Exploring American Folk Music

by Kip Lornell

  Hawaiian performers at the Festival of American Folklife. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  Into the twenty-first century, Hawaii maintains its status as a syncretic cultural center. Most of the Islands’ citizens are minorities, many of whom came from Asia as well as other islands around the world. For most of the twentieth century Puerto Ricans settled in the Islands, bringing their music with them. The resulting synthesis is a unique blend that would almost sound at home as much along the borderland of Mexico and the United States as it does in Muai.

  FRANCO-AMERICAN

  Cajun Country

  Despite the fact that a state line divides Texas and Louisiana, Cajun country constitutes a distinctive cultural region that is clearly distinguished by its language, customs, foodways, and music as well as by its physical geography. This small section of the Deep South is one of the United States’s most easily identifiable cultural areas, and its unique characteristics remain largely unknown to most people around the country. Just as the rich sauces and tangy spices of Cajun food have attracted enthusiastic multitudes over the past few decades, the indigenous Cajun and zydeco music also continues to grow in popularity.

  Cajun fiddlers Michael Doucet and Dewey Balfa (circa 1990). Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

  This intriguing part of the country is unique because of its unusual blend of settlers. In the middle 1700s the English deported large numbers of French colonists from Nova Scotia, then known as Acadia. They were dispersed across the world, but many of them moved south, sailing down the eastern coast of North America in search of a fresh start. A few thousand of them eventually resettled in the southeastern part of Louisiana, the physical geography of which in some ways resembled their flat and wet homelands in western France, though a whole lot warmer.

  These newcomers eventually intermingled with local residents, resulting in a cultural mixture known as Cajun. Cajuns speak a unique brand of French different from its Parisian counterpart. This is partially because most of the Arcadian people originally came from the maritime Breton and Norman sections of France, far from Paris. Moreover, the Cajun language is actually a creolized blend that mixes French with English and the African languages imported from Africa and filtered through the French West Indies.

  This uniquely creolized section of the United States is itself fragmented by region. Along the bayous of south-central Louisiana, many of the residents still live in relative isolation. Boats remain a principal mode of transportation along with a continuing emphasis upon traditional ways of fishing and self-sufficiency. Further west, closer to the Texas border, the land is grassy and prairie-like. In the middle 1800s this was the frontier, something like our present-day conception of life and lifestyles on the wild western frontier. That spirit is found today in the wildcatting oil towns of Lafayette and Big Mamou, where the local economy still rides the waves of boom-or-bust economy. It is a land of unparalleled beauty, and many are drawn to explore the bountiful wildlife found in its obscure bayous. There is no place else like it in the United States.

  Musical development

  Cajun music evolved with the language and the rest of its culture. The early settlers brought with them their older French songs and dance music played on fiddles. They eventually picked up the keening, high-pitched vocal style of the indigenous Native Americans, which has become a trademark of the music. The African American residents contributed a slightly syncopated rhythmic sense and the concept of improvisational singing. Hispanic settlers introduced the guitar to the Cajuns, while Anglo-Americans provided them with new tunes. By the 1850s, most of the basic elements of this highly creolized music were in place.

  In the nineteenth century dances were usually held in homes on weekends with fiddles, sometimes in pairs, providing most of the music. The diatonic accordion, so well known in Cajun music today, was not introduced into the area until after the War Between the States by German settlers who came to Texas in the 1840s and 1850s. The fiddles and accordions were soon joined together because they could be heard over the loud and raucous dances. By early in the twentieth century, small dance bands consisting of an accordion, fiddle, some percussion instrument (spoons, washboard, or triangle), and a guitar were found in dance halls all across Cajun country. They played a mixture of polkas, waltzes, two-steps, and other European-derived dance tunes for appreciative audiences. Cajun dances were often held on weekend nights in small, rural dance halls lined with wooden benches under which their children slept while their parents danced the night away.

  During Reconstruction small waves of Anglo-Americans moved into southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. The discovery of oil in the early twentieth century brought them into the region by the thousands. Their arrival, followed by the 1916 ban on speaking creolized French in the schools, signaled an important change for Cajun culture. The modern era of the twentieth century was invading this once remote portion of the United States and began a more rapid alteration of their once isolated corner of the world. This trend was exacerbated by the socialization fostered by World War I, a slowly expanding transportation system, and the explosion of the mass media. Each of these factors helped to force this unique culture into a secondary position as Cajuns quickly moved to become “true Americans.” Cajun music fell victim to this general trend. While some of the musicians stubbornly clung to the traditional songs and tunes, many others absorbed the contemporary trends.

  Documenting Cajun music

  Fortunately a handful of Cajuns made commercial recordings in the late 1920s. Most notable were the fiddle duets of Dennis McGee and Sady Courville, which still sound hauntingly archaic. But the first Cajun records, “Allons a Lafayette” (“Lafayette”) and “La Valse Qui Ma Portin De Ma Fose” (“The Waltz That Carried Me to My Grave”) were made by Joseph Falcon and his wife, Clemo Breaux. Falcon remembers that the Columbia record executives in the temporary New Orleans studio were dubious about the entire affair:

  They looked at us . . . they were used to recording with orchestras. “That’s not enough music to make a record,” they said. So George [Burrow, a jewelry store owner from Rayne who wanted to sell Falcon records] had 250 records paid for before I even went to make them. So George started talking: “We got to run it through because that man there . . . is popular in Rayne; the people are crazy about his music and they want his records.” But they said, “We don’t know if it’s going to sell.” They then turned around and asked him, “How much would you buy?” He told them he wanted 500 copies as the first order . . . and he made out a check for 500 hundred records. They started looking at each other. “Well,” they said, “you go ahead and play us a tune just for us to hear.” (Strachwitz and Welding, American Music Occasional , vol. 1, 1970, 15)

  By the middle 1930s the Hackberry Ramblers had synthesized Cajun music with the pioneering western swing sound and were among the first Cajun musicians to use amplified instruments. Electric steel guitars were soon heard in dance halls across southern Louisiana, as were the current popular tunes by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, the Lightcrust Doughboys, and Al Dexter and his Troopers. These songs were now pushed forward by the drums that Cajun groups began using. At the front of this modernization of traditional Cajun music was Harry Choates, whose popularity ensured him jobs as far west as Waco, Texas.

  In fact, many Cajuns were leaving home for oil-related jobs in central Texas and Oklahoma. California became home for many transplanted Cajuns during World War II as they left the bayou for the West Coast defense industries. Many of them settled along the coast in the metropolitan San Francisco Bay area and around Los Angeles, both of which have long supported Cajun music (as well as western swing and country music) to a degree that would surprise many people unaware of these migration patterns.

  The impact of Cajuns on related forms of music cannot
go unnoticed. Cajun singers such as Joe Werner of the Riverside Ramblers influenced Webb Pierce, among others. In the early 1950s Hank Williams was based in Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the “Louisiana Hayride” and his recording of “Jambalaya” (which draws part of its tune from “Grande Texas”). Many of the western swing bands included popular Cajun songs such as “Jole Blonde,” a polka, or a two-step in their repertoire. From the 1940s until the present, Cajun music has left a small but important mark upon commercial country music.

  * * *

  MUSICAL EXAMPLE

  There is no Cajun song better known than this one; in fact, it is often referred to as the Cajun national anthem. You will almost inevitably hear “Jole Blonde” if you attend a Cajun music gathering. It first reached the ears of many people in the late 1940s when Harry Choates’s version reached the national charts, which spawned many cover versions and answer songs. Since then it has become a song associated not only with Cajun music but also with southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas in general. This version was recorded in the mid-1950s.

  Title “Jole Blonde”

  Performers Tony and Rufus Allemand

  Instruments Tony Allemand, fiddle and vocals; Rufus Allemand, guitar

  Length 2:02

  Musical Characteristics

  1. It is played in a simple triple meter—3/4.

  2. You hear a homophonic texture with the fiddle supplying the melody.

  3. The tonality is major.

  4. Allemand’s voice pitches in a relatively high register.

  5. He uses a slightly ornamented vocal style that emphasizes the emotional nature of the song.

  Ah! ma joli’ blond’.

  Gar dez don qu’o c’est qu’t as fait.

  Tu m’as quitte’ pou’ t’en aller.

  Je n’ai pas ma canne en mains, mais toi t’vas l’ voir!

  Ah! my joli blond’.

  Moi j’m’en vais-t-a naviguer.

  Tu vas pleurer-Zavant longtemps pou’t’attaper;

  Tu voudras t’en rev’ni avec ton vieux neg’.

  Ah! my beautiful blond.

  Look what you’ve done.

  You left me to go away.

  I don’t have my stick on hand, but you’ll get it!

  Ah! my beautiful blond.

  I am going to sea.

  You will cry before long, that’ll teach you;

  You will want to come back to your old negro.

  This selection is taken from Smithsonian Folkways 4438.

  * * *

  The internal revitalization of Cajun folk music began slowly in the late 1940s. Led by the accordion-playing Iry Lejeune, the older songs once more began popping up at dances and on play lists of the local radio stations. Many of these musicians were born in the 1920s to parents with strong ties to traditional Cajun culture. Musicians such as Joseph Falcon and Nathan Abshire were natives and, therefore, immersed in their indigenous culture, though their language and music were kept more private during the decline of the Cajun culture itself. Spurred on by local record and radio entrepreneurs like Eddie Schuler and George Khoury, who knew they had a limited but faithful commercial audience for Cajun music, the inexorable reinvigorization of grassroots Cajun music had begun.

  In retrospect, the decades-long attempt to “officially” obliterate Cajun culture that began just before 1920 was doomed from its outset. Cajuns are exceptionally hardy folk and they tenaciously cling to their traditions. Since the 1930s outside researchers, among them Alan Lomax, have been visiting southwestern Louisiana to document the indigenous music. Interest in Cajun music also increased during the early days of the folk revival. Harry Oster, then an English professor at Louisiana State University, spent considerable energy recording Cajun and other styles of indigenous music in southern Louisiana during the middle to late 1950s. At the suggestion of Ralph Rinzler and Mike Seeger, the 1964 Newport Folk Festival became the first major “event” at which Cajun music was featured outside of its home. Despite the uneasiness of Louisiana’s more polished, uppercrust society, state officials were ultimately pleased that the music of Gladius Thibodeaux, Louis Lejune, and Dewey Balfa was so well received. Since then Cajun folk music has been heard all across the United States and the world.

  Inside Louisiana itself the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODFIL) has been active in promoting the culture through their efforts to promote French and Cajun language in the public schools. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, located in the heart of Cajun country and whose sports teams are known as the “Ragin’ Cajuns,” operates a center devoted to the study of Cajun expressive culture and history. These groups have also helped to coordinate several regional festivals featuring local music, most notably the annual Cajun Music Festival in Lafayette. Today younger musicians such as Bruce Daigrepont, Zachary Richard, Michael Doucet, Steve Riley, Marc Savoy, along with an older generation that includes Tony Balfa and Nathan Menard, perform their indigenous music at folk festivals and clubs across America.

  During the middle 1950s and into the 1960s, citizens across the United States received a small dose of Louisiana’s musical culture in the form of swamp pop. This new sound intermixed R&B and contemporary country music with the Cajun and creolized music with which they grew up. Musicians such as Warren Storm, Phil Phillips, Rod Bernard, Johnnie Allan, and Bobby Charles Anglicized their names, eschewed the fiddles and accordions of their forebears, and turned to the popular music. The result was a unique blend that resulted in regional and national hits like “Sea of Love,” “Let’s Do the Cajun Twist,” “Mathilda,” and “Runnin’ Bear.” Only the “British Invasion” of 1964 slowed down the output of swamp-pop artists and assigned the music to the status of regional pop music.

  Zydeco

  Zydeco is a unique regional music that is closely related to Cajun music and is most simply described as creolized African American Cajun music. Traditional zydeco music and its performance contexts are very similar to its white counterparts. Found primarily in venues that stretch west from Lafayette to Houston, zydeco has developed since Reconstruction. Whether the musicians favor the older Cajun sound or prefer the blues or soul-tinged music, it is all propelled forward by a rhythmic drive and syncopation that betrays its Afro-Caribbean background.

  The black Americans of southwestern Louisiana are truly creoles because they are usually a mixture of African, French, and Spanish descent. Although English is becoming the Lingua Franca, many older black Americans in Cajun country still speak a hybrid language that also mixes its heritage into a blend that Cajuns have trouble understanding!

  Most blacks and mulattos came to Louisiana as slaves for French planters in the late eighteenth century or as “freed coloreds” following the Haitian revolution that ended in 1803. The music they played became known as zydeco, a creolized form of the French word for snapbeans. Scholars are not certain exactly how the term “zydeco” developed into its present meaning, but among themselves local residents often say that it is derived from an old southwestern Louisiana dance tune known as “Les Haricots Sont Pas Sales” (“The Snapbeans are Not Salted”). This term also shares its origins with the Afro-Caribbean culture that spices up all of this area. The spelling for this lively dance music is not standardized, and the word sometimes appears as zodico, zordico, or even zologo. Zydeco refers not only to music but also to the event where the dancing and music take place. Thus, one can host a zydeco, referring not only to music but food, dancing, and socializing. Especially popular are zydecos held at a fais-do-do, an informal house party where the music and dancing last far into the night.

  Although zydeco and Cajun music are closely related, distinctions can be made. Zydeco tends to be played at a quicker tempo. Its melodies are generally simplified with more emphasis placed on its syncopated rhythms. In a Cajun two-step the first and third beats are accented, while a zydeco two-step accents the second and fourth beat. The repertoire of zydeco musicians also tends to include more blues and fewer waltzes
than do Cajuns. Cajun bands usually feature a triangle, while zydeco bands favor a washboard fastened to a vest and known as a frottoir. Prior to the contemporary models, nineteenth-century zydeco musicians favored a scrapped animal jaw or a notched stick to provide the rhythmic drive.

  Among older zydeco musicians, the Fontenot and Ardion families are noted for their skill, though for many years they played mostly for neighbors and friends. Local interest in zydeco music has increased over the past 20 years to the point that Alphonse Ardoin observed:

  I have a grandson . . . that I’m trying to teach. He’s only three years old, but he’s interested already. He doesn’t know how to play anything yet, but he takes the accordion and plays with it . . . To be a musician, you have to be committed to music and have it in your family. It has to be in your blood for you to learn easily. (Ancelet 1984, 87)

  Without a doubt, Clifton Chenier was the best-known zydeco musician. Before passing away from kidney disease in 1984 he toured extensively, bringing his modern zydeco music to large concert halls and small dance halls across the country. Chenier transformed zydeco music by using his larger piano-keyed accordion and incorporating elements of blues and rock ’n’ roll. His early recording efforts included some R&B releases for Specialty and Post. But Chenier’s breakthrough came in the late 1960s when he began playing at blues festivals and recording his unique music for Arhoolie Records. His band usually included a saxophone and full rhythm section in addition to his brother Cleveland’s washboard.

  The impact of zydeco has grown to international proportions since the 1990s. The amplified blues-based bands of Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas, Terence Semien, Beau Jocque, Queen Ida and the Bon Ton Zydeco Band, and Buckwheat Zydeco have toured Europe as well as the United States. They perform for local dances as well as international blues festivals. The initial 1983 Opelousas Zydeco Festival underscores the fact that this music originated and continues to thrive in Louisiana and was (finally) recognized there before disseminating across the United States and beyond.