Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, musician and the Big Chief of the Golden Eagles, is a revered elder of both the Mardi Gras Indian community and the larger New Orleans cultural family. The two-time Grammy nominee is perhaps best known for his long-time affiliation with Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias, but he has also garnered international attention and acclaim for his more recent work with groups like the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars, Dr. John, Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, Galactic, and Johnny Sansone, and other luminaries of the New Orleans blues and funk landscape.
Along with his long-time friend Bo Dollis, Boudreaux is credited with bringing the unique Mardi Gras Indians songs and chants - a tradition dating back to the 1800s - to the rest of the world through their seminal recordings in the early 1970s. He was a recipient of a 2016 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States’ highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
He comes by his status as a Mardi Gras Indian chief through bloodlines of both African and Native American ancestry. As the revered elder of the Mardi Gras Indian culture, Monk, as he is known to all, says he sees himself as the guardian of what is, effectively, a spiritual discipline that involves gnostic customs and beliefs that have been shared by members of the New Orleans Black community over the course of multiple generations. He is one of the best-known and loved New Orleans culture heroes, the subject of murals on city walls and documentaries, and the inspiration for characters in television dramas like the HBO series Treme.
Born Joseph Pierre Boudreaux in 1941, he joined the Wild Magnolias in the early 60s, a tribe led by his childhood friend Big Chief Bo Dollis. In 1970, Boudreaux appeared with the Wild Magnolias at the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. That year, the group released the single "Handa Wanda" on Crescent City Records, the first studio recorded music by Mardi Gras Indians. Boudreaux continued to be active with the Wild Magnolias and with his own Golden Eagles, recording the album Lightning and Thunder for Rounder Records in 1988, appearing on the 1974 The Wild Magnolias, the 1975 They Call Us Wild, the Rounder classic Super Sunday Showdown!, and a number of other releases.
But after being with the Wild Magnolias for over 30 years, Boudreaux left the group in 2001 in a dispute with the group’s manager. Since then, his career has taken off: in addition to masking and performing with the Golden Eagles, he has pushed the genre to new directions and has played and recorded around the world with a Who’s Who of New Orleans artists.
Boudreaux has been nominated for Grammys twice for Best Regional Roots Album, most recently in 2024 for his Jazzfest performance with the Golden Eagles, and earlier, in 2021, for his terrific album Bloodstains and Teardrops. That record was born from Monk’s experiences in Jamaica, and which expertly weaves together strands from swamp blues, Mardi Gras Indian songs, and reggae and other Jamaican influences. The record includes an all-star cast: Michael Doucet of Beausoleil, Tab Benoit, and Johnny Sansone, among others.
Boudreaux has appeared in a number of films and documentaries, including the 2005 history of New Orleans music, Make it Funky!, the prize-winning 2010 film Bury the Hatchet, and the New Orleans Social Club's album Sing Me Back Home, released in 2006.
Boudreaux's son, Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr., is also a masking Indian and musician and, like father, like son, got a Grammy nod in 2023 for his band’s debut eponymous album, The Rumble, in the Best Regional Roots Album category.
