Aqua String Band (Parade)

About

If you're standing along Philadelphia's Broad Street on New Year's Day, alternately shivering and cheering the Mummers' Parade as it passes by for hours, Aqua String Band is sure to catch your attention. Known for originality and creativity, Aqua epitomizes the combination of grandeur and whimsy for which mummers are known. They wear out-sized costumes of bright blocks of color outlined in sequins, often with giant feather plumes spouting from their shoulders. First come the dancers, repeating their elaborate, high-stepping moves-the famed Mummers' Strut-block after block. Then come the musicians, providing the jubilant, rhythmic tunes from a massed battalion of accordions, saxophones, fiddles, banjos, and more.

Only an experience this bizarre and joyful would justify standing outdoors for hours in the dead of winter-or the year-long rehearsals and costume preparations required of band members. "The Aqua String Band is like a family," says Captain Ken Maminski. "We work all year toward New Year's Day, but like I always say, 'New Year's is one day a year, but it's the other 364 days that make us a string band." For Maminski, the sense of family is quite literal: he joined as a 10 year old in 1980 after enviously watching his father in the Mummers' Parade. Now Ken's two young sons have joined the Aqua String Band.

Considered by many to be the oldest folk festival in the United States, the Mummers' Parade is based on the tradition in many European countries of dressing in outlandish costumes and making excessive noise on New Year's Day to scare away local demons for the rest of the year. The tradition took hold in South Philadelphia's immigrant neighborhoods in the late 19thcentury, and the city government finally recognized it as an official event in 1901. Each year local clubs design elaborate new costumes based on a theme and compete against each other. The prize-winning Aqua String Band has been marching since 1920.