*Down In The Bayous In Cajun Country- “The French Blues”, Modern Cajun- BeauSoliel

Click On To Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Beausoliel Doing "Varise".

CD REVIEW

The introductory paragraphs in this review have been used to review other Cajun CDs in this space.

Well, it is about time that I started to review some of the work of the good old boys and girls from the bayous down in Cajun country. Places like Lafayette and Lake Charles evoke memories of time and place in Cajun musical history. You know, at the edges of the places where the likes of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis learned their crafts. And places where all kinds of mixes of music and races blended to form unique sounds all their own. Accordions, washboards, fiddles, guitars and what ever came to hand on those whiskey-drenched Saturday nights.

And on those nights come names like Clifton Chenier and Booboo Chavis that form the black-influenced strand of the music. The Hackberry Ramblers and the likes of Waylon Thibodeaux form another, the good old white boys. French Acadian exiles, English “swamp foxes” of undetermined origin, black escaped slaves, “poor white trash”- it is all there mixed in one form or another. For the most part there were no serious conscious attempts to mix the strands but how could the intermixing influences be avoided in that small isolated area of southwest Louisiana. And all under the umbrella of what I call the “French blues”. Get your dancing slippers on.

La Danse De La Vie, BeauSoliel, Rhino Records, 1993

Elsewhere in this space I have gone on and on about my love affair with the blues, my admiration for the singers of the folk revival of the 1960’s and my appreciation for the 1950’s pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll. I admit to a late interest in Cajun music sparked, a little at least, by the Dennis Quiad New Orleans-centered film “The Big Easy” from the 1990’s. This modern Cajun-oriented group BeauSoliel became better known and caught my attention in the wake of that interest in things Cajun. The group, as far as I know, had as part of its mission to make this previously somewhat insulated music more accessible to non-Cajun and non-patois speaking audiences. They achieved some success in this endeavor. Witness here some nice fiddle work on the title track “La Danse de la Vie”, “Quelle Belle Vie” and “ La Fille de Quatorze Ans”. Moreover, this is very danceable music. Feet up.