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American Routes
American Routes is a weekly two-hour public radio program produced in New Orleans, presenting a broad range of American music — blues and jazz, gospel and soul, old-time country and rockabilly, Cajun and zydeco, Tejano and Latin, roots rock and pop, avant-garde and classical. Now in our 15th year on the air, American Routes explores the shared musical and cultural threads in these American styles and genres of music — and how they are distinguished.
For our annual pre-Lenten bacchanal, we bring you classic Mardi Gras songs from the Crescent City and beyond. We travel to Nice, France – grand city on the Cote d’Azure – for a float parade that parodies American fast food assembly lines and French political scandals as stinky as local cheese; From there, on to the vintners village of Limoux, where free glasses of blanchette are never empty. We end our journey in Coney Island NY, where we hear of carnivalesque revelry at America’s great amusement park by the sea and walk with the fishes in the Mermaid Parade. Finally, New Orleans’ own Monk Boudreaux walks us through the sites and sounds of Mardi Gras Day. Big Chief of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indian tribe, Boudreaux has sewed suits, performed music with the Wild Magnolias and masked on Mardi Gras for over 50 years.
