History Museum of Mobile: Learning Lunch, Steve Joynt + Performance by Excelsior Band
Date/Time
Date(s) - February 12, 2025
12:00 pm
Location
History Museum of Mobile
Categories
The History Museum of Mobile’s Learning Lunch Program is on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, at 12pm and will feature Steve Joynt, the Editor and Publisher of Mobile Mask Magazine. He will deliver his presentation, Where Floats Come From, followed by a musical performance from the legendary Excelsior Band.
Steve Joynt has been a professional journalist for 40 years. He got his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his master’s in journalism from Columbia University in New York City. He worked for 15 years as a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald, then spent 11 years with the Press Register in Mobile as an assistant city editor. Steve left the Register in late 2011 to start the Mobile Mask web site and magazine. The first magazine was published for Mardi Gras 2013. He recently sold Mobile Mask to Lagniappe, and this year’s issue of the magazine – his 13th – is also his last. But it’s not THE last. Through Mobile Mask, Steve has had three Mardi Gras-related historic markers placed in the city, including one on Royal Street, just outside the History Museum of Mobile. This is his 12th annual Mardi Gras Learning Lunch.
The Excelsior Band is an African American brass marching band that has embodied the culture of the city of Mobile and its beloved Mardi Gras celebration for many generations. It was originally organized as a firehouse band by John A. Pope in 1883. Today, it is a ten-piece marching brass band that consists of three trumpets, three saxophones, one trombone, a tuba, a bass drum and a snare drum. The band plays many genres of music with emphasis on Dixieland and conventional jazz and is well known for performing in and leading Mardi Gras parades.