Practice

Second line

Also known as: second-line parade, social aid and pleasure club parade

The continuing African-American street-parade tradition of New Orleans — a Sunday-afternoon procession through a neighborhood led by a brass band and the parading members of a *social aid and pleasure club* (the *first line*), followed and joined by the public (the *second line*) who walk, dance, and chant in time with the band. The tradition is the direct descendant of African-American funeral processions (the *jazz funeral* — solemn dirge to the gravesite, joyful brass return) and the post-Reconstruction-era benevolent societies that organized burial insurance, mutual aid, and parade culture for working-class Black New Orleanians whom mainstream institutions excluded. Today there is a second line every Sunday afternoon, August through June, somewhere in the city — typically lasting four hours and covering 3–4 miles of neighborhood streets. Each social aid and pleasure club hosts an annual parade in their own neighborhood; the parade-rotation calendar is published months in advance and is one of the principal weekly social-cultural events of working-class Black New Orleans.

Cultural

The structure of a second line is rigorously kept. The parade is hosted by a single social aid and pleasure club (SAPC) — a benevolent-society organization typically with 20–80 dues-paying members, anchored in a particular neighborhood, and rotating each year through a calendar that lets every active SAPC host one annual parade. On the day of the parade, the hosting club’s members assemble in elaborate matching outfits (suits sewn by club members, often coordinated to a year’s theme), parade behind a hired brass band on a route through their neighborhood, and the public falls in behind to dance, walk, and follow.

The route stops at sponsoring bars, restaurants, and homes along [[daoism|the way]]; each stop is a brief rest, a chance to greet local residents, and often a moment for a sponsoring proprietor to bring out drinks for the band and the parading members. Total parade duration is 3.5–5 hours; total distance 3–4 miles.

The brass band is the central musical institution. Continuing brass bands include Rebirth Brass Band, Hot 8, Stooges, Soul Rebels, To Be Continued, Free Spirit, and (historically) Olympia, Tuxedo, Onward, Eureka. The music vocabulary — second-line beat, sousaphone bass-line, the Saints and Down by the Riverside and Lil Liza Jane parade standards, and dozens of band-original tunes — is one of the most continuously-evolving American folk traditions.

The tradition descends in continuous lineage from late-19th-century Black benevolent societies (the [[french-quarter|New Orleans]]-based Young Men of Charity, the Tramps, the Square Deal Boys, etc.), which in turn drew on the West African secret-society and burial-society traditions enslaved people had practiced at [[congo-square|Congo Square]] through the antebellum era. The continuity has held through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, integration, white flight, deindustrialization, the 1980s crack epidemic, Hurricane Katrina (the second-line tradition was the first cultural practice to publicly resume after the storm — the first parade rolled in October 2005), and the gentrification and tourism pressures of the 2010s and 2020s.

The [[backstreet-cultural-museum|Backstreet Cultural Museum]] (in Tremé) and the [[french-quarter|New Orleans]] Jazz Museum’s second-line and SAPC exhibits are the principal public-facing documentation of the tradition. WWOZ 90.7 FM publishes a weekly second-line schedule; the route, host club, and band are announced weekly during their Takin’ It to the Streets program.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Cultural

contains

Backstreet Cultural Museum principal continuing public archive of social-aid-and-pleasure-club banners, suits, and parade documentation
New Orleans the continuing Sunday-afternoon African-American street-parade tradition; weekly August through June

shares substrate with

Mardi Gras Indians the two principal continuing African-American performance traditions of New Orleans; share rhythmic vocabulary, parade-procession structure, and neighborhood-anchored social-organization

3 inbound links · 4 outbound

Cultural

See also

What links here, and how