*Down In The Bayous In Cajun Country- “The French Blues”, "Acadian Folk Songs"

Click On Title To Link To Arhoolie Records Website, An Excellent Place To Find Rare Cajun Music Items.

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.

Folksongs of The Louisiana Acadians, various artists, Arhoolie Records, 1994

The roots of Cajun music go back a long way, probably as far back as the time of the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and the forced trek to Louisiana made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Evangeline”. This CD tracks those origins and brings the story up to modern times. As always with an Arhoolie product there are copious liner notes to help fill in the story. Unlike other Cajun CDs I have reviewed in this space like those of the Hackberry Ramblers, this one has many early Acadia pieces that are untouched, or barely touched, by other musical influences. These tunes are similar in simplicity to the music of other isolated regions of America like the Appalachian Mountains. Fiddle, a bass, maybe a drum but some just have that pure, lonesome fiddle. Feast on “Mes Souliers Sont Rouges”, “Contredanse Francaise”, ‘Y Avait Boitine Boiteuse”, “Aux Natchitoches” and “Contredanse De Mamou” in the middle of this CD to see what I mean.