Inside the Mummers

SOMETIMES IT TAKES an outsider to make you appreciate what you have.

To many Philadelphians, the Mummers are just a group of people who get dressed up in outrageous costumes and march in a parade every New Year's Day.

Sure, they're part of Philly, but really for just one day, right? Other than the occasional string band that you might see performing at some event, most of the year the Mummers are pretty much out of sight, out of mind.

Now, Temple University Press has published two books on the Mummers by people who aren't from Philadelphia, and they paint a considerably fuller picture. Although the books could not be more different - one is a sociological study, the other a collection of color photographs - they have the same message:

Throughout the year, not just on New Year's, the Mummers are an important presence in the working-class city neighborhoods from which they arise. They not only create a sense of community, they also help keep those neighborhoods vibrant.

In other words, the Mummers play such a critical role in the life of the city that they should be nurtured, even treasured, as a kind of natural resource.

"It's a taken-for-granted part of Philadelphia," said Patricia Anne Masters, a sociology professor at George Mason University in Northern Virginia, who has written "The Philadelphia Mummers: Building Community Through Play" ($22.95).

"I don't think the people that run the city realize how central it is to the communities where the clubhouses are and the parade is put together."

Photographer E.A. "Ed" Kennedy III, who is originally from New Orleans, is amazed at how little appreciation Philadelphia seems to have for the Mummers.

"We're tolerating them, we're putting up with them," he said. "There is really an antipathy toward white, working-class culture in the United States."

Kennedy, who is African-American, added, "If these guys had been black, there would have been four or five books like this."

His own book, "Life, Liberty and the Mummers" ($35) has many spectacular images of Mummery as most Philadelphians know it - marchers in backpieces and full feather-and-sequin regalia, strutting up Broad Street and along Market to cheering crowds.

But much of the book focuses on the hidden life of the Mummers. Kennedy takes us inside the clubhouses, where members relax with a football game on TV, practice their songs, or joke with each other over mugs of beer. He takes us under I-95 in South Philly, where young club members, bundled up against the cold in jackets and sweatshirts, run through their dance routines.

And then there are the striking nighttime photos of the Mummers serenading their families and neighbors after the parade on "Two Street" in South Philly, where clubhouses and rowhouses sit side by side.

This is where the Mummers and spectators alike seem most joyous in Kennedy's photos, where the sense of community that both authors portray seems most apparent.

When he took his first Mummers photos in 2003, Kennedy wasn't intending to put together a book. A former newspaper photographer, he had recently moved to the city with his wife, who is from Philadelphia. He was doing commercial photography and decided to attend the parade that year to take some "stock" photos.

Kennedy had never seen the Mummers before, and as he started snapping photos, a group of lawyers and their wives in the crowd, along with a Philly cop, filled him in on the differences between string bands and fancy brigades. He realized the parade wasn't the commercial venture he had expected.

"I'm noticing, this is really homemade," he recalled. "This is really folk art. This isn't like some corporation built these floats. These are real people."

He saw a brass band with black members, playing the theme from "The Flintstones," and he was reminded of the African-American brass bands that perform in the neighborhoods of New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

After the parade, Kennedy watched the serenades on Two Street. He was hooked.

A few days later, he visited a couple of bars in South Philly, asking patrons whether they recognized the people in his photos, so he could talk to them further.

"They said, 'That's my cousin. That's my brother.' You kind of realize how interwoven this is with family and community."

Kennedy spent several years with the Mummers and got inside their world, and their heads. The Mummers opened themselves up to him willingly, he said.

"People almost desperately wanted me to tell their story," he said. "When people invest that much in a photojournalist, you really have a responsibility to them."

The book has been a big hit with the Mummers, said Kennedy. At a recent funeral for one Mummer, Kennedy was asked for an autographed book that could be put in the coffin.

He later thanked the man's friends for letting him come to the funeral. They replied, "Ed, you're part of our family now."

The Mummers fell into Masters' lap as well. As she puts it, "The Mummers found me."

She was searching for a topic for her doctoral thesis in sociology, and during a visit to Philly decided to see the Mummers on New Year's Day in 1995.

"It was so wonderful and strange and exotic," she recalled. "I wondered why they do it."

She decided to learn more about the Mummers and realized that this century-old tradition was part of the lifeblood of many working-class neighborhoods. This, she decided would be the subject of her thesis.

As she did more research, Masters began focusing on the importance of "play" in the world of Mummers. Part of that is the sheer fun they have, but there's also the element of escape.

"They can experiment to show a different part of themselves," she said. "You can be an ironworker one moment, and the next moment be a performer under a fancy suit."

It's through the shared experience of play, said Masters, that the Mummers are bound together and to the community.

For many club members, she said, being a Mummer "is as important to them as their work lives are."

Like Kennedy, Masters got close to the Mummers. Told she couldn't understand the parade unless she became part of it, she helped out the Golden Crown Fancy Brigade with its costume preparations - "I burned my thumb a lot with glue guns" - and marched with the club two different years.

Masters' book, adapted from her thesis, chronicles the history of the Mummers and describes, from a sociological perspective, its many rituals and traditions.

Masters believes Mummer neighborhoods have a richer life because of them - something that's not fully appreciated by the politicians and the city as a whole.

"I really think the Mummers aren't as valued as they should be in their own home."

Though when she told one Mummer, "You have a wonderful culture here," he had a quick response:

"We don't do ballet." *