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The
Drowned History of New Orleans
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By Aisha R.
Masterton**
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Sept.
7, 2005
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All pray
that the sax will ring again through the streets of New Orleans.
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What
has emerged in the past week is that New Orleans is a world unto itself,
detached from the rest of the United States in both culture and religion.
Officially
founded in 1718 by the Frenchman Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, who named it after
Philippe II, Duc d’Orleans, the city was actually established close to the
site of a Native American village called Tchoutchuoma, where in 1519 a port was
first established by the Spanish. Over the next two hundred years, more European
settlers came and wars were fought with the Native Americans, whose clans were
eventually wiped out or driven into exile. New Orleans took on a distinctly
Mediterranean flavor, with Catholic religious festivals, Spanish architecture,
and French cuisine. Europeans and the few Native Americans left intermarried,
and then, of course, there were Africans who were brought in by the thousands to
be put to work as slaves.
According
to Dr. Clyde-Ahmad Winters, former professor of African and Islamic studies at
Iowa State University, “thousands of Muslims from the Senegambia and Sudan
were kidnapped or captured in local wars and sold into slavery. In America,
these same Muslims converted other Africans and Amerindians to Islam.” He
tells of just one such man, Ibrahima Abdur Rahman, a Fula prince, who became
well known in New Orleans, petitioned the president for his freedom, and
returned to Africa after 46 years of slavery. Dr. Winters notes that many of the
African Muslim slaves wrote the entire Qur’an down from memory and “remnants
of these writings still exist today in museums in parts of the once
slave-holding south.”
Cornelia
Walker Bailey, whose family name is a corruption of Bilali, has discovered that
her great-great-great-great-grandfather kept a Qur’an and prayer mat, and
prayed in the direction of Makkah. All the churches on Sapelo Island are built
facing east, and she learned to say her prayers facing east.
New
Orleans is known as the birthplace of jazz and blues. Sylviane Diouf has done
research into the Islamic roots of blues and discovered that similar vocal
techniques are used in blues singing and the singing of Islamic West and North
Africa. The attitudes of certain slave owners towards different African musical
instruments also affected the development of blues. According to Jonathan
Curiel, drumming, most often done by non-Muslim Africans, was banned because of
its potential to convey messages across long distances; whereas stringed
instruments—probably the kora and “one-string zithers”—were permitted
because of their similarity to European stringed instruments. Out of that,
banjos and the use of guitars were developed. Many of today’s African
Americans in New Orleans have returned to their Islamic roots, converting to
Islam and forming small Muslim communities.
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Canal
Street, New Orleans, in the 1920’s
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The
local Creole language, blending both French and Spanish, is said, nevertheless,
to be more or less based upon African grammatical structures. These must be the
structures of the languages most spoken on the West African coast, such as Wolof
and Fulfulde. The word Creole is now used to cover Louisana culture as
well as language. Nowadays, even whites speak exclusively Louisana
Creole.
By
the end of the 19th century, Islamic influences in New Orleans and other
Louisana cities had begun to die out with slaves having been pressured into
converting to Christianity. One of the city’s most famous festivals is the
Mardi Gras, which is the last day before Lent, a period of fasting for forty
days. The Catholic Church establishes the day of Mardi Gras, based upon the
Gregorian calendar. The Mardi Gras is carnival time, although in the past it was
banned because of being too riotous.
New
Orleans has been a magnet for immigrants all over the world, including Irish,
Germans, Vietnamese, Indian, and Mexican. Dr. Timothy C. Cahill, who has made a
study of New Orleans’s pluralism, lists two Afro-Caribbean centers of worship
(one entitled Voodoo Spiritual Temple), one Baha‘i center, seven Buddhist
temples, three Islamic centers, and one Sikh Gurdwara. Indeed, voodoo (voudon),
believed to have spread from Haiti, has played a significant part in the black
culture of New Orleans. When slaves were forced to convert to Catholicism, they
simply integrated Catholic practices and saints into the practice of voodoo. One
famous female practitioner of voodoo even brought in Virgin Mary.
In
the New Orleans of today, before the flood, it was possible to be taken on tours
around the city to see where this lady had been born and where dramatic events
had happened as a result of voodoo.
What
has been wiped away by the flood is one of the unique cities of American
history, an independent outpost resistant to the conservative, Protestant
strains of the north; a gateway to Africa, South America, and even Southeast
Asia.
Sources:
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Cahill,
Dr. Timothy C., “The Pluralism Project”, http://www.pluralism.org/affiliates/cahill/index.php,
visited 6-09-05.
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Curiel,
Jonathan, “Muslim Roots of the Blues”, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/15/INGMC85SSK1.DTL,
San Francisco Chronicle, visited 6-09-05.
- “Early Islamic Influence in Louisiana”, http://www.islamfortoday.com/louisiana.htm,
visited 6-09-05.
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“New
Orleans and Mardi Gras History Timeline”, http://www.mardigrasdigest.com/html/mardi_gras_history__timeline.htm,
visited 6-09-05.
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“New
Orleans, Louisana”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans,_Louisiana,
visited 6-09-05.
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“Pre-Civil
War New Orleans”, www.studyworld.com/pre.htm,
visited 6-08-05.
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Reckdahl,
Kate, “Mississippi Muslim”, http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2003-07-08/cover_story.html,
site visited 6-09-05.
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Taylor, Troy, “Haunted New
Orleans”, http://www.prairieghosts.com/laveau.html,
visited 6-09-05.
**Aisha
R. Masterton holds a BA in Japanese
language and literature and an MA in comparative East Asian and African
literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She
is currently working on a PhD on Islamic mystical and philosophical influences
in West African literature. You can contact her at ahabrasul@yahoo.co.uk.
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