted to connect to his African ancestry. The mask was a nod to African masquerading traditions as a way to commune with and become the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi. The more traditional tribes in the city also wore beaded patches that featured scenes from the colonization of the Americas. “It’s like witnessing the frontier wars,” she said. “To me, it’s like one of the most public representations of what this country was built on.” Harris chose to feature cowry shells, a form of currency in West Africa before the 20th century. After the 1984 Super Sunday, Harris and Lewis became an unbreakable team – Harris as Big Chief and Lewis as his right hand counsel and the head of his sewing table. Robertson joined the table some years later, after moving from Uptown to the 8th Ward. One Super Sunday, he’d followed Harris and the tribe from his old neighborhood all the way to the 7th Ward. A friend brought him to Harris’ home where the sewing table was assembled. “I just picked it up and went to fooling with the stuff,” Robertson said. “I made a connection when I first started sewing. I used to always say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, but something [is] guiding my hands just showing me what to do.’” Harris said Robertson is eerily quiet when he’s sewing – methodically thinking of how to showcase each cowry shell and beading colorful patterns around them. As the group would sew, Harris’ wife Christine would keep the sewing table fed. “It’s a lot to live with,” Breunlin said. “I remember in the book her saying, ‘I miss my husband during Mardi Gras. Because it’s an all consuming activity.’” Phillips joined the crew in 1991, when he moved back to New Orleans after living in Washington D.C. and studying African drumming. Back then his neighborhood was filled with children, he remembered. The youngsters would stop by his home as he was crafting his drums, stretching animal hides over metal barrels. He began teaching the children. That year on Mardi Gras day, a friend Phillips knew from the Desire projects invited him to the Chief’s house on Annette Street to play music with the Indians and wait for the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi to step out. He grabbed one of his drums and headed over, playing along to the traditional Carnival Indian music. “When he finally came out, I ended up playing with him the whole day,” Phillips said, laughing. From then on, Harris, Coach Lewis, Robertson and Phillips were a team of four. Phillips, who toured with the Sun Ra Arkestra and was also trained in jazz, said he brought the “9th Ward funk” to the group and credits their origins from different parts of the city for being able to create the tribe’s signature sound, heard in songs like “Who Got the Fire” and “Fi Yi Yi.” At one time, Harris’ sewing table included 20 people. Now, it’s just him and Robertson. (Phillips does not participate in the beading process.) “When I started with Vic and them, all I had to do was sew and [other people] would come and put the suit together,” Robertson said. “But as they got older and went to dying out, I had to take on more.” Lewis died of an aneurysm on August 5, 2011. “I miss him now,” Robertson said. ‘Young people don’t want to do this’ Phillips said although the three men are retiring, that classic Fi Yi Yi sound is likely to remain. He taught many of Harris’ younger family members to play the drums when they were children. “All the kids used to come by my house before Katrina and play the drums,” Phillips said. “So they’ve been immersed with the drums from the early 80s.” This year, Robertson has been sewing patches for the Big Chief’s suit at a close friend’s house. He brings his finished pieces to Harris’ home. The suit, like all 10-year-anniversary suits, will be Black and will display African pride through its colors and use of cowry shells. When Harris steps down, the style will change. Harris said Victor, Jr. does not want to wear a face-covering mask. He’s returning to the large feathered crowns of more traditional Mardi Gras Indians. The only time Harris wore a crown was in 2006, the Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina, to honor his Montana, who died in June 2005 during a City Council meeting where he was speaking against abuse of Indians from the NOPD. Harris said Victor Jr. will have to assemble his own sewing table. Harris believes this can happen, although people may need to travel longer distances to get to each other. Victor Jr. lives in Kentwood, and the 7th Ward neighborhood where Harris first jumped out of his door as the Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi has drastically changed since Hurricane Katrina. Master designer Jack Robertson assists Eve Lee, a student in Breunlin’s class during a beading workshop led by him and Big Chief Victor Harris Credit: Bobbi-Jeanne Misick / Verite News “Five, six generations of our people lived in them houses and went to the same schools and all our schools in that neighborhood is gone,” Harris said. Mardi Gras is different in the area these day. The elders who Harris would visit as a masked chief to offer love and healing to are no longer there, and their children have moved away. “Where do the Indians pass? Where do we travel now? Where do we go?” he said. “It’s a neighborhood thing, where we go see our people .They were expecting us in the neighborhood. That gone. So it’s threatening in a manner where that we don’t have no past no more, no neighborhood where all of this was born – the inner city.” Phillips is also concerned. He said on Carnival Day last year, the neighborhood was much quieter than in years past. He worries that one day, Mardi Gras Indians will only be seen in commodified spaces. “You got to go buy a ticket to see it … at the Jazz Fest [or] at the French Quarter Fest,” he said. And Robertson is worried that there are fewer young people interested in learning to sew. “Young people don’t want to do this,” he said. “It’s a lot of sitting down and not going out.” And the people who show an interest are already working long hours to make ends meet in a city that’s grown more expensive than the one they once knew. Despite these fears, the three men who pushed the Mardi Gras Indian culture forward appear grateful for the experience. “It’s been a good journey now,” Robertson said. “I done saw stuff I wouldn’t have saw if I wasn’t dealing with Victor and them.” Related Stories Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. 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