Southwestern Louisiana is a weird, fucked-up place. Obviously, that sounds like an insult, and to most Louisianans it certainly would be. Mostly though, it's meant as a compliment; it's weird and fucked-up in a wonderful, fascinating way -- an alluring, addictive way. Southwestern Louisiana is a siren's song, calling me, offering me a seductive promise if I return. But unlike the treacherous beauties of Greek mythology, my boat doesn't smash up against the rocks as I draw near. Nay, Southwestern Louisiana keeps its promise, lavishing ample rewards upon me for giving in to temptation.
Southwestern Louisiana, the rural part of it, is the Louisiana most people don't know. Not really, anyway. Most confuse it with her big sister, New Orleans. Sometimes people confuse New Orleans for her. Tell your friends that you're making a trip to Louisiana, and they automatically assume you mean the Crescent City. Mention "zydeco," and even musically literate Austinites may not be quite sure what you're talking about. Tell somebody you're from New Orleans and they think you're a Cajun.
I wasn't too clear on all the differences myself until three years ago. That's when a group of friends persuaded me to pile into a car with them and go to the annual, weekend-before-Labor Day Zydeco Festival in Plaisance (don't bother looking for it on a map -- it's a wide spot in the road north of a somewhat bigger small town, Opelousas). My mother, who went to college in Baton Rouge, had given me a bit of a warning: It's like a foreign country, she said.
Try, a different planet.
Southwestern Louisiana is also called Acadiana. I'd never heard the word until that Zydeco Fest trip, when I saw a poster advertising something called the Festivals Acadiens. It promoted something called "Acadian" culture. It didn't take too much deduction to realize that it was the root word which had gradually slurred into "a-caj-un" and eventually just "Cajun."
Acadiana is more than a foreign country -- it's a country within a country, like the Basque region in Spain, or the Kurds scattered through various Asian countries; and, much like those peoples, Acadians endured a painful quest for a homeland. The culture's genesis is two decades older than the American Revolution, but closely related to it: In the 1600s, a colony of French farmers made their homes in what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada, naming the area Acadia (another allusion to ancient Greece, the Arcadia region of which was supposedly a paradise). In 1710, the area came under British rule, and in 1755 there came Le Grand Dérangement: a bloody mass expulsion of the French settlers. They scattered across the globe, but a sizable number ended up in Lousiana. They set up camp in this swampy, alligator-infested wilderness for good, and named it Acadiana.
This time, their hold on the land was easier to maintain. The Louisiana Purchase may have legally put their land under the dominion of the United States, but Acadians remained very much a people apart. Living in areas that were often accessible only by boat, Acadians didn't have any trouble resisting the cultural sway of the U.S. -- in fact, the cultural autonomy was such that outsiders were called les Américains. Travelers to the area had to either speak French or face serious language barriers. (And not just any French, either -- the Cajun language retained many archaic forms and incorporated words from other languages, much like "Spanglish" here, making it barely understandable by many fluent French speakers.)
And, like the rest of the Old South, the "Cajuns" owned Negro slaves, who were obliged to learn French. Just like their English-speaking counterparts, these slaves developed their own subculture, morphing elements of their African and Caribbean roots with the ways of their masters and society at large. They came to be known as the Creoles.
Today, much has changed. Language-wise, a roadtrip to South Texas might pose more problems than Acadiana. Still, the Cajuns and Creoles have stubbornly held onto their heritage. Drive down the street of any Cajun town and read the business signs -- names like Thibodeaux Dry Cleaners; Ardoin Automotive; Soileau's Restaurant. Talk to the people. Some have accents that make a Texan twang sound like Queen's English. That's assuming they can speak English, the chances of which decrease with the individual's age -- the kindly old Mr. Ardoin, proprietor of the Stone Motel in Eunice, sounds as though his English skills were acquired rather late in life. Learning English, in fact, was a major reason for Acadian children to attend school for much of this century.
Indeed, as far as cultural experiences go, rural Louisiana can be about as intense as any trip abroad. Take, for instance, Fred's Lounge in Mamou -- my first experience in Cajun country, and a jolting one at that. Mamou, population 3,200, may seem like a sleepy little farm town, and most days of the week, it is. But don't snooze too late on Saturday morning, or you'll miss the party at Fred's Lounge. One fateful morning, I was pushed into this corner bar a little before noon, still waiting for the coffee to kick in, assuming I was being treated to a polite morning jam session.
Polite, hell. I was startled to find the smaller-than-Hole in the Wall place sardined to near-immobility with a pack of Cajuns (and tourists struggling to keep pace) who already had about a three-hour head start into party mode, sloshing their beer-filled bodies around what little floor was available for dancing. A steadfastly ignored sign at one end of the club, hanging over a painting of (now deceased) owner Fred Tate read, "This is not a dance hall. If you get hurt dancing, we are not responsible."
They were being whipped into this frenzy by Donald Thibodeaux & Cajun Fever, an appropriately named band set up in the middle of the club. That's the middle, mind you -- not in a corner, not up on a stage, but smack in the middle of the mess, and cranking out smoking Cajun music as loud as their amps could make it. I was not exactly wet behind the ears on this type of music; I had a few CDs of it, and I had seen Beausoleil, Boozoo Chavis, and Buckwheat Zydeco in Austin. But this was different. This was wild. This was real. For the first time, I got a sense of what Yankees at the Broken Spoke must experience; I was definitely no longer on my home turf, and felt an awkward excitement coming on. Off to the side, a radio announcer was sending the proceedings out over 1250 AM frequency, KVPI, as has been done here for 50 years now every Saturday morning at 9am. The blasting accordion, red-hot fiddle player, lightning-quick steel guitarist, and clang-clanging triangle player cast a mesmerizing, dance-inducing trance upon me.
And then it got crazier.
Next, we went to Plaisance, arriving at some festival grounds in a pasture at the end of a narrow country road. It looked like any outdoor folk music festival, until you got out of the car. That's when the racial makeup of the crowd became obvious -- the majority of the attendees were African-American, and young ones at that. If that doesn't catch you by surprise, it should. Go to any blues festival in other states, and see how many blacks are in the crowd. See if any of them are under 40. And questions of race aside, how many young rednecks do you see at an old-time Western swing or bluegrass festival?
Unlike blues elsewhere, Acadiana's black population hasn't turned its back on its traditional music, zydeco. This goes for the young Creoles, as well, with each new generation developing a love for Cajun music's black cousin, modifying it to their modern tastes -- the star this day was a 35-year-old newcomer to the Crawfish Circuit named Beau Jocque, who adds a raw, hip hop blast and funky touch to the more traditional accordion, washboard, and French lyrics. Evidently, although Beau Jocque was then nationally unknown, he had been stirring up the locals for some months now -- they had obviously been waiting for a song titled "Pop That Coochie," a zydeco-ized cover of a 2 Live Crew tune (it's a lot better than one might expect). Hundreds of feet kicked up dirt until the field looked like a Lubbock dust storm.
I wouldn't have believed it possible, but after a meal and brief but much-needed rest, we turned it up yet another notch when I set foot inside my first zydeco dance hall. It was one of those big, decades-old places that you find in the country, like Dessau Hall or Greune Hall. This one was down the road in Lawtell, a club called Richard's (pronounced REE-shards), and Beau Jocque was again on stage. If the crowd at the festival was surprising, this audience was overwhelming. Forget majority black -- we whiteys composed only a tiny handful of the 200-300 dancers.
If my gee-whiz attitude offends our more P.C. readers and gets us some indignant letters, well, so be it -- growing up in a small Texas farm town leaves one with no small amount of cultural baggage, no matter how progressive you become later in life. White people just don't normally walk into big crowds of blacks. Go over to Austin's Eastside, gringo, and see if hanging out in a conjunto bar doesn't give you at least a mild jolt of uncomfortable adrenaline.
Actually, it was a miracle my body could produce any more adrenaline, as I'd been fueled by it all day. But at Richard's, it surged through me again, colliding violently with alcohol, a bass line that could've come from Bootsy Collins, and shoulder-to-shoulder dancers who wouldn't have understood the word "inhibitions" even if you translated it into French.
Towering over this scene was the huge, muscular figure of Beau Jocque tossing around his heavy accordion like a child's toy, exhorting the crowd to do his hedonistic bidding. I walked right up to the stage and stood amidst the reserved tables and stared at him, entranced, as the club literally shook all around me. I must have looked like a big, gawky fool, standing there with my mouth open; but the man was amazing. I could see people out of the corner of my eye snickering at me. Look at the white boy, they must have said. Columbus thinks he's discovered something.
I left stoned out of my mind. But the only substance in my body was the alcohol from a couple of beers. I had one of those buzzes where it seems like the whole world is on fast forward, but this time it was being created by something internal.
Race is, indeed, no small matter in Louisiana. It brings my obscenities from the opening paragraph back around. Drinking beer and dancing at 9am is fucked-up in a good way. Unfortunately, Louisiana has an evil side, too... fucked-up in a bad way.
Cajuns are charming people. Their tourist industry is organic -- it isn't built around a theme park, or even the casinos they recently built. Rather, it's built around their ordinary lives. You don't visit this region to experience a material thing, you go just to hang out with these people and do what they do every weekend. People visit Acadiana specifically because Cajuns are fun people.
Yet, in the blink of an eye, they can transform into something ugly. My friend told me that on a prior trip, he had seen an African-American gentleman, and the white man with him, forced to leave a Cajun bar. If you're white and tell a Cajun that you're heading to a zydeco bar that night, at best, you'll get a strained smile. They may not even be familiar with the bar of which you speak. Possibly, you'll get the response that my friend received: "What do you want to listen to that nigger music for?"
I had one Cajun try to goad me into a conversation on race; I feigned ignorance to cover my discomfort, and acted as though I didn't understand where he was trying to lead me. I wish I could have covered the David Duke signs posted every few miles, too. Don't think for a second that Duke's popularity is anything like misguided working people voting for Pat Buchanan: In Louisiana, Duke people know exactly what they expect from their candidate.
I only bring it up because it's so absurd. The racial wall between Cajuns and Creoles is complete idiocy. Of course, all racism is such, and a native Texan is hardly in any position to lecture anyone about their state's racial problems. But in most places, it's understandable. Most places have major cultural differences between people of different color. I don't hang out with b-boys on East Twelfth Street for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is that I'd look pretty silly.
But in Louisiana, look inside a Cajun dancehall, and you'll find there's a big crowd of people in cowboy hats and cowboy boots, doing this shuffle dance to some guy playing the accordion and singing in French. Then go to the zydeco bar down the street, and you'll find there's a big crowd of people in cowboy hats and cowboy boots, doing this shuffle dance to some guy playing the accordion and singing in French. See the difference?
Yet, when I told a local Creole at Plaisance that I really loved Cajun music, he adamantly corrected me: "No, this music isn't the same thing. This is zydeco." Well, technically, he's right. Modern Cajun leans a bit in the country direction, zydeco incorporates some blues elements. But I think he was trying to emphasize a broader point than that.
One of my favorite places to eat in Acadiana is the Palace Cafe in Opelousas. It's a grand old diner; it was built in 1954, and doesn't appear to have changed so much as a placemat since. I've eaten there every trip. Last year, we had the nicest waitress, a Cajun woman who probably had lived there all her life. We unknowingly came in much too close to their 9pm closing time, and she was tired. Her supervisor told her she could go on home. "No," she said. "They're my customers. I'll stay."
Our destination that night was Slim's Y-Ki-Ki, a legendary zydeco hall which, we were pleasantly surprised to discover, had booked the equally legendary Boozoo Chavis for the evening. I knew it was in Opelousas, but wasn't sure exactly where. So I asked her for directions.
She told us, and then paused for a moment.
"Is... is it okay for you to go there?" she asked. "I mean... do they give you any trouble?"
It wasn't said with even the slightest trace of hatred in her voice. It was genuine, if fearful, curiosity. She was looking at us, but really, she was peering into a world she couldn't possibly dare to explore. We were the door slightly ajar, and she hesitantly peeked inside.
"Yes," I replied, remembering my experience at Richard's. "I've done it before. We had a lot of fun."
"Well," she said, bewildered, perhaps not expecting that answer. "I don't know. I mean, I know they're God's people and all, but.... " Her voice trailed off.
I wish so badly that I had asked her to come with us. The moment was right there. No, of course she wouldn't have come. But she was looking in the door. Maybe it was just for one heartbeat, but she was looking in... looking inside her heart, looking over to the other side of the wall, and wondering if everything she'd ever been told about "them" had been a lie. In my more idealistic moments, I fantasize that she would have come with us that night.
Then she could have experienced what Boozoo Chavis gave me that night... a high that no drug in the world could match. n
Lee Nichols plays Cajun and zydeco music every Tuesday morning, 10-11am, on KOOP (91.7 FM).