Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1998
There wasn't a great deal of music in Louisiana in its earliest days. Musical
instruments did not appear in Louisiana records until 1780, the year a legal
succession mentions a fiddle. A 1785 Spanish government report mentions a man
named Préjean who played the fiddle and clarinet.
His may have been the only clarinet in the colony, but it is likely that
there were other fiddles. Almost all music in early Louisiana was probably
played on a fiddle. When there were no instruments available -- or during Lent
when instrumental music was banned -- the Acadians made music with their voices,
sometimes singing words, sometimes mimicking instruments, and keeping time by
stomping their feet and clapping their hands.
In old Acadie, most of the music was rooted in medieval France, and
was of two sorts: Instrumental music meant for dancing, or ballads sung a
capella to tell a story. At the time of the deportation from Canada in
1755, "... the only instruments with which (the Acadians) left were their own
voices along with the rich tradition of French ballads and dance tunes,"
according to a study by Sharon A. Doucet, published in the Journal of Popular
Culture.
Once they settled in Louisiana in the late 1700s, Acadians held bals de
maison (house dances), in private homes where furniture was cleared to make
room for dancing. A lot of noise competed with the music made by a fiddle or
two, so fiddlers bore down hard on their bows to get as much
sound as they could. When they sang, it was in a shrill, strident voice that
could be heard above the din, and that voice and heavy bowstroke became a part
of the distinctive sound of early Cajun music.
The Acadians continued to sing some of the old songs that they knew in Acadie, songs that reflected not only their own French and Canadian roots, but the Celtic, Irish, and Scottish influences of Nova Scotia. Helen Guillot of Lafayette, niece of legendary Cajun musician Joe Falcon, can still sing some of those songs, which she says were handed down to her from her grandmother, Odile Falcon, who learned them from her grandfather, Drozin Miguez, who learned them in Canada. According to research in the 1970s by Jeanne and Robert Gilmore, some of the dozen or so songs handed down to Mrs. Guillot are 400 or 500 years old. Mrs. Guillot says that they were usually sung a capella, and that they were seldom performed publicly when she began playing guitar with Joe Falcon's band in the 1930s.
Once they were settled in Louisiana, the Acadians also created music, much of
it showing the influence of their new neighbors Spaniards, black people from
Africa and from Haiti, Anglos coming across the Mississippi River from the hills
of Kentucky and Tennessee, Germans who settled along la Côte des Allemands,
and, to a lesser degree, Native Americans (who were by then either
disappearing from the Louisiana culture, or were assimilated).
The Acadians learned jigs and hoedowns and reels from their American
neighbors and added them to a repertoire that already included polkas, waltzes,
and other dances.
Doucet found, "Perhaps the oldest surviving form of music in the Cajun
repertoire is the unaccompanied ballad, many examples of which can be traced
verbatim to Quebec and France. The fiddle, being versatile yet portable, soon
surfaced as the favorite instrument, especially for dance music. An intricate
style of twin fiddling evolved, with one fiddle playing the melody and a second
one echoing the tune in a lower octave or playing a rhythmic harmony. Some of
the earliest recordings of Cajun music, made by Dennis McGee and Sadie Courville
for the Vocalion label in 1929, illustrate excellent examples of this style."
In his essay, "Acculturation in Cajun Folk Music," LSU folklorist Harry Oster
also notes the American influence. "When settlers from the southern mountains,
inheritors of the tradition of the British Isles, made their way into the Cajun
country, they often brought with them Anglo-Saxon and southern mountain songs.
Some of these found so much favor with the Cajuns they translated them into the
French idiom. Some followed the original texts quite closely with little or no
modification to make the French words rhyme. For example, 'A Paper of Pins'
became 'Un Paquet d'Epingles' and 'Billy Boy,' 'Billy
Garçon.'"
Mrs. Guillot estimates that half of the 40 or 50 songs in the repertoire of
Joe Falcon's band in the 1930s were songs "changed from the English."
Practically all of them were sung in French, she says, though from time to time
English lyrics would be used. She says that Falcon's wife, Cléoma, had begun
translating English standards into French in the 1920s.
As Louisiana French musicians began to change and adapt the old music, some
of the most influential musicians were black Creoles who introduced elernent of
the blues into Cajun songs. It was about this time that the diatonic accordion
began to gain popularity in Louisiana and it also transformed the repertoire.
The accordion was loud enough to reach above the noise of a house full of
dancers and durable enough to be hauled around. It drowned out the fiddles and
pushed them to second place in the instrumental order.
Doucet tells us, "(The accordion) also had the advantage of being able to play both the melody and the bass accompaniment at the same time. The diatonic accordion played by the Cajuns had the disadvantage, however of being limited to one or two keys, similar to a harmonica. Thus the unlimited range of the accompanying fiddle was relegated to the keys in which the accordion could play. Some of the intricacy of the earlier twin fiddle music was lost, but a distinctive combination style soon developed, with the accordion and the fiddle taking turns playing the melody. The guitar was added for rhythmic accompaniment and the triangle (tit fer) or washboard (frottoir) for percussion."
According to Barry Jean Ancelet's book, "Cajun Music: Origins and
Developments," "Musicians such as Adam Fontenot and Amédé Ardoin developed new
ways of making music with the newly acquired accordion. Ardoin's innovative,
syncopated style made him a favorite at both black and white dances, but it was
his powerful and highly creative singing that attracted the attention of early
recording scouts. He was among the first group of Louisiana French musicians to
record."
Joe Falcon, who played the accordion, and his wife Cléoma, who accompanied
him on guitar, were the first to record a Cajun song, Allons Lafayette,
in 1928.
The second Cajun recording, La valse criminelle on one side and
Hé Mom on the other, was also made in 1928 by Leo Soileau and Mayeus
LaFleur. Hé Mombecame a huge hit because of its poignant lyrics in
which LaFleur, an orphan, asks why his mother never comes to see him. The news
coverage of LaFleur's murder on Oct. 28, 1928, in a Basile dance hall only nine
days after the record was made also contributed to the song's strong reception.
Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin and Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee made several
recordings shortly after that.
"These early recordings ... were immensely popular and influential," Ancelet
says. "Because (Amédé Ardoin) recorded alone in (the 1930s), his creative genius
was unbridled and he composed songs which quickly became part of the classical
Cajun repertoire. His percussive accordion style also influenced the parallel
development of zydeco music."
For the first time, too, recordings began to create "standard" versions of
old Cajun songs. Before records were made, there were no "standard" versions.
Each musician played each song the way he'd heard it, or the way he felt like
playing (or singing) it that night. That was not always the same way he played
it the night before, and he might play it differently the next night, depending
upon mood and whim.
Revon Reed, one of the first to advocate the preservation of Louisiana French
music, explained it this way in a 1974 article in Acadiana Profile magazine:
"Cajun music has been transmitted by ear from one generation to another. The
words and song titles are literally revised from year to year to convey the
particular current reality felt by the singer. There are a variety of different
titles for the same tune. Sometimes, too, the meter or the beat is revised to
suit the mood of the player or crowd. A waltz becomes a two-step, as in the song
'Allons à Lafayette.' Others, like the Cajun version of 'Home
Sweet Home,' start off as a waltz and suddenly double or triple in beat and
become a fast-moving two-step."
But changing lyrics is also a relatively new thing, because lyrics are also
relatively new. Reed also explains, "Until some 50 years ago, Cajun musicians
had few lyrics or songs to accompany themselves on the fiddle or accordion. Much
of the Cajuns' singing accompaniment was simply a cry or yip every so often.
These musicians would yell out their emotions rather than sing about it. Not to
be confused with square dance cries, the Cajun cry simply connotes an ad lib of
a feeling, sometimes sad and heart-rending; other times, gay, exuberant, and
sassy."
Zydeco comes from the same roots as Cajun music, but as recordings introduced
outside influences to the south Louisiana culture, black musicians began to
become even more influenced by the blues and developed a distinctive sound, at
first called juré or la-la which were the precursors of
zydeco. Juré (from the French for "testify") is described in John
Broven's book, "South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous," as
"Louisiana French (field hollers) accompanied only be improvised percussion
(such as footstomping or hand-clapping) and vocal counterpoints." It was also
sometimes called bazar, probably for the church socials where the music
was often made. According to Michael Tisserand, writer of "The Kingdom of
Zydeco, La-la, sometimes called pic-nic, is an accordion-based
music heard just after World War II. It evolved in the 1950s to what we now
recognize as the zydeco sound .
At the same time, white musicians became more influenced by Hank Williams and
other country performers and by the Texas swing style of music of Bob Wills.
These styles and lyrics that until then had often been extemporaneous or, at
least, quite flexible, became "fixed" as more people heard the same version of
the song on widely distributed records. Cajun music also became simpler during
this era because the accordion, still less flexible than the fiddle, was
becoming the instrument of choice for Cajun dance bands. Cajun music had by then
moved from house parties to dance halls and, in those days before amplification,
the accordion could be played loud enough to be heard above the hubbub. But what
it brought in volume, it lost in finesse, and the dances themselves were
simplified as a result of the simplified music.
"Until the turn of the twentieth century," Ancelet tells us, "there was a
wide variety of dance styles which included Old World waltzes, contredanses,
varsoviennes, polkas, mazurkas, and cotillions, as well as two-steps,
one-steps, baisse-bas, la-las, and breakdowns developed to accompany
the contemporary musical styles. The simplification of musical styles ...
simplified 'dance styles as well, leaving the waltz and the two-step as the
major steps."
In the 1930s, radios began to appear in many homes, and Cajun musicians began
to imitate the music they heard. On one hand, local performers were able to make
radio appearances and enhance their own popularity. On the other, they began to
hear more music from elsewhere and incorporate it into their repertoire. Some
performers directly translated popular country hits into French, others began to
imitate the styles and rhythms of popular songs when they wrote new music.
That, and other influences contributed to changes in the lifestyle of French Louisiana, and with it, the music.
Ancelet tells us this: "By the mid-1930s, Cajuns were reluctantly, though
inevitably becoming Americanized. America, caught in the 'melting pot' ideology,
tried to homogenize its diverse ethnic and cultural elements. ... National
leaders like Teddy Roosevelt ... insisted that there was no such thing as a
'hyphenated American' and urged members of various ethnic and national groups to
conform to America or leave it.
Oster wrote in 1958, "During the past thirty years ... the strength of the
French influences (in south Louisiana) has been waning because of a variety of
sources. When the public schools came into general existence many of them
forbade the speaking of French on the premises, to force the children to learn
English. The widespread building of roads during the nineteen-thirties brought
these communities into contact with the rest of the world. The rise of the
phonograph, radio, motion pictures, and most recently television has had the
double effect of changing the tastes of this traditional people in the direction
of conformity and substituting mass-produced, homogeneous entertainment for the
old folk dances and songs. In addition, the return of veterans of World War II
after years elsewhere, the discovery of oil on many Cajun farms,
industrialization, and the consequent influx of executives and workers from
other states all have upset the traditional agricultural and fishing way of
life."
The Cajun music scene in the mid 1930s reflected these social changes.
Musicians abandoned the traditional style in favor of new sounds heavily
influenced by hillbilly music and western swing. The once dominant accordion
disappeared abruptly, partly because the instruments were no longer available
from wartime Germany, partly because of changes in the music itself.
As songs from Texas and Tennessee swept the country, string bands that
imitated the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and copied Bill Monroe's
high lonesome sound sprouted across south Louisiana. Among the early leaders in
this few trend were the Hackberry Ramblers who recorded new, lilting versions of
what had begun to emerge in the classic Cajun repertoire, such as Jolie
Blonde.
By the late 1940s, electric wires had networked Acadiana. The wail of the
electric steel guitar could be added to the traditional instrumentation but,
more importantly, instruments could be attached to amplifiers.
According to Ancelet's account, amplification also "made it unnecessary for
fiddlers to bear down with the bow in order to be heard; therefore many
developed a lighter, lifting touch, producing an airier ... sound which was
quite different from the intense, mournful earlier style."
According to Doucet, "The old-fashioned, 'traditional' Cajun music was in
danger of being forgotten until the young Iry LeJeune began recording ... in
1948. He revived many of the songs which had been composed by earlier black
accordion players like Amédé Ardoin. His music surged to popularity and was soon
imitated by other bands. The accordion had returned."
By 1958, Oster could write, "The changes that took place in the Cajuns'
choice of music (as outside influences came to the region beginning in the
1930s) constitute a particularly interesting example of acculturation. ... As
Cajun society is in a highly transitional state, one can still find music
representing the three most important stages of development of the Cajun
community. The music now (1958) being performed includes (1) the folk music of
seventeenth-century France, still circulating in a relatively pure ,form; (2)
hybrid folk songs which combine lyrics in Cajun French with elements from one or
more outside sources (southern mountain folksongs, commercial popular music of
the country-and-western type, an Negro folk music of the blues variety) and (3)
current popular music of the time."
Today, there are many sounds in Cajun and Creole music, ranging from a combination of Cajun, blues, rock and roll, and other elements, to much more traditional melodies. Reed spoke of Cajun music in 1974, but his words are equally true about the Creole music that comes from the same Louisiana French roots: "Cajun music is certainly the soul of Acadiana. It is the archaic sound of the fiddles, the accordions, the triangles, and the spoons. Add the guitars and the drums to those traditional instruments and you've got a wild, exciting evening to look forward to. Accompany the instrumentals with a song, a little foot-stomping and clapping -- and that's a Cajun soir6e in southwest Louisiana. It is a sound that expresses human needs, wants, desires, love, joy, laughter and tears -- the living experience of a people who refuse to let their heritage be engulfed in the Melting Pot of Americana."