Search Results

Using the new “Best Zydeco and Cajun Music Album” Grammy Award category as an analytical lens, this conclusion denounces Cajun isolation by suggesting a revaluation of the cultural processes that have shaped the community’s cultural and musical orientation through time.

This chapter investigates the meanings involved in the valorization of a rural heritage. Characterized as “simple,” “plain,” and “unpolished,” the attributes of the region’s music are integral to the ways in which it is technical described, practiced, lived, staged live or displayed on CDs, taught, and recorded. The alleged technical simplicity of this music can be deceptive, however, and presents its own particular set of challenges. The insistence on fun and an approach that presents this music as a way of life combine to constitute a set of codes, rules, and expectations. The representation of the “new” Zydeco sound encapsulates the oppositions between rural and urban and black and white that Zydeco musicians seek to reconcile in order to achieve respectability through their music. Finally, this chapter examines how French Louisiana music is grounded in a profound attachment to place, and more broadly to regional identification with south Louisiana.

This book focuses on a vibrant Cajun and zydeco music and dance scene in the San Francisco Bay Area and nearby regions of northern California. This chapter describes the themes central to the book, including the wide dissemination of symbols of Cajun culture, tourism, and the meeting of cultural insiders and outsiders on the dance floor. It examines Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song “Down At The Twist And Shout” as a starting point for a discussion of themes that will resurface in other chapters. The romance of travel is a central theme of the song, and the coupling of its lyrical content with its commercial success as a pop song makes it ripe for an analysis of what its success says about its audience(s). In this case, “Down At The Twist And Shout” embodies a larger trend in popular culture to rehabilitate the image of Cajuns and to treat aspects of their culture as objects of touristic desire.

This chapter first discusses how a reversal in negative views of Cajun ethnic identity began during World War II. The creation of a more positively defined Cajun ethnicity gained momentum during the 1960s, when it became part of a wider “new ethnicity” movement that appeared across the United States in conjunction with the civil rights movement. As Cajun ethnicity came to be seen in a more positive light, the image of the Cajun who works hard and plays hard became an available role model for those seeking cathartic release in a leisure activity. The chapter then profiles key figures in the musical life of the immigrant Louisiana French community in northern California, and describes black and Creole migration from the South to California during and after World War II.

This chapter discusses the Cajun music and zydeco scene in northern California as it expanded beyond its original Creole basis and took on a life of its own. It describes the rise of all things Cajun in popular culture and profiles the following individuals: Freida Fusilier, Susan Appe Ramon, Ralph “Bobby” Gradney, and Richard Domingue. The chapter details the development of the northern California scene from 1985—2005 and concludes with some final reflections from the author.

This chapter explores the history of the Creole accordion. Black Creoles in Louisiana have created their own, distinctive accordion music adapted from French, Native American, and African cultures. While Creole musicians in the early twentieth century were often hired for Cajun dances, where they played Cajun dance music, at their own gatherings they played a uniquely Creole repertoire that drew from the African American blues—a repertoire later developed by accordionists such Clifton Chenier and Boozoo Chavis. Zydeco, as this music eventually was labeled, has become a symbol of Louisiana Creole culture. It is argued that despite the pressure on modern zydeco bands to adapt to the demands of the music industry, the traditional accordion and rubboard remain the core instruments, and zydeco accordionists keep playing in a distinctively Creole style.