Abstract
The work being done at Fred’s Lounge to preserve and promote the French-language music of Southwest Louisiana came at a time when academic and governmental interests were focused on discovering, preserving, and promoting the art and music of regional cultures. The work of intellectuals and the interests of community culture boosters came together in an ongoing conversation over three decades in which federal folklorists like Alan Lomax and Ralph Rinzler were collecting music to serve the culture interests of the nation, while academic music collectors like Harry Oster and commercial collectors like Chris Strachwitz went over the same ground in the interests of the state, the university and the record label. Government musicologists, record label executives, and folklore academics had very different ideas about the relationship between folk music, identity, and the larger culture.
Creole musician Danny Poullard, quoted in Acadiana: Louisiana’s Historic Cajun Country, Carl A. Brasseaux (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 161. Poullard was often asked about the differences between Cajun and Creole music. This was his (exasperated) response.
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Notes
- 1.
Charles Seeger, quoted in Bendix, In Search of Authenticity, 151.
- 2.
The American Folklife Preservation Act S.1591, March 20, 1969.
- 3.
Times-Picayune, June 14, 1953, 37.
- 4.
Times-Picayune, June 14, 1953.
- 5.
Paul Tate, Letter to Gus Cranow, February 1, 1974. Ralph Rinzler Papers Fieldwork Box 4 Louisiana, Correspondence 1–3, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Washington, DC.
- 6.
Richard Deshotels, personal correspondence with author.
- 7.
Reed, Lâche Pas, 111.
- 8.
Harry Oster, “Une ‘Tite Poule Grasse ou la Fille Ainée (A Little Fat Chicken or The Eldest Daughter): A Comparative Analysis of Cajun and Creole Mardi Gras Songs,” Journal of American Folklore, Volume 114, Number 452, Spring 2001, 205–206.
- 9.
R. Brasseaux, Cajun Breakdown, 43.
- 10.
Sexton, “Ritualized Inebriation,” 31–32.
- 11.
Nicholas Spitzer, “Zydeco and French Mardi Gras: Creole Identity and Performance Genres in Rural French Louisiana” (PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 1986): 431.
- 12.
Nicholas R. Spitzer, “Mardi Gras in L’Anse de ’Prien Noir: A Creole Community Performance in Rural French Louisiana” in Creoles of Color, The Gulf South, ed. James H. Dorman (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1996), 87–125.
- 13.
Spitzer, “French Mardi Gras,” 432.
- 14.
Barry Jean Ancelet, “Mardi Gras and the Media: Who’s Fooling Whom?” in Mardi Gras, Gumbo, and Zydeco: Readings in Louisiana Culture, ed. Marcia G. Gaudet et al (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 4.
- 15.
“Folksongs of the Louisiana Acadians,” liner notes, 16.
- 16.
World War II Honor List, Louisiana, 1946, National Archives 305293.
- 17.
R. Brasseaux, Cajun Breakdown, 190–191.
- 18.
Broven, South to Louisiana, 267.
- 19.
Cheryl Brauner, “A Study of the Newport Folk Festival and the Newport Folk Foundation” (M.A. thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1986): 270.
- 20.
Harry Oster, “Negro French Spirituals of Louisiana,” Journal of the International Folk Music Council, Vol. 4 (1962): 166.
- 21.
“Folksongs of the Louisiana Acadians,” liner notes, 2.
- 22.
“Folksongs of the Louisiana Acadians,” liner notes.
- 23.
Barry Jean Ancelet, “Lomax in Louisiana: Trials and Triumph,” Folklife in Louisiana, http://www.louisianafolklife.org/.
- 24.
Most famously covered by Little Richard in 1957.
- 25.
Joshua Clegg Caffery’s Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Recordings (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013) provides a comprehensive and learned account of the Lomax’s Louisiana recordings, including Alsatian ballads sung by the Hoffpauirs, whose ancestors were from the border of northeastern France and Germany, and a number of songs that also existed in the French-Canadian Maritime provinces. See also Joshua Caffery, Folklife Lecture on Louisiana Music, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, December 11, 2013.
- 26.
Cohen, Alan Lomax, Assistant in Charge, 253.
- 27.
Times-Picayune, April 17, 1938, 32.
- 28.
Ancelet, “Lomax in Louisiana,” Folklife in Louisiana, March 8, 2018.
- 29.
Caffery, Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana, 264.
- 30.
Harry Oster, “Evolution of Folk-Lyric Records,” JEMF Quarterly, Volume XIV No. 49 (Spring 1978): 148–149.
- 31.
Sigal, “Jambalaya,” 115–116.
- 32.
Ancelet, Cajun and Creole Music Makers, 85.
- 33.
Savoy, Cajun Music, 326.
- 34.
Ancelet, Creole and Cajun Music Makers, 79.
- 35.
Tisserand, Kingdom of Zydeco, 17.
- 36.
Chris Strachwitz, Folk Music Occasional, 23.
- 37.
Brauner, “Newport Folk Festival,” 140.
- 38.
Tisserand, Kingdom of Zydeco, 12.
- 39.
Savoy, Cajun Music, 350.
- 40.
Broven, South to Louisiana, 119.
- 41.
Chris Strachwitz, interview with author.
- 42.
Chris Strachwitz, “Zydeco Music—i.e., French Blues,” The American Folk Music Occasional (New York: Oak Publications, 1970): 22–23.
- 43.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 18.
- 44.
Gunnar Myrdal, “Selection from An American Dilemma (1944),” in The American Intellectual Tradition, Volume II: 1865 to the Present, sixth edition, ed. David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 277.
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Peknik, P. (2019). “It’s All French Music”: Patrons on the Trail. In: French Louisiana Music and Its Patrons. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97424-8_4
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