From Death to Dancing: How New Orleans Celebrates the Afterlife

In most cities, funerals are quiet affairs. In New Orleans, they come with a brass band and backup dancers.

Here in the Crescent City, we don’t just mourn the dead—we honor them, celebrate them, and send them off in style with a dance, a drink, and a little bit of jazz. The line between grief and joy gets blurred by trumpet blasts and feathered umbrellas, and before you know it, you’re crying into your cocktail and dancing in the streets.

From funeral parades to second lines, New Orleans has turned mourning into movement and death into one more reason to party. Here’s how the city’s joyful embrace of the afterlife continues to inspire traditions, including the spirited spectacle of Krewe of BOO!.

🎷 The Jazz Funeral: A Bittersweet Serenade

A New Orleans jazz funeral is more than a sendoff—it’s a ceremony of soul. It begins with a somber march to the burial site, the brass band playing hymns like “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” But once the body is laid to rest, the tone shifts. The band swings into high gear, the tempo jumps, and suddenly the air is filled with joy, celebration, and second-lining.

It's sorrow transformed into rhythm, and loss uplifted by community. Because here, death isn’t the end—it’s just another verse in the song.

☂️ The Second Line: From Funeral to Festival

The first line is made up of the family, musicians, and funeral party. The second line? That’s everyone else—neighbors, friends, tourists, anyone who feels the beat and joins the dance. With handkerchiefs in hand and umbrellas in the air, second liners follow the band, weaving through the streets like a wave of joy in motion.

Second lines aren’t just for funerals anymore—they’re for weddings, birthdays, and parades like Krewe of BOO!, where we honor this sacred tradition with spooky swagger.

🕯️ Life, Death & Celebration: The NOLA Way

In New Orleans, we don’t ignore death—we invite it to the party. Our cemeteries are open-air art galleries. Our ghost tours sell out nightly. We build altars, honor ancestors, and turn grief into gratitude.

And it’s not just about spectacle—it’s about soul. About connecting with those who came before us, and making sure they’re remembered with style.

👻 Krewe of BOO! and the Dance of the Dead

Every October, Krewe of BOO! channels the energy of the second line with skeletons who shimmy, ghouls who groove, and floats that feel more like rolling funerals turned festivals. Our parade doesn’t mourn the dead—it marches with them, hand-in-phantom-hand, through the French Quarter fog.

Whether it’s a brass band dressed as zombies or revelers in top hats and tombstones, the message is the same: we see you, we celebrate you, and we’re bringing the music with us.

🎭 To the Afterlife and Beyond

New Orleans teaches us that honoring the dead doesn’t have to mean sadness—it can mean memory, music, and motion. It’s the sound of a snare drum echoing through the streets, the flash of sequins on a black veil, the way a tear turns into laughter when the tuba kicks in.

So when the next Krewe of BOO! parade rolls, listen closely. That’s not just a Halloween beat—it’s a love letter to the afterlife.

💀 From death to dancing, we don’t say goodbye in New Orleans. We say, “laissez les morts danser”—let the dead dance. And we’ll be right behind them, second lining all the way.