Crescent City Conjure Lecture Series: Class Two.

"Legacy of Bone: Mardi Gras and Afro-Diasporic Spirituality"

Presenter: Big Chief Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, North Side Skull & Bone Gang

“Legacy of Bone” will analyze the traditions of New Orleans’ famous, North Side Skull & Bone Gang, and the parallels to ancestral reverence in Afro-Diasporic practices such as Hoodoo, Rootwork and Conjure. Big Chief Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes will discuss initiation, rites of passage, and social responsibilities of a fraternity famous for spreading messages of morality and mortality throughout the Treme on Mardi Gras morning. Crescent City Conjure’s own, Sen Elias, will then illuminate the way those practices echo and extend ancestral veneration/“work” found within the framework of African-American folk spirituality. 

Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, born in Gavel Hill, Arkansas, is a veteran educator, athlete (Kansas City Chiefs), and musician. After moving to New Orleans, he founded Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots and became an archivist for the New Orleans Jazz Historical Park. Remaining at the intersection of the community and its rhythms, Mr. Barnes has also been called to serve as the Second Chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, one of the oldest existing carnival groups in New Orleans, and is a member of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club.