Word: momus
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...half a century, New Orleans' fantastic Mardi Gras balls were strictly for the upper crust. Nobody without money, blue blood, or both gained membership in the secret men's clubs or "krewes"* which staged them. Before 1900 there were only five clubs: Comus, Momus, Twelfth Night, Rex and Proteus. They culled guest lists with pernickety care, asked only the fairest of debutantes to serve as carnival queens. But times changed. The socially ambitious began forming their own krewes...
Last week in Baltimore Brazilian Pianist Guiomar Novaěs and Conductor Hans Kindler's National Symphony gave one of Villa-Lobos' biggest works its first U. S. hearing. Called Momo Precoce (The Young Momus) after the ancient Greek god of ridicule, the composition depicted the sights & sounds of Brazil's annual, three-day-long "Children's Carnival." After listening to its naïve, childlike jingle themes, half-focused in a turbulent hubbub of flashy orchestration, Baltimoreans rated it one of the most bumptiously original pieces they had heard in a long time...
...courtiers, laughing at the whites on the royal way. At 7 p. m. their parade ends, and the drinking and the loving begin. It is carnival for the merriest of people. It is also dark satire on the pretentious, elite Mardi Gras courts of the white folks' Rex, Momus, Comus, Proteus, the Druids...
52nd Street (Walter Wanger). Time was when Manhattan's 52nd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, was just as stuffy as the picture that bears its name. But in the last decade or so Bacchus and Momus have taken over the genteel brownstone houses whence Rhinelanders, Iselins, Fahnestocks, Vanderbilts once set forth in broughams to leave their cards. Today nightclubs jammed with swing bands and floor shows have chased away all but a last handful of old settlers. 52nd Street misses most of the swing, wastes too much time on the old settlers...
...formal, exclusive occasion; for merchants and hotelmen, a golden harvest; for visitors and the man-in-the-street one good long party. Last week's party began six days before Ash Wednesday. Through packed streets lumbered float after gaudy float bearing the cinematic tableaux of the Krewe of Momus. Red, green, yellow and purple flares dimmed street lights, sent choking fumes up toward windows from which thousands of heads leaned. At the Municipal Auditorium the parade halted, maskers moved from floats to stage. A band opened the ball. Masked King Momus danced with Miss Irene Rice, queen...