THIS STORY IS PART OF THE LENS CARNIVAL EDITION.

On most Fat Tuesdays in recent history, thousands of New Orleanians, mostly Black people, packed the edge of Orleans Avenue. The smell of freshly grilled hot sausage was in the air. Music came from every angle.

Then, like clockwork – reliable, though not always on time – the Krewe of Zulu parade would roll through the middle of the historic Treme celebration, throwing coconuts, plush spears, and tons of trademark Zulu beads.

But this year, things changed. On Monday, with forecasters looking ahead to Mardi Gras Day and predicting 40 mph winds by about 12 noon, the city announced that the Krewes of Zulu and Rex would roll hours early on Tuesday. To make the parades move quickly, there would be no bands or walking groups, city officials said. 

While both parades cut their routes short, Zulu’s truncated route kept the parade entirely Uptown — far from its homebase near Orleans Avenue.

Business owners, who had prepared for their biggest day of the year, were instead saddled with loads of leftover inventory. Most school bands also did not march, though Zulu was able to find a way to include both the St. Augustine Marching 100 — alma mater of Zulu King Rodney Mason Jr. — and the visiting Talladega College band, which had already traveled to the city.

Often, in the wake of parade cancellations, local bands that don’t play aren’t compensated. It seems to be a long-held parading practice; bands experienced financial losses a few weeks ago, when Sunday parades were rescheduled to Tuesday.

For Mardi Gras Day bands, the Rex organization took a singular stand, opting to pay the bands that were booked for its parade. But at this point, it seems that none of the other krewes with altered parades have followed suit.

With the exception of St. Augustine, the local high school bands booked for Zulu did not march – and will not be paid, a club spokesman said.

Making concessions just to get onto the street

To ensure that their historic parades weren’t shut down altogether, krewe leaders discussed a range of possibilities with city leaders. But getting floats on streets required concessions.

Zulu had to “compromise in order to parade.” said Darren Mire, the krewe’s spokesman, noting that the route did not even pass the famous Zulu Club at 732 N. Broad St., steps away from Orleans Avenue. “It’s a tradition,” he said. “It’s our home.”

The king’s float also couldn’t make its traditional stop at 2301 Orleans Ave., where the Chase family gathers outside their restaurant each year. “We missed the toast at Dooky Chase,” Mire said. 

Disappointment for the omitted stops went beyond Zulu riders and royalty. Crowds who packed the Basin and Orleans corridor mourned not being able to mark the end of Carnival with Zulu.

All along Orleans Avenue, people spent the day feeling like something was missing, said Patrick Walker Jr., best known as DJ PJ, who hosted his third annual block party at the historic Carver Theater, at 2101 Orleans Ave. 

Until the bad-weather forecasts began, Walker’s primary focus for the year was adding an adjacent parking lot to ensure that there was enough space. His block party – “like a huge family reunion,” he said – has quickly become a popular new Tuesday tradition. Last year, Zulu tractors had difficulty moving the parade floats forward through that part of Orleans Avenue, he said. So his primary concern was to add extra space, to remedy that.

Then came Monday night’s announcement, followed by a flood of calls from past attendees. Walker had contemplated cancelling the party, but by early Tuesday morning, calls from his supporters convinced him that he shouldn’t shut down the event, which is free and open to the public. He listened. “I did this for my people,” he said.

The winds were formidable, as the city had warned about in repeated NOLAREADY texts. Though Walker placed his DJ equipment under a tent, its legs weighted down by big pieces of concrete, wind gusts kept pulling it up, he said.

Oddly, Walker’s crowd grew faster than ever before, he said, because of people who skipped the shortened Zulu parade, coming early to the Carver. That gave a surge of business to what he calls the “ecosystem of vendors” – food and drink trucks – that park near his block party. His sizeable crowd sharply contrasted with businesses along the Zulu route, which reported scant crowds and smaller revenues.

Stocked up, for crowds that didn’t arrive

Two blocks away from the Carver, at 1931 Orleans Ave., Sharon Martin opened Goldy’s Lounge nine months ago. Excited for the bar’s very first Fat Tuesday, she prepared by stocking up — really stocking up. By Monday evening, her cooler and storage spaces were jam-packed full of liquor and cold drinks, to the point where she had to rent one of her landlord’s apartments upstairs to hold the overflow.

Now, much of her supplies sit, unopened. “I won’t have to order anything for quite awhile,” said Martin, who — relying on numbers the bar had seen for Zulu under previous owners — had anticipated making at least $10,000 for the day.

Goldy’s was somewhat saved by people stopping on their way to and from the nearby Carnival hub, North Claiborne and Orleans Avenues. But when the day was done, the lounge made less than half of what they’d predicted.

As an avid parade goer, Martin rarely misses a parade during Carnival. Tops on her list is Zulu, which she had never before missed. For her and those around her, she said, Zulu is the highlight of Fat Tuesday. To her, it feels like some white krewes see Black people in the crowd and don’t throw as readily, or sometimes, she said, throw too aggressively. It’s different with Zulu, whose riders lavish attention on Black parade-goers. 

To be able to watch Zulu from her own bar felt like a life’s dream fulfilled.

Then came the route change, mere hours before the parade rolled. “There was nothing you could do about it, you couldn’t change the situation,” said Martin, who fails to understand why the parade turned down Poydras Street instead of continuing to Orleans, since the streets are parallel to one another. 

In the end, Zulu — which was formed as a parody of elite white Uptown Carnival clubs — did not even touch downtown. “The community of Orleans where the Zulu club is, we are hurt,” Martin said. “We feel like we were slapped in the face. To not see the only original Black Mardi Gras krewe, it was hurtful.” 

A similar sting was felt at Backatown Coffee Parlour, at 301 Basin St., which usually makes between $4,000 and $5,000 on Mardi Gras Day, its highest-grossing day of the year, owner Jessica Knox told The Lens. A big part that success comes during the Zulu parade, which rolls by on Basin Street before it curves onto Orleans Avenue. Backatown usually makes an additional $1,500 in viewing tickets for customers who want to eat her food and watch Zulu from the coffee shop. “It is my best day,” Knox said. “Essence used to compare, but since all tourists are now directed to stay around the Convention Center, it is no longer as profitable.”

Tuesday’s re-routing was particularly painful because only one parade passes through Treme, Knox said. “When those in power are making decisions, they have to do more than look at the quickest route,” Knox said. “They should look at the quickest and most equitable.”

No pay for local bands

To balance band-department budgets, band directors rely on the money earned from Carnival parades, which ranges between $1,000 and $5,000, with the top pay reserved for top-tier schools. On parade days, directors pay for buses and meals for students. They use the remaining money to repair and replace instruments and to dry-clean uniforms at the end of the school year and to hold awards ceremonies, celebrate students.

But when parades are canceled, or rescheduled without bands, bands typically do not get paid. That can leave them without enough money to get instruments and uniforms ready for the next year.

This year, the Rex organization decided to compensate the 16 bands that had been scheduled to march within its Mardi Gras Day procession, according to Ben Dupuy, the Rex krewe communications lead, in a message emailed to The Lens.

“Despite the changes made for safety purposes, Rex is paying the bands that were scheduled to march in our parade,” Dupuy wrote. “Rex always loves including marching bands because it improves the parade experience for all involved, and we look forward to their safe return in 2026.”

That shift, in this musical town — where bands are often the highlight of Carnival parades — raised questions about the history of bands getting paid in the wake of cancelled parades.

Whether bands get paid after a cancellation varies between krewes, which all have their own contracts, said Mardi Gras historian Arthur Hardy, who also was a high school band director during the 1970s and 1980s, when school board contracts specified that krewes would pay bands 50% if parades were canceled. “It’s a tricky, tricky business,” Hardy said. “You don’t want to see schools hurt.”

After making some calls, Hardy confirmed that, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish School Board used a standardized marching-band contract with parade krewes. “It stated that if the band had not left the band room, half of the contracted amount was due. If the band arrived to the formation area, the full amount was due,” he said. Currently, though there is no standard, he said, some charter schools and krewes may still use parts of OPSB’s standard contract.

For marching bands, there are many layers to parade cancellations, especially for seniors who miss crucial parades in their last year of marching.

At Warren Easton High School, one of the 16 bands hired by Rex, this year’s changes left the band’s seniors heartbroken, said band director Johnny Fisher. The seniors were let down because they weren’t able to properly relish the last parade of their high school careers — or receive their letter jackets on Fat Tuesday, an Easton Carnival tradition.

On Friday, Fisher hadn’t yet heard that Easton would be compensated, because Rex notified its bands this weekend. The news came as a relief, Fisher said. “It helps out a lot,” he said, noting that he expects to use some of it for instrument repair and the rest to help some students afford Warren Easton’s trip to this year’s Chicago Thanksgiving parade.

Adverse weather hit this year’s Carnival twice

Band pay became a more urgent issue this year because of repeated bad weather during the last two weeks of Carnival.

Only once has Rex faced a complete rainout, in 1933, according to Hardy, the historian. In 1995, thunderstorms ruined much of the day. At the advice of Rex royal meteorologist Nash Roberts, the parade rolled that year without bands, two hours late — between storm systems, in what’s now referred to as the “Nash Dash.” That morning, Zulu and its bands were caught in fierce downpours, according to reports from the Times-Picayune, which described rain “streaming off King Zulu” and “sodden banners” ahead of the John F. Kennedy High School marching band.

This year, inclement conditions forced parades to make changes twice, on Mardi Gras Day and on Feb. 23, the first Sunday of parades, when the forecast showed, accurately, that it would rain all day. The Sunday day and evening parades were rescheduled to Tuesday – two days later – but they rolled in one evening, without bands or walking krewes, so that all the parades could be condensed into one weekday evening.

It seems as though the local bands scheduled for Sunday’s parade were not paid, from initial reporting done by The Lens. One source, a krewe leader who preferred not to be named, said that many current parade contracts include a clause allowing local bands to go unpaid if the city orders the parade not to roll, or to roll without marching groups. College bands, which often must travel to make the parades, typically are paid, he said.

To some band directors – especially those who also perform as professional musicians – the issue is reminiscent of a 2004 dispute between the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and New Orleans-area musicians who initially went unpaid even as Jazz Fest paid national acts for rained-out performances. Jazz Fest ended paying the local musicians.

After Mardi Gras, Hardy spoke with two longtime parade marshals, who preferred to share their information through him, he said.  

“As a rule of thumb, out-of-town bands get paid everything. Local bands that show up at the parade side get everything or at least half,” Hardy said. But if a band doesn’t leave the school band room, they get nothing – unless the krewe wants to pay them, he said. “Frankly, the big-budget krewes can afford to be generous. Ones on the borderline can’t.”

Zulu is following the “never left the bandroom” protocol for New Orleans high school bands that were scheduled to play in its parade, said Mire, the Zulu spokesman, who confirmed that, at this point, only bands that played on Tuesday would be paid. “Most of the local bands understood,” he said.

‘Rex is structured differently than Zulu’

“Rex is structured differently than Zulu,” Mire said. But certainly, he said, this was new territory for Zulu. “We’ve really never had this situation.” The topic may be discussed at the next Zulu board meeting, he said.

Like some of the Rex bands, some Zulu bands were not yet sure of their pay status on Friday, said Keith Thomas, director of John F. Kennedy High School’s marching band, whose band was booked to march in Zulu this year.

If Zulu money comes through, it would be used for Kennedy’s annual band banquet, which bestows awards on individual students and recognizes band members for hard work during marching season, he said. But, to date, they’ve heard nothing certain about Zulu parade pay, said Thomas, who is also a Zulu member. He will likely find out about compensation when krewe members meet next week, he said.

Rex officials have also been making decisions in recent days. Soon, Warren Easton and the other Rex bands will receive the plaques and medals that the krewe routinely confers to bands after a parade. Rex has also invited all 2025 bands to march with Rex in 2026. “Our plan,” Dupuy said, “has been to treat them as if they had been able to be with us and march with us on Mardi Gras.”