Mummers Parade continues New Year's Day tradition

The various clubs that participate work year-round on costumes and routines.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- As they drum, strum and toot in the new year, the 2007 Fralinger String Band will be trying to make history in a tradition that is itself working to keep from becoming a relic.
One of 17 string bands that will, as is the custom, drape themselves in sequins and feathers to perform in Philadelphia's yearly day of extravagance known as the Mummers Parade, Fralinger is competing for its fifth consecutive first prize. If it wins, it will set a record for the longest winning streak for a band in the parade's 106-year history.
It is a history that combines a number of international traditions for heralding in the new year, but it is local in the truest sense of the word. Mummery, sometimes described as Philadelphia's Mardi Gras or unruly Broadway -- if Broadway shows were held outdoors for more than eight hours in sometimes frigid temperatures -- is composed almost entirely of middle-aged, white, blue-collar men with ties to South Philly.
"It's the lovable, unpolished side of Philly," said Cara Schneider of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. "It's truly a bottom-up event, just a bunch of guys who work all year to put on a good show."
In its heyday in the 1940s the parade, held every New Year's Day, drew crowds of 2 million. Its popularity has waned in recent years, and now an average of 100,000 people attend the event throughout the day.
Spectators at the parade today see the Mummers marching, sometimes prancing, up Broad Street, Philadelphia's main north-south thoroughfare. They are disguised elaborately as pirates, aliens and revived members of past civilizations, to name a few, in costumes weighing up to 150 pounds and requiring accessories as exotic as ostrich feathers from specific South African farms.
Centuries in the making
That level of showmanship took centuries to develop. City lore traces the tradition back to ancient Egypt or to a Roman labor festival, but its Philadelphia roots go back to the "New Year's Shooters" of the 1640s, so named because of the Swedish and Finnish immigrants who celebrated the new year by shooting off firearms.
English and Welsh settlers in the 1680s brought their Christmas masquerade plays and 100 years later the Germans introduced the Belsnickle, a stern Santa Claus character that spawned many costumed parodies. The word Mummers probably came from the German "mumme," meaning disguise. A post-Civil War influx of Southern blacks to the South Philadelphia neighborhoods that housed the other groups added the Mummers' signature strut to the mix, as well as "Oh! Dem Golden Slippers," the parade's theme song.
All that cultural blending coalesced in 1901, when the Mummers Parade became an official, city-sponsored event. The spectacle expanded into four separately judged divisions: comics, the satirists; Fancies, with the flashiest outfits; Fancy Brigades, with choreographed theatrical works; and String Bands, the dancing musicians.
Months of preparation
Each group begins preparing as early as Jan. 2 for a 41/2-minute performance before a panel of judges selected by the city Department of Recreation, vying to win cash prizes and, more important, a year's worth of bragging rights.
To those who might find it more than a little bizarre that more than 10,000 grown men dedicate a significant portion of each year to rehearsing for a competition where the top prizes barely cover a tenth of the cost of their flamboyant pageantry, the Mummers have one response.
"It's the greatest hobby there is," said Vince Lanzilotti, 65, a retired saxophonist from Fralinger String Band. "Most people take up an instrument to form a band and make money. I never made any money, but the friends I made and the places I've been, money couldn't buy."
Lanzilotti's story is like that of many in the band. A high school friend persuaded him to join Fralinger at 17, in 1958, and "the fellas and I grew up together. We saw each other have children, then grandchildren," he said.
Recruitment
Since a Philadelphia philanthropist, Dr. John J. Fralinger, founded the band in 1914, Fralinger has survived mostly through musicians recruiting family members and close friends to carry on the tradition. The band now has about 150 members, 85 of them musicians and the rest marshals who carry the props.
Jack Mills, who has played banjo for 15 years for Fralinger, described growing up in the Mummer culture.
"My father and grandfather were in the Polish American String Band, my uncle and I were in Fralinger and my sister married a man in Quaker City," he said. "So family dinners were always interesting, with the controversy over who's gonna win and all the trash talking."
To raise money for the average of 110,000 the band spends on costumes and props each year, Fralinger performs private concerts. Its touring has taken members to Pearl Harbor, won them a spot playing Phillies home games during the 1993 World Series, and in 2007 will take them to Hong Kong and Disney World.
The band's recent success has earned them some extra attention, saxophonist Steve Coper said, but getting there took some time.
"We kept coming up the bridesmaid," he said of the band's 12 second-place finishes. "Finally in 2003 we punched through, and we're on a roll."
Dedication
It also takes hard work.
"You know what you get from patting yourself on the back? A sore shoulder," music director John Wernega told musicians at a recent rehearsal. "The minute you think you've got it down great, it's that second you go down."
Before hearing that speech, the band had already selected and researched its American Indian theme in early February, designed props and looked at suits by June, started twice weekly music practices in May and as many drill rehearsals by October.
The level of commitment required may be a reason it's getting harder to recruit new members, Coper said.
It was partly to fuel interest in string bands that Russell Coleman, 31, of Uptown String Band, started his online archive of audio, video and photos from bands throughout the parade's history.
The site shows how acts grew from banjo-heavy marching bands to the combination of strings, woodwind and theater they are today.
Keeping tradition alive
Coleman also works with high school music teachers to introduce young people to mummery and said more and more of them are unfamiliar with the tradition.
Lanzilotti said he has noticed dwindling crowds throughout his 48 years as a Mummer but takes heart in the dedication of his fellow bandsmen.
"It's a hobby that's something you do longer than you go to school, longer than you work," he said. "You do it till you die or you can't do it anymore."
And speaking of things he'd like to see before he dies, he added, that fifth straight win would be nice.
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