Ask someone unfamiliar with New Orleans what a "second line" is and they'll usually guess it's the name of the brass band. It isn't. The band, the grand marshal, and the club members with their sashes and umbrellas make up the first line; the second line is everyone else — the crowd that falls in behind the band and dances their way through the streets, and in a real sense the second line is the point of the whole event, not an afterthought to it.
Rooted in Mutual Aid, Not Just Music
Second line parades grew out of New Orleans' Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, community organizations founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely by Black New Orleanians who were excluded from mainstream insurance and burial services, to pool member dues and provide financial support for funerals, medical costs, and other community needs. Alongside that mutual-aid function, these clubs organized public parades, both festive annual outings and, distinctively, processions accompanying members' funerals, and the brass band parade format that developed around both occasions is what eventually became known as second lining. The tradition is inseparable from its organizational roots; a second line parade isn't simply a music event that happens to take place outdoors, it's the public, celebratory face of community organizations that have supported New Orleans' Black neighborhoods for well over a century.
From Funeral to Celebration
The jazz funeral is probably the second line tradition most widely known outside New Orleans: a brass band accompanies the deceased's family and mourners from the funeral service toward the burial site playing slow, somber hymns, and then, traditionally after the burial or once the family has been formally released from mourning duties, shifts into upbeat, danceable music for the procession back, at which point the crowd of mourners becomes a dancing second line. That shift from grief to celebration isn't disrespect toward the deceased; within the tradition it represents a spiritual send-off, celebrating a life while also affirming the community's own continued vitality in the face of loss. Not every second line parade is tied to a funeral, however; clubs also hold purely celebratory annual parades on a rotating community calendar, especially concentrated in the fall and spring parading seasons, that have nothing to do with mourning at all.
What the Dancing Actually Looks Like
Second line dancing itself is loose, individual, and highly improvisational rather than choreographed in any fixed pattern, built around a bouncing, syncopated walk that stays close to the brass band's rhythm section while leaving enormous room for personal style and showmanship. Dancers commonly incorporate handkerchiefs or small parasols, twirled and waved overhead in time with the music, a visual signature of the tradition strongly associated with both mourning processions and celebratory parades alike. Buck jumping, a more athletic, high-energy style of second line dancing involving jumps and acrobatic footwork, has become especially prominent in more recent decades of the tradition, with individual dancers and crews developing personal signature moves that mark them out within the broader parading crowd.
A Living, Weekly Tradition
Unlike some historical dance forms that survive mainly through preservation efforts, second lining in New Orleans remains an active weekly practice during parading season, with different Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs each hosting their own annual parade on a rotating community schedule that residents track closely, often more closely than any single citywide festival calendar. The New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, operated by the National Park Service, documents and interprets the brass band and second line traditions as part of the city's broader jazz heritage, situating second lining within the same cultural lineage that produced the city's jazz music more broadly. Anyone visiting New Orleans specifically to experience the tradition should look for a club's scheduled parade route rather than expecting to encounter one spontaneously; routes and schedules are public and widely shared locally precisely because community participation, not passive spectating, is the entire point of the event.
Joining a Second Line as a Visitor
Visitors are generally welcome to join the second line crowd behind a parade, and doing so respectfully mostly comes down to staying behind the club members and grand marshal rather than crowding the first line, following the crowd's lead on dancing style rather than performing something unrelated, and recognizing that you're a guest at what is fundamentally a neighborhood community event rather than a tourist show staged for visitors. The music and dancing share deep roots with other African American social dance traditions, and anyone drawn to second lining after visiting New Orleans will find useful context in broader guides to finding local dance events, since brass band and parade culture, in smaller forms, has spread to cities well beyond Louisiana over recent decades.