BeauSoleil brings its
By Burl Burlingame
ferocious style of dance music
to Andrews Outdoor Theatre
Star-BulletinThere was a time when Cajun wasn't cool. Before the explosion in Cajun cooking in the late '80s. Before Paul Simon made musical archaeological expeditions into the swamps. Before "The Big Easy." Before TV commercial soundtracks. Before BeauSoleil.
BeauSoleil leader and fiddler Michael Doucet -- the one who looks like Albert Einstein after a three-day bender with shrimp and hot sauces -- recalls the long-ago 1970s when he used a National Endowment grant to seek out and document Cajun music. Speaking French was banned. School principals forbade him to share knowledge with students. Retired Cajun musicians had not played since before World War II.
Cajun music was considered retro; hollers and swings by swampland hillbillies. It was mistaken for Creole music. It leaked out of Louisiana in homogenized curdles, Grand Old Opry'd and drugstore cowboy'd and the fire reduced to a damp squib. "Diggy Diggy Lo." "Big Mamou." "Jambalaya."
Things are different today. The heritage of Cajun culture -- like many niche cultures that make up the smorgasbord of Americana -- is celebrated and studied and preserved. And BeauSoleil played a conspicuous part.
The widely touted "World's Greatest Cajun Band," is playing the University of Hawaii at Manoa tomorrow night, closing out UHM's Summer Session.Being the "World's Greatest" anything is pretty heavy baggage, and Doucet shrugs it off. "It's just a bunch of guys getting up there and playing how they feel," he said. "It's being honest with people -- that's what communicates."
We caught up with Doucet by phone in Colorado -- "It's cool here. It's hot and humid there in Hawaii? I can't wait! It'll be like home" -- and learned that the Hawaii date checks off another state for the hard-traveling musicians; tomorrow, they'll have played every state except North Dakota ("And there is an excellent reason for not playing North Dakota," explained the Star-Bulletin's sports editor, who hails from the Flickertail State).
Cajun is more than hot food and cold beer and a Gallic-derivative language. The Cajun are one of a variety of peoples dotting the delta of southern Louisiana, and are descended from refugees from Acadie in Nova Scotia, the original French colony in the Americas.
"My family are Acadians," said Doucet. "Acadie was first settled in 1504, but all the French-speaking inhabitants were deported in 1755 by the English. Many went back to France, where they got land grants in Louisiana."
Soon after settling anew, the property was sold to the Americans. Even so, the new "Acadiana" remained largely isolated. "We didn't even have a bridge until 1922," said Doucet.
Acadian-style fiddling and music was considered a local curiosity. There was a spate of recording when the medium became accepted in the 1920s, and the introduction of the diatonic accordion added a squeeze-box urgency to the melodies.
"Still, the music was pretty much the same, dating back to the time of kings and queens and the way life used to be," said Doucet, who was stunned in the early '70s when he started playing with musicians in Brittany and discovered identical tunes and meters among the olde French themes.
Doucet had started playing music in the usual way; guitar-heavy garage bands in the '60s, dance bands in the '70s. He inherited his uncle's fiddle, and then came the trip to France. Soon he helped found Coteau, known as the "Cajun Grateful Dead."
BeauSoleil, named after the fertile "good sun" region of Acadie -- the Eden that Doucet's ancestors were forced to flee -- was formed shortly after with brother and guitarist David Doucet, accordionist Jimmy Breaux, percussionist Billy Ware, bass player Al Tharp and drummer Tommy Alesi.
Research continues, first discovering the roots of Cajun music and then nurturing them with a little TLC and a dash of modern musical pepper. "It was lucky that the Library of Congress did so many field recordings in the 1930s, and that they were 'uncommercial,' which meant they were pure," said Doucet. "They thought they were too rough for general consumption.
"You then trace the melody, discover it here, in France, in Nova Scotia. 'Jambalaya,' for instance, which we think of as a new song, is an old Cajun melody called 'Gone Texas'; it's been around for a long time.
"Louisiana has always been a hotbed of musical influences melding together. Jazz. Blues. Cajun. Zydeco. Caribbean. Everything that came down the river or washed up from the Gulf."
Whenever possible, Doucet tries to meet with the musicians who created the sound, and says it was lucky he started in the '70s, when many of the old Cajun masters were still around. "Oh I had to get them on tape to preserve it," he said. "We were just young folks interested in old folks' music.
"Back then, Cajun wasn't popular. It was like the Gestapo of Musical Culture didn't want you to hear it. Well, you can't control the culture that way. You can't package Cajun music neatly for the mass-market. We're not making generic 'Cajun' noises to be played over the intercom at the Target store because Cajun is hot right now.
"It's too rough. It can't be caged up. It's the music of an oppressed people, and it has to do with dreams and loneliness and the feeling you get from love."
OK, this is all sounding pretty academic so far. A dry lecture in Cajun 101. And that's something BeauSoleil is not. It is a ferociously up-tempo dance band that can suddenly shift beautifully into a lament that breaks the heart. Either way, you're moved.
Even insufferably snooty Rolling Stone magazine called BeauSoleil "The best damn dance band you'll ever hear."
"Cajun music is the new aerobics," laughed Doucet. "We want people out of the gym and onto the dance floor, where men and women can actually touch each other. What an idea!"
BeauSoleil
In concert:7 p.m. tomorrow
