Mardi Gras Indian’s 'Journey' suit is a dazzling New Orleans masterpiece

If you find yourself on Royal Street in the Lower 9th Ward on Tuesday evening at sometime around 6 p.m., listen for chanting and cheering, and keep your eyes peeled for a flurry of royal purple feathers swaying between a pair of 10-foot totem poles with wings up top.

That’s how you’ll know that Big Chief Keith “Keitoe” Jones of the 9th Ward Seminoles is stepping out. March 19 is St. Joseph’s Day, when New Orleans' unique Black Masking Indian tribes ramble through the streets, aiming to encounter other tribes in a ritual that dates back who knows how long.

The object is for the maskers to size one another up and try to prove whose got, as the tribes describe it, the prettiest suit. Jones’ suit is real, real pretty. By anybody’s standards.

Mardi Gras Indians make a new suit each year, which they wear on just a few special occasions. Jones’ 2024 suit, which he debuted on Mardi Gras Day, has an unusual design. Instead of a vest or chest piece, Jones created a poncho that hangs down from his shoulders, circling his torso. He said he’s never seen anything similar.

Every square inch is exquisitely decorated with a continuous coating of the tiniest seed and bugle beads you ever saw, plus a beaded fringe that dangles like a chandelier. Other parts of the suit are bordered with glinting mirrors. The workmanship is dazzling.

Jones is 64 years old. His dad, Little Sonny Jones, was a blues singer who used to be Fats Domino’s opening act. When Jones was, like 15 or 16, his brother Johnny brought home some parts of an Indian suit and “from there, I grew a love for it,” he said.

His first suit in the 1970s was pink, had a flamingo theme, and was designed in the three-dimensional style of the 7th Ward. But he later learned to make the flat, elaborate bead mosaic patches associated with uptown maskers.

When Jones wasn’t spending hours and hours sewing, he was an Italian-style cook, first at Jimmy Moran’s Riverside restaurant in the French Quarter, then at Impastato’s in Metairie. Kitchen work paid for the beads and feathers on Jones’ suits, but it was hard on his feet and knees. He said that knee replacements and foot surgeries, plus the COVID pandemic, sidelined him for nine years.

His 2024 suit is his spectacular comeback. Sure, Mardi Indians compete with one another to produce the most amazing suits. But Jones said the real competition is with yourself. The next suit has always “gotta beat” the last one, he said.

To invest the thousands of dollars and uncountable hours necessary to produce a suit is more than a craft or a hobby. It’s a devotion and an identity. Jones said that when you strap on a suit, especially with a mask that covers your face, “you become a spirit.”

In his case, it’s a spirit of unity.

It’s impossible to cover the whole, complex Mardi Gras Indian heritage in a few words. It has to do with Black New Orleanians who began creating Carnival suits long ago, based in part on the appearance of Native American ceremonial wear. The look may have to do with American Indian feathered headdresses and face paint, but the bead work, drumming and stylized parading can be traced back to African aesthetics that came here with enslaved people.

Some people call the participants in the custom Mardi Gras Indians, others prefer Black Masking Indians or other terms.

The fusion of Native American and African characteristics is what Big Chief Kietoe’s 2024 suit is all about. In the middle of the chief’s chest is a portrait that is exactly half Mardi Gras Indian and half Native American chief.

Everything else follows from there. On his right shoulder are Africans in traditional dress, backed by the South African flag, on the left is the Native American equivalent backed by the red, white and blue.

That duality of African heritage and Native American inspiration continues everywhere, down to the pant legs and even on the chief’s gloves. Jones said that that the suit, titled “The Journey,” illustrates how Africans came to the land of American natives and blended harmoniously. He points out that the split face on his suit is smoking a peace pipe.

He also points out that the connection between Africans and Native Americans can be more than symbolic. “My grandma,” he said, “is Cherokee.”

Jones said he’s been planning his comeback since 2019. In a Youtube video the big chief tears up as he hits the streets on Mardi Gras, returning to masking after way too long. Despite the tremendous weight of the suit, his knees were up to the task of marching up St. Claude Avenue and having stylized confrontations with other tribes on North Claiborne Avenue.

Jones is quick to point out that he could have never produced such an artistic, labor-intensive suit as “The Journey” on his own.

Just like during the Academy Awards, he thanks his stepson Roland Butler, his son and daughter Keith and Precious Alexander, granddaughter Jae’on Alexander, brother Darryl, sister Sally, grandniece Little Queen Zia Jones, and artists Noonie Smokey and Jesse Wilson for all of their help and encouragement. And he thanks God for the opportunity.

To narrow down the St. Joseph’s Day search for Jones and his tribe, stake out Royal Street between Reynes and Forstall streets.     

The Super Sunday Mardi Gras Indian march in Central City – the Superbowl of Black Indian masking – was postponed from March 17 to March 24, because of impending rain. If you miss him on St. Joseph’s night, Big Chief Keitoe also plans to appear then.