Tulane University Marching Band - first time in Mobile parade!

The TUMB makes its Mystics of Time Parade debut, performing in an out-of state parade - in Mobile, Alabama -  for the first time.  TUMB is this year's featured band in MoT's parade, playing in a Mardi Gras clinic during the day, and at the Mystics of Time Ball in the evening! The TUMB will perform a special arrangement of “As Time Goes By” for this parade, and will have special doubloons to celebrate this year’s theme.  Mobile claims to have the oldest annual Carnival celebration in the United States, dating from its start there by Frenchman Nicholas Langlois in 1703, when Mobile was the capital of Louisiana.

The Mystics of Time is one of Mobile's most popular parades, & parades on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, unleashing smoke-breathing dragons on the streets of the city of Mobile: the self-propelled dragons are Vernadean and her offspring, Verna and Dean. The dragons & other floats were built by Royal Artists out of New Orleans.

The MOT formed in 1948 and first paraded the next year. As the story goes, a group of friends, while playing their regular poker game, started discussing forming a new Mardi Gras group. One day, in the old Azalea Grill, that group bumped into a group of men who were members of another parading organization but were disenchanted with that organization. Together, they formed the MOT.

For more on the Mystics of Time, see the article about the group's 65th anniversary in the 2013 Mobile Mask magazine.