As recently as the early 1980s, only a handful of tribes appeared at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 2022, more than 40 performed on stage and paraded through the Fair Grounds, giving attendees from around the world a taste of one of the city’s most enduring and enigmatic cultural traditions.

The Baby Dolls of New Orleans are renowned not only for their dancing and attire but their commitment to preserving an iconic tradition that has been uplifting and empowering women for more than a century.

These maskers, dressed as skeletons and wielding scary-looking spears and large bones, wake up the Tremé neighborhood on Mardi Gras morning with a warning: Get your act together before it’s “too late.” They evoke the literal meaning of Carnival — farewell to the flesh...

Once shrouded in secrecy, with little interest in sharing their traditions with the outside world, Black Masking Indians, also known as Mardi Gras Indians, have become celebrated icons whose music draws Grammy nominations and whose history and folkways command serious...