Mardi Gras

In the annals of the impossible-to-imagine, you can file New Orleans without Mardi Gras right next to summertime without sunshine. The centuries-old Mardi Gras tradition is a street parade, jam session, costume party, and spiritual celebration rolled into one — but without a flag-waving, foot-stomping soundtrack, it would just be a stroll down the street. Kick off your Mardi Gras party on the right foot, with New Orleans piano’s patron saint, Professor Longhair, whose whooping, whistling, ivory-hammering “Go to the Mardi Gras” gives you all the instructions you need. The Dixie Cups’ girl-group reinvention of Mardi Gras standard “Iko Iko” is a proud piece of parade history, even if most of the record buyers who made it a 1965 smash had no idea what a “flagboy” was. And it’s impossible to get closer to the core of what the festivities are all about than the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” Fat Tuesday’s high-flying Dixieland anthem.

Choose your own Mardi Gras mood — be it gentle or jammin’ — in Next Steps.

Mardi Gras may be steeped in tradition, but it’s about doing your own thing, too, so you can celebrate any way the spirit moves you. You can don your mask and feathers to the steady-rolling R&B stomp of Huey “Piano” Smith and come down with a case of “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu.” You can swing with the second-line beat as the Rebirth Brass Band blows, bumps, and wails its way down Bourbon Street to “Feel Like Funkin’ It Up.” And Paul Simon proves you don’t even have to be Big Easy-born to get into the carnival state of mind, with “Take Me to the Mardi Gras.”

Your chance to dance to the Mardi Gras boogie arrives in Deep Cuts.

Mardi Gras is a movable feast, not just for the taste buds, but also for the eyes, ears, and feet. The floats, the brass bands, the Mardi Gras Indians — everything’s in motion, and there are a million ways to keep the party moving. Break into a washboard-banging, squeezebox-pumping “Mardi Gras Boogie” with Zydeco king Clifton Chenier. “Shake and Break It” sounds like good advice for working up a sweat with the hot jazz trumpet of Dixieland originator King Oliver. And if you really want to get an old-school groove on, get in step with the triangle-rattling rhythm and fiddle-sawing sway of the Balfa Freres’ “Danse de Mardi Gras.”

Mardi Gras is the mother of all blow-outs, a non-stop cavalcade of dancing, drinking, feasting, and fun, as a constant parade of partiers strut, stomp, and sashay through the streets of New Orleans. But whether you’re making the wintertime trek to the Crescent City or simply celebrating Fat Tuesday with a Red Snapper cocktail and a plate of jambalaya from the comfort of your living room sofa, we’ve got the tunes to put you in the Mardi Gras mood. Slip into the supple funk of Allen Toussaint’s “Night People,” shake and shimmy to Fats Domino’s rock ’n’ roll stroll “I’m Walkin’,” or get a kick in the brass from “Grazing in the Grass” by the Rebirth Brass Band. Whichever way you want to roll, we’ve got you covered with the music to make this a Mardi Gras you’ll still be raving about when the next one rolls around.