Hastings Fat Tuesday: 11 years of Mardi Gras and Music

Hastinga Fat Tuesday, the largest Mardi Gras celebration in the UK, is now in its eleventh year, having brought life, colour and local music to venues across the town since 2009.
George Street, Hastings. Start of Fat Tuesday procession going to Robertson Street.
19.02.12.
Picture by: TONY COOMBES PHOTOGRAPHY ENGSUS00120120220092128George Street, Hastings. Start of Fat Tuesday procession going to Robertson Street.
19.02.12.
Picture by: TONY COOMBES PHOTOGRAPHY ENGSUS00120120220092128
George Street, Hastings. Start of Fat Tuesday procession going to Robertson Street. 19.02.12. Picture by: TONY COOMBES PHOTOGRAPHY ENGSUS00120120220092128

This year’s festival will kick off with a bang when Indie singer-songwriter Baxter Dury, famous for hits like Slumlord and Miami, brings his psychedelic stylings to the White Rock Theatre on Friday 21, but the event won’t end there. Dury’s performance will be followed by more gigs and the Grand Mardi Gras on Sunday, before the parade takes a more family-friendly turn with the Umbrella Parade on Sunday. Then, on the Tuesday itself, everything culminates with The Fat Tuesday Tour and The After-Party, a series of events the website describes as “A raucous night of madness, music, merry-making and more music”.

According to the Fat Tuesday website, the celebration began when the event’s co-founder, Bob Tipler started looking for a way to promote his New-Orleans-inspired band, The Cajun Dogs.

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“I wanted a platform to try and promote the band in a bigger way.” The Co-founder said on a promotional video

“(The Mardi Gras) gave us an opportunity to find out who the biggest band in town was, put The Cajun Dogs on as a supporting act and just have a party on a Shrove Tuesday night.”

From there, and with the input of co-founder Adam Daly, who brought his decades of events experience to the table, the festival went from strength to strength, acting as both a family friendly community event, and a platform for local, up-and coming bands like this year’s support act: Kid Kapachi.

Fat Tuesday is the English translation of Mardi Gras. It traditionally refers to the night before Lent, and the last opportunity to indulge in rich, fatty foods before a period of stringent fasting.

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Though Fat Tuesday is the premier Mardi Gras night in the UK, the tradition actually has roots all over the world. It is most famously celebrated in New Orleans, Lousiana, but other celebrations take place in France, Italy, and the Czech Republic, with traditions, timings, names and celebrations changing from city to city and place to place.

Despite its international pedigree, the Mardi Gras appears to be a winning formula in Hastings.

Speaking in the same promotional video as co-founder Bob, Dany Louise who works in fund-raising and evaluation for Fat Tuesday said:“Fat Tuesday really makes people proud of living in Hastings. They really feel that it brings out all the qualities of Hastings in terms of the talent- the local talent, the musical talent- but also the friendliness, the exuberance, the community spirit, just the pride in the town. There is a really strong sense of place here.”

To find out more about this year’s event, which offers a variety of free events, to buy tickets for the paid workshops and to learn about the festival’s variety of independent acts, visit hastingsfattuesday.co.uk

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