Visions of Louisiana: Allons Danser!

I haven’t written for a few days because I have been too busy dancing and eating.  I have also learned a lot about Louisiana history, its peope and culture, some of which I would like to share with you.

Cajun v. Zydeco music.  This is a sore point for me, because when I invited a friend of mine (who shall be nameless) to my Zydeco birthday party last October, he told me that it was the music of David Duke and he refused to go.  Until I came down here, I didn’t know the difference between Cajun and Zydeco, either.  I thought they were the same thing. Then, the other night , I was talking to a woman at a Cajun restaurant and dance club and told her I loved Zydeco music, thinking that was what we were listening and dancing to.  She made a face.  “This isn’t Zydeco,” she said.  “This is Cajun.  I don’t like Zydeco.  It’s too…jungle sounding.”  Hm.  I always thought they were the same, and in Seattle there are plenty of bands that bill themselves as both Zydeco  and Cajun.  But no.  Down here they are different. 

The word “Cajun” comes from “Adacian,” the name for the French/Canadian settlers who were forced to leave Canada during the French and Indian Wars of the 18^th century. There had been about 18,000 of these people living in Nova Scotia.  The land kept changing hands from French to English, English to French, for several hundred years.  The Acadians lived as farmers up there, and I guess they mingled with both the exiled Scots and the Micmac Indians who lived up there.  Their legends tell of an idyllic life, in their little cottages with thatched roofs and their wooden shoes.  However, when they refused to sign a loyalty oath to the British after the British had won the Seven Years’ War (that lasted for nine years from 1754-63), they were forced to leave their homes, rounded up onto ships and sent far away.  We had to endure the worst historical film I have ever seen, telling this story.  I would rather have listened to someone reading Longfellow’s Evangeline that see this movie which billed itself as “a tale of wonder and of woe.”  I can’t even explain how bad it was.  It featured a low-voiced woman as the “voice of Acadia” telling the story of the exiles during what they call Le Derangement, the removal and journey down the east coast of North America, in tiny boats.  Very few communities even allowed them to come ashore because they were poor, French Speaking and worst of all) Catholic.  Thousands of them actually died of disease and starvation while they were still on board the ships.

Finally, they found refuge on the southern coast of Louisiana, where the French and Spanish had been for a while. 

a simple Acadian cottage

They modified their farming and fishing methods, and learned to plant corn, red beans and rice and to catch shrimp, crawfish and catfish.  “Acadian” became “Cajun.”   Their music was a hybrid of their own French folk songs with Scots fiddles and German accordions thrown in.  The first night we were in Breaux Bridge, we drove over to Lafayette, one of the oldest Acadian settlements dating back to the 1770s, to listen to some Cajun music and eat some crawfish.

crawfish boil

  Live Cajun music follows a pretty predictable pattern: first they play a two-step, then they play a waltz, then they play a two-step, then they play a waltz, and so on.  Cajuns are white Catholics with French Canadian ancestry.  They speak French with a weird Louisiana accent, or throw French words into their English conversation, which is very charming.  They are generally pretty poor; they keep cattle in their “vacheries” and fish for crawfish in the ditches by the side of the highways.  Most of their culture revolves around food, music and fishing, but they also LOVE the Longfellow poem, Evangeline.


"Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!

Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October

Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.

Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré."

Click here to read the whole poem  

The name of the fabled land the Cajuns came from, according to Longfellow (who never visited either place) is called "Acadie," and the village of Grand-Pre is now a pilgrimage spot for people of Acadian ancestry.  The impact of this poem has been sort of like the impact of Owen Wister's The Virginian on people in the Western US.  After their histories and myths were invented for them, they went back and tried to live it.  Longfelloow tells the story of a mythical Acadian woman who is separated from her fiance on their wedding day because of the Derangement and only finds him later, down in Louisiana, just as he is about to die.  But of course she remains faithful to him during that entire time.  Okay, I admit I didn't actually read the whole poem so I don't know what all happens, but I did visit the famous "Evangeline Oak Tree"

The forest primeval in Louisiana

that's in the Longfellow State Park, and my grandmother's middle name was Evangeline, after the poem, so I will probably read it as soon as I finish writing this blog.  There are also at least two silent film versions of the story, apparently, so I should probably try to learn more.

The next day, we went to Breaux Bridge to the famous “Zydeco Breakfast.”  Zydeco is a music that evolved from a combination of Cajun music and the music of slaves and free blacks living down here.  Some of it sounds Cajun, some sounds like Mississippi delta blues, some like a combination of the above.  It’s way more fun and interesting than just plain Cajun.  You never know what the band is going to play.  Instead of just white people dancing, there are all races, all ages just going crazy together on the dance floor.  Cajun is predictable and charming; Zydeco is a wild party!  I’m not saying I don’t like Cajun, but once you’ve heard Zydeco, Cajun music can seem boring and sedate (hence the comment from the old whilte woman that she thought Zydeco was too “jungle.”  Of course, that does sound racist as well.  But what do you expect in Louisiana? 

I was amazed at the scene at the Zydeco breakfast.  They even made a documentary about it, which I plan to purchase and show to my students as a true Vision of America.  There were old white grannies dancing wildly with young African American men with long dredlocks, young blond women dancing with old grizzled farmers, a guy who looked exactly like Cesar Chavez dancing with anyone he could get his hands on.  So many people had indeterminate ethnicities that it was clear that their ancestors hadn’t been interested in “keeping the races separate” in any way.  It was awesome.  Matt’s favorite song, “I think I need a Boosta,” was a modern Zydeco tune written by Leroy Thomas, the band leader, all about the miracles of modern medicine, with lines like, “She gave me a Viagra! Abracadabra!” and “goin’ down to Dallas’/ had to take a Cialis.”  The radio stations in Louisiana are great; you don’t have to listen to that  mainstream overproduced stuff they call “country” at all.  We listened to old timey 70’s country, Western Swing, Cajun, Zydeco, Blues, Dixieland Jazz and even some world music like Jack Carrick plays in his weekly show, “On the Road with Jack Carrick.” 

Cajun vs. Creole, probably an even more important distinction than the musical distinction, is not about music, but about ethnicities, national origins, and (most crucial) food.  You already know what Cajuns are, but what are Creoles?  Well, in the New World, "Creoles" or "criollos" in Latin America, were people with European parents who were born over here.  This meant they were "white," but were sort of looked down on by the "peninsulares" who were born over there.  Most of the big name Latin American revolutionaries of the 19th century were criollos, and they didn't necessarily want equality with the other types of people living there; they just wanted self-determination and independence from Europe.  But I digress.  In Louisiana, a lot of times those people were called "French Creoles," and there were rich and ritzy.  They cooked richer food with the same ingredients the Cajuns used, but it would be like buttery crawfish or crab bisque, instead of a gumbo with a dark roux.  This is because the Creoles had way more money than the Cajuns.  A lot of them had big plantations, growing rice and (worst crop of all), sugar.  We visited an old sugar plantation down here, by the name of Oak Alley.  It was one of these creepy 

historical reenactment things, with a somewhat idiotic tour guide.  Sugar plantations were the most brutal on slaves, with a life expectancy of maybe 7 years at most for a field worker. For many years, these tours of Oak Alley didn't include any mention of enslaved people there.  Now, can you guess when the slave cabins at Oak Alley were rebuilt and an exhibit about slavery added?  My guess was 10 years ago; Matt's guess was two.  It was actually within the past year.  And the exhibit was pretty weak, let me tell you.  I can't even joke around about "the gracious way of lahf" any more.  It's just getting old how much slavery is glossed over and ignored down here.  

But back to the Cajun v. Creole thing.  So the plantation owners were wealthy French Creoles.  That is my point.  But then there were other Creoles, who were partially of European ancestry and partially African.  For example, many of the slaves at Oak Alley were children of the ritzy Creole owner and one or the other of his female slaves.  A lot of them ended up getting their freedom after the death of their father, or even during his lifetime, and moving to New Orleans, where there was a HUGE free black population, lots of biracial or multiracial people, and a lot more rights being enjoyed by everyone.  It actually wasn't until after (you guessed it) Reconstruction was over that black people in New Orleans were treated almost as badly as black people all over the South.  

Finally, of course, we went all over the city of New Orleans on Easter, visting the Cathedral and watching all the parades that wound their way through the old streets.  New Orleans is exactly the way they say it is in all those books and shows.  We got to go out to a Jazz/Blues club, witness hundreds of drunk people, and have dozens of beads thrown at us from the floats.  It's a very diverse city, a very gay city, and a very fun city. We visited some of the oldest Catholic Churches in the country, including the oldest African American Catholic Church, where we celebrated Easter in New Orleans.  Not only was there a saxophone player rocking out, but the priest, at the end of his homily, started singing the old hymn, "Because He Lives," backed by the choir.  At the end of the service, he grabbed a tambourine and was dancing around!  I told him I wished all priests could be like him, and he said, "So do I!"  

spot the priest shaking the tambourine over on the left there