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AcadianaCasts Presents:
AcadianaCasts Presents:
Unearthing the Roots of Cajun Tradition with Dr. Barry Ancelet's Insights
Step into the vibrant world of Louisiana with Dr. Barry Ancelet, a crusader for Cajun culture, as we celebrate the stories, humor, and traditions that stitch this community together. Dr. Ancelet, revered for his dedication to Louisiana's rich oral history, takes us on a journey from his academic roots to the flourishing of Festivals Acadiens et Créoles, which ensures the heartbeat of Cajun heritage continues to thrive. As we navigate through the narrative landscape, expect to find yourself chuckling as our conversation uncovers the wry wit and social customs embedded in Cajun French that prove laughter is a language unto itself.
From the charming intricacies of Cajun and Creole identities to the stirring evolution of their musical traditions, this episode paints a picture of a culture in constant motion. We trace the Creole influences that span continents, dissect the Cajun accordion's unique sound, and marvel at how recent immigrant communities add yet more threads to Louisiana's cultural tapestry. With Dr. Ancelet as our guide, we marvel at the resilience of French-speaking youth and their bold steps to safeguard a bilingual society's practical and cultural benefits, offering a glimpse into the future of Louisiana's cultural expressions.
Finally, we bring it home with a garden lesson that's as unexpected as it is enlightening, showcasing the humor and adaptability that define Cajun and Creole communities. This yarn not only rounds off our exploration but also plants a seed of wisdom about life's unpredictable nature. So tune in and prepare for an auditory feast that celebrates the spirit of Cajun and Creole life—a spirit as enduring as the swamps and bayous of Louisiana itself.
AcadianaCasts Presents: Dr. Barry Ancelet
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Thank you to our sponsor, Cajun Comic Relief. Visit cajuncomicrelief.org to learn more about the 33rd Annual show, March 9th 2024 at the Heymann Center.
"AcadianaCasts Presents" is the Flagship Podcast of the ACADIANACASTS NETWORK. Lafayette, LA based host, Carter Simoneaux talks with entertainers, business owners, athletes, chefs, and more - anyone who can help tell the story of Acadiana.
If you want to watch this episode on YouTube, check out our channel!
On today's episode of a Kady and a cast presents. We have the great dr Barry on sale. If you are familiar with Cajun or Creole culture at all or interested in it, you probably have heard or seen this man. He helped start Festival of Cajun. So back in the 70s, I believe we're gonna get into you know how he got into the work that he's so well known for part of the reason why Cajun culture is so alive today in South Louisiana and the world. For those who don't know, you know he's just one of the most well-known linguistic anthropologists, has a doctorate in anthropology, I think, linguistics, in linguistics. So we're gonna get into that. And also, of course, cajun comedy. This episode is brought to you by Cajun comic relief. We'll have a more ad on that later on in the episode we'll talk about that, but also kind of talk about the kind of its roots with dr Osley here today. So, with that being said, hit the music. Glad to have you.
Speaker 2:I'm Carter Siminoe, host of a KDN a cast presents. Go to a kdnacastcom for more locally sourced podcast from the buzz arm. Better, better business with Chris Babin, the butter butter, better business bureau. And law. Have mercy with Chaz Roberts, personal injury lawyer here in town and the tea with Ben Powers of developing Lafayette. We got some great content coming out this year for you like, comment, subscribe. It's the best way to support us. But with that being said, let's get to the man of the hour. Dr Osley, thanks so much for joining us here. I was talking to you a little bit before about you know I was taking kind of a deep dive into your history real quick. You studied French at USL correct, got a degree in that and then went to Indiana where you quickly got turned your masters from French into folklore how?
Speaker 3:what was that change? I didn't even know that there was such a thing as studying folklore until I got there. But uh, yeah, I, by the time I got to Indiana, I had already figured out that I wasn't. It wasn't, you know, french, french that I was interested in. It was this French and the, the, the expressive culture of this area, that was, was stories that were told in songs. It was sung in French.
Speaker 3:And so I, in my first semester in Indiana, I was taking courses on, you know, french literature from the 18th century, whatever, and that wasn't it, I mean. So I was gonna regroup and come home and I had a, a card from Ralph Rinsler, who had helped us put together the first concert that became festivals, like I did, I think, eventually, 1974, he said oh, you're going to Indiana, you know, say hello to my friend Henry glassy. I didn't know Henry glassy from Adam, but Henry glassy, turns out, was one of the most preeminent world-round folklorists, you know, and he was at Indiana University. And so I, one day I was walking down the street I said, yeah, I need to go and do that and say hello, because next time I see Ralph, I don't want to have to say oh, I didn't do it, you know. So I went in and I introduced myself. I said uh, is there some guy named Henry glassy here? Well, that would like be cool.
Speaker 3:Going to the. You know be like going to the French University and saying is there some guy named Levi Strauss here? Like he was that big, he was huge, and it would have been like going to Princeton and saying is there some guy named Albert Einstein here? Right, and so I heard a chuckle from behind the door and he said who's that? And the secretary said says his name was Barry. I said from Louisiana. He said, oh, send him in. So I went in and start talking to him and he said you're from Louisiana. You know, do a ball far, said I do. He said oh well, you know, I was telling him about my frustrations with the, with the, you know the straight-up French literary program, and he said but sounds like maybe this is where you need to be.
Speaker 3:And I said you, okay, you know transferred and my whole life changed yeah, and the lives of lots of people around South Louisiana changed because of that one of the things that they offered me was the opportunity to take a look at exactly what I was interested in, which was, you know, the stories and songs and expressive culture from in French, in Louisiana, and so I started doing fieldwork collecting. We weren't in the library, you know, we weren't. We weren't present too much in the library back then, so I started doing some fieldwork. I've got a tape recorder and was going around recording.
Speaker 3:I had heard stories and songs all my life. My father was a barber, my mother was from a, you know, very rich storytelling family from Paco, yeah, between Arneville and Leonville, where they were bootleggers, and so there was all kinds of stories. I had heard stories around the barbecue pit, in a fishing boat, at a bar, at you know wherever, and so I knew they were out there and I went out and started recording him and and that's what I did, my dissertation on not look, it was tough work, but somebody had to do it.
Speaker 3:I had to go and spend time at barbecue pits and you know, and and in boats, and poor you.
Speaker 2:I know right bars, listening to stories so yeah, because there was a lack of written material and so you had to really talk to people to get oral history.
Speaker 3:This archive that you built exactly. The only way to get that stuff into the libraries was to first capture it, you know, by recording it, and then transcribe it and then turn it into print. So you know, now there are a lot of, there are quite a few books on who we are and what we do, and you know stories we tell and songs we sing, houses, we build cuisine. But you know, back then there weren't many and stuff we we very quickly figured the only way to get some books upon that shelf was to do it ourselves yeah, I mean, I'm kind of doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:I'm archiving, so I call myself a fat idiot more often than actually finding out real information. But I really, I really resonated, resonated with me the you just go want to talk to people on a microphone, and that that's kind of where it all started. Yeah, building up this collection of information and history.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went to, you know, up and down by Tash and in the prairies and in in the marshes and and the other side of the basin and Pier Park area and bashery, just, you know, trying to find as many people I could who it would be willing to tell me so, and sometimes it was really interesting. Man, like I went to, I had heard from some people where I had been recording before and by Pier Park, that there was this guy and this old man in Bayou, soda, elop the road, who didn't speak English and who, who would told stories and saw, I didn't have a way to contact him, right, I didn't you know him a phone number, anything, so I just walked up, cold, knocked on the door, said hey, my name is Barry Osley, I heard you tell stories and he said and I was speaking in French to him and he was so excited to have somebody who was willing to listen.
Speaker 3:He grabbed me by the shirt and said come on in. You know, and that happened to be over and over again people were so eager to to share their stories and songs with somebody who seemed to be interested because yet, you know, back in the 70s, a lot of that was fading and and people kind of discounted it. It was old people stuff, and it was stuff that was that we were getting away from. Well, turns out that that past and all that culture from that past was a perfect fuel for what became my generation's counterculture movement in the 70s, you know, trying to resist being swallowed up in some sort of plastic culture. We figured oh, you know what we have. We have us, we have our past, and all we need to do is discover it and value it and venerate it and and we can make a protest against, you know, sliding into big Americana and I want to get into kind of the storytelling and how that relates to Cajun comic relief.
Speaker 2:But I was listening to a podcast and you were explaining what was the name of the concert before it was officially Festival Cajun it was a tribute to Cajun Creole music right, and you guys had the first concert at Blackham Coliseum and I've seen some pictures.
Speaker 3:March 26, 1974 that's my birthday raining cats and dogs. There was a foot and a half of water on Johnson Street. We had no idea if anybody was gonna come and the place filled yes, what's the capacity of it and what was it? Yeah, I think past me was 8,200, 8,400. We had at least 10,000 in there at least. And something you said, standing room, only about standing up around and and amazing first of all that surprised me a lot.
Speaker 3:But then then, before the first group started a second way, another wave came in and filled up all the standing room and I thought what happened? Well, it turns out somebody had said it was more dangerous to have those people outside, you know, in the rain, when it was thundering and lighting. So they said, well, just let him in. And the fire marshal came up to me. He said what happened? I said I don't know. He said well, I'm not gonna shut you down because my bit, my dad's playing in third group.
Speaker 2:But what I love about it is that you saw in the crowd. Obviously there was some older folk, but so many young faces oh, yeah, yeah and that kind of just really it was.
Speaker 3:It was that that counterculture movement right, I was talking about. You know, people were realizing well, you know, we have something of value that nobody else has, and it's us yeah, and that is resonates to this day, or you know, we're kind of talking off air before this.
Speaker 2:You know people claiming to be Cajun because they went where it really comes from. They just want to be a part of something that's different than you know, the rest of America exactly of course there's semantics of what that actually means, that we can get into that later.
Speaker 3:But one of the biggest elements of the Cajun culture is storytelling, as you have already said it's also one of the most problematic to to program because you know music, singing, even singing and and playing music. People can appreciate it, even if they don't understand the lyrics. But storytelling is telling you a story, me, if you know. If you don't understand the language, you don't stand French, you're not gonna laugh at the end of the story and story tells not gonna be compelled to tell you another one.
Speaker 2:And how well do those stories translate to to English.
Speaker 3:Most of them actually do, because most of them are situational comedy, but there are some that are based on wordplay that don't hmm, sure, puns, that kind of thing, but but most of them are situational.
Speaker 3:And one of the things that I've learned along the way, collecting all these stories and studying them really deeply, you know, what I did was I I established a collection and I started to think, okay, where these things come from. Why do we tell in these stories? And some of them were obviously old, and so I was able to trace some of them back to France, some of them back to Africa, some of them to the Caribbean, and some of them through Akkadiz, them through Quebec to out to France, so it I started realizing whether there's an interesting pedigree here, you know. But one of the things that I noticed also studying this, this stuff you know pretty deeply, the same as true, that meet the song lyrics to the some of the older ballots. You know I've traced some of them back to the 12, 13, 14th century in France. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 3:So one of the things I learned was that the sense of humor in particular. Not all stories were funny, but the ones that were seem to have a pretty consistent strategy. And it had to do with tickling power, it had to do with shaking, shaking this system, you know, just jarring things a little bit. Like. You know, we humor like Carnival itself, is not designed to actually overthrow society. It's just, you know, just it tags. It says hey, just in case you thought you were getting away with it, we see what's going on and we make fun of it. You know, and one of some of the things that are characteristic about Carnival-esque humor, that so characterizes our sense of humor here is the little guy who wins. The little guy who wins not because of his strength but because of his wit. He's smart, he's funny, he's clever and he even, he even gets out of trouble, even if it's at its own expense.
Speaker 3:I relate to that like one one story was about this little guy who was in a bar. I heard this from Felix Richard. This little guy was in a bar and this he he had not gone out for most of his youth because he was concerned about having enough money and being established enough to get married and he didn't want to, you know, start courting until he and his dad told him one time. He said, look man, you better get out there. You know life is gonna pass you up. You know, all the time you get out there, be too old, nobody, none of these girls gonna be interested in you.
Speaker 3:So he finally went, but he had a brand new buggy, brand new horse. I mean he was, you know, fit out, fit it out, and he was really proud of his horse and he was knew that in those old dance halls back then people played a lot of practical jokes and so he didn't want anything happening to his horse and buggy. He tied it up to a light post in the lot, went in, started dancing, drinking, go outside, check on his buggy and horse dancing and drinking outside, check on his horse and buggy. Then after a while he started, you know, got carried away with dancing and drinking and forgot about his buggy for a little while and horse. Finally somebody comes up to him, taps him on shoulder, says hey, man, you ought to see what somebody did to this horse and buggy tied up to the light place. That's my horse and buggy. What happened? He said somebody painted it bright green. Said what she went outside and he, looking sure enough, his horse and buggy were spray painted white, bright green.
Speaker 3:Oh, he got so mad A little bit of guy Got so mad he rushes back into dance hall. He starts waving his arms, stops the music, gets up on the table, starts beating his chest. The sorry so and so painted my horse and buggy out, said I wish he would show himself because I got something to tell him. And this big, huge guy comes out shirt open. You know, hairy chest, I'm the one who painted your horse and buggy green. What you got to tell me Said well she's ready for a second coat.
Speaker 3:So even at his own expense he gets out of trouble. More often he actually wins, the little guy in this kind of in the sense of the strategy of humor. And the other thing I love is there was nothing sacred, no sacred spaces.
Speaker 2:They weren't worried about cancel culture.
Speaker 3:Deathbed, wedding bed, confessional church no sacred spaces. Courthouse no sacred spaces. If you found yourself in what would be ordinarily considered a sacred space, something chaotic is going to happen to up in the whole thing and turn it inside out.
Speaker 2:I mean it's pretty reflective of the human experience. Yeah, absolutely Nothing, truly.
Speaker 3:Give you an example. So this old man was on his deathbed, not much time left. Family was gathered at the house ready to see him. Often he's up in his room. He could smell a gumbo. He sees one of his grandkids go by in front of the door. He says hey, come over here and see I smell a gumbo. He says yeah, grandma's making a gumbo. He said well, boy, I sure did love your grandma's gumbo All my life. I loved her gumbo. Could go down and tell her to send me up a bowl so I can have a bowl of gumbo before I go? Kid goes down, comes back with nothing in his hands. Grandfather says well, where's my gumbo? The kid says grandma says you can't have any. She says after the funeral, so nothing's safe. Yeah right, nothing's safe.
Speaker 2:And also there's humor in some of the vernacular, Like fade-o-do means go to sleep, right? Because well, I'll let you explain it.
Speaker 3:Well, they actually used to put their babies to sleep in the back room and a lot of those babies were little. Mothers would go out there and nurse their baby to her and go dance, and they were all trying hard to keep those babies to sleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they'd be sleeping in the room while the adults are partying, having a good time.
Speaker 3:Because, if you think about it, our culture was very deeply anchored in the family experience. That was a really healthy thing to do. The whole family went together. One of the things that happened at that concert was we saw grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles and mom and dad and the kids all coming together. By the 1970s they were doing less and less together, but they got to do this together. One of the things that happened was, typically you could only hear Cajun and Creole music in Zydeco in a bar, and yet so you had to be of legal drinking as you get in. So the kids got excluded and they couldn't see. The kids couldn't fall in love with the music because they didn't have heard it.
Speaker 3:But once we started programming the music in such a way that the whole family could come, that's what happened. Wow. And so now you've got kids with their elbows up on the stage looking up at this man playing music and saying, hey, that's cool man, I want to be, that's ours and I want to be up there one day. That's what happened to Steve Riley. Right, we have a photograph of a young Steve Riley watching Mark Savoy and Dewey Balfoy play up on the stage in Gerard Park and then, a few years later, we have a picture of Steve Riley playing into some other kid down there saying I want to be up there.
Speaker 2:There's a picture of me when I was a kid at Festival Caldean, at one of the barricades looking out watching Steve Riley. There you go. So maybe one day I'll be on one of those stages, but I definitely need to beef up and learn all my French Before I go off on the next thing, real quick. What's the best way to get into learning Cajun French?
Speaker 3:I guess, speaking with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's no easy way, but the best thing is immersion. So, as much as you can figure out how to immerse yourself and it requires a decision that's not easy to make initially you have to just decide. I'm going to do this. I'm going to pick some people who speak French, and when I see them, when I'm with them, I'm going to deliberately only speak French. It's hard to do, because most people have affective relationships with people already established in English, and so it's hard to switch gears, but it's the only way to do it. There are some programs where you can learn. There's some great immersion programs around where you can at least prime the pump, get it going, but then after that you've got to make it operational.
Speaker 2:You have to use it, work. It's hard, it's hard.
Speaker 3:It's like playing guitar or fiddle or anything else you have to work at it.
Speaker 2:I tell all my friends because I play guitar and they say, hey, I really want to learn guitar. I'm like, well, be ready to suck for a while and here's one.
Speaker 3:Or some people say how do I become a writer? And I always say here's a pen.
Speaker 2:Do it, Do us do it. Yeah, my whole thing was like I wanted to get into podcasting. How do I do it?
Speaker 3:Do it.
Speaker 2:Sitting in front of a microphone. Yeah, exactly so. Cajun Comic Relief is March 9. It's the 33rd annual Cajun Comic Relief. Kind of went down during the COVID times a little bit, but it's coming back. We're juvenated for trying to get the older crowd back into it but also introduce it to a new generation.
Speaker 3:One of the things I'm really excited about this year is that they've gotten Murray Conk and AJ Smith back among the others who are going to be there, and those guys represent a really tradition-based humor In Murray Conk case. He is the son-in-law of Felix Richard, who I recorded for hours and hours, and hours he's the one who told me that story about the green mare, the green horse.
Speaker 3:And so Murray was in that house and paid attention to the humor he was hearing and experiencing. So his sense of comedy, his sense of humor, is deeply rooted in the tradition. So is AJ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are certain beats within the style of comedy. And you were kind of hitting some of those earlier when you were telling the joke. But I've seen videos of the crowds from past years and I would only love to see that come back again. But what is it about this style of comedy that resonates with people down here? Our people love?
Speaker 3:to see power shaken up With policemen or priests or bishop or whoever's supposed to be in charge. Just shake them up, take them down a peg. That we love that. Take a little wind out the sails. Yeah, that's right, and it just reminds everybody that we're all human, we have foibles, everybody can make a mistake, and it has a lovely healthy leveling effect, I think.
Speaker 2:No, it makes sense.
Speaker 3:It's really healthy to be able to laugh at yourself. Oh yeah, not necessarily in a self-deprecating way, that's not necessary, but we can laugh. It's like a comedian I heard one time saying are you laughing at me? He said, no, I'm laughing with you. I'm laughing near you.
Speaker 2:Laughter just has this natural scientific thing on our brains that releases dopamine. It's a healing thing.
Speaker 3:It's a healing thing, which is one of the reasons why the comic reliefs model of a laugh till it helps is perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this year love of people nonprofit is going to be the benefactor benefit. I don't know Words are hard, even English, but the money raised will be going to love of people's fight against Parkinson's and dementia, something that is kind of.
Speaker 3:So a few years ago they asked me to be the emcee for one of the shows and one of the things that was evident when that happened was that I am not a stand-up comic. If anything, I'm a storyteller. And there's a subtle difference. Stand-up comic is willing to stand up in front of a bunch of people looking at them, sitting there, looking at them, whereas a storyteller is more interactive. It's more around a barbecue pit or in a fishing boat or on a pier or in a backyard or something.
Speaker 3:So I was there to talk about that and represent that, and the difference between what I was doing, the stories I was telling and the ones that the comedians stand-up comics were telling was pretty interesting. I mean, they were similar, there were some similarities to it, but they were doing a remarkably different thing. And it's interesting to see how stand-up comics have evolved out of our storytelling tradition, much the same way as it happened in the Jewish tradition, the African-American tradition, the Hispanic-American tradition. Those were profound, deep storytelling traditions and that one that was really good at it, like Richard Pryor or George Carlin or somebody, emerged and everyone wanted to hear the one that was really good at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also mixing in with those last few guys, you mentioned real-life things that are happening to them in their daily lives and how they see the world, and societal things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so some of the stuff that comes out in these kinds of sessions, these comedy sessions, is not so much jokes as funny observations about how things are. George Carlin said my job is to observe life, and then I notice the funny stuff and come tell you about it. He said we all see the same thing. I just notice it more than you do and I come out and remind you of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard someone say recently that stand-ups are a form of journalists in a way. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:This is why John Stewart and a lot of other political satirists are good at it. They notice what's going on and find the humor in it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's Cajun Comic Relief March 9th at the Hyman Center. Two shows. It's going to be great. Other guys performing Blake Abert and DJ Rhett. Dj Rhett coming in from Terrebonne Parish, I believe. I don't know if this is even offensive to ask, but what is the biggest difference between Southwest Louisiana and Cajuns and more the River Parishes?
Speaker 3:The River Parishes have a lack of an accordion for one thing.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 3:There's a slightly different accent, slightly different, very different experience, much more water oriented than we were out here in the prairies, but we recognize each other as part of the same big family.
Speaker 2:Right when I joined Tibido, I asked him it's a while that you can be in New Iberia or Eunice or Homa, and people will have a Cajun accent, but it's a little different, different variations. I was asking why is that? And he gave me the obvious answer, which is back in the day. You couldn't get anywhere besides a horse, and so there was just this natural barrier.
Speaker 3:Different settlement patterns too, and back then people lived in relatively small worlds when you celebrate. The people who would show up at a community Boucherie, where everybody would share meat, were the same people who would show up and fix your roof if the storm blew it off, and they were the same people you would run Mardi Gras with. And there was very small Mardi Gras in these small communities, for example. Traditional Mardi Gras didn't cross bridges. What do you mean by that? They didn't go across the bayou. That was them. This is us. Oh OK, you ran in your own community.
Speaker 3:And bayous were typically borders.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they separated communities and so, roughly speaking, the same tradition immigrates to, just for the sake of an example, both sides of bayous-serpa. On one side you have Timamou, the other side you have Gromarie, and they both run Mardi Gras. Well, they sing roughly the same song and they have a lot of similar strategies in their Mardi Gras. However, they've been living there for 150 years, separated by that bayou, and so things evolved slightly different on this side, slightly different on this side. So the song you recognize it as basically the same song, but it's got a different ending. So the subtleties, the subtle differences, are as interesting as the remarkable similarities to the L-Share oh, that's fascinating.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, we'll be right back to the interview in just a second, but first I've got to give you the details on this year's 33rd annual Cajun Comic Relief Show. This year we're lighting up the Hyman Center with a comedy lineup like no other, with JP Leonard hosting from Lafayette Comedy. We've got also DJ Rhett, aj Smith, blake Abair and Murray Conk. As a proud Acadiana advocate, I'm thrilled to share. This year's Lafayette Fest is not just about bringing joy. It's a powerful movement to support love of people's fight against Parkinson's and dementia. Every ticket you purchase helps get us one step closer, rather, to making a difference in the lives of those affected by these conditions. So join us to laugh till it helps, by celebrating our rich Cajun culture and contributing to a cause that touches many hearts. Get your tickets today by visiting Cajun Comic Relief. That's CajunComicRelieforg. You can also follow them and get all the updates on Facebook and Instagram by following CajunComicRelief.
Speaker 2:All right, let's get back to the interview. So I want to get into some questions that my mom sent me to ask you. Because of her and my dad, I've found memories of being in the car on the way to band practice for the Cajun band. My dad, yosemmnysaming like I can't read the French Cajun diction into English dictionary and trying to get some of these phrases and these words down. But so and she got me into fiddle lessons when I was a kid and she took them with me but I quit pretty early because you know, she was an adult. I was a kid, she was getting better, faster than I am, and that frustrated me, so I put the fiddle down and never looked back. But I got some questions from her. One is Siminoe, our last name. Why is it that it's with an X and the S-I-M-O-N-E-A-U-X here in South Louisiana, but in other parts of the world France and Canada I've seen Siminoe without the X.
Speaker 3:The story is that people were putting the X for their name. You know they couldn't sign their names. They would put the X, the inscriber would write the name down and then the person would put an X. That may be true. It may be just that there's a variation on how to spell the name. I mean, you know, there are places where there are X, where there is an X, in other parts of the French-speaking world. So you know and like, for example, there's even more variation.
Speaker 3:The bro name was spelled B-R-O-T, b-r-a-u-d, b-r-e-a-u, b-r-e-a-u-x. There's, like you know, a dozen different name spellings. One of the reasons for that is that the people who were saying their name couldn't write it down. They were not literate, and so somebody else was figuring out how to transcribe that.
Speaker 2:Is that also kind of why you went the route of or, I guess made by necessity having to go the route of these oral histories because there was a lot of literacy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of written documentation. All of the information was in somebody's head and I had to go and sit there with them and talk to them and get it out that way. But the only way to study this stuff is to capture it, make it stay still, if you understand what I mean. So I would record it, you know, on tape, and then transcribe that word for word and then step back and take a look and say, okay, what is this telling me, what does this mean? But that's the only way. You have to make it still for a while to contemplate it. I had heard stories all my youth, in my family and out there in the community, but they were all just flitting out, flitting by. It wasn't until I made them stand still for a bit, take a look at them, that I started figuring stuff out.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a wild puzzle. It was a wild puzzle You're getting to put together. What is the origin of the Cajun accordion versus a standard accordion with a keyboard that's more prominently seen in Zydeco?
Speaker 3:It was just an early version of that. This is a later version of the accordion that somebody figured out a way to put a keyboard on it. The diatonic button accordion that you mostly see Cajun musicians and some older Zydeco musicians play was invented in Germany in Vienna, excuse me in the early 1800s and then very, very quickly became popular for several reasons. One, it made a lot of noise and it was easy to learn. It was as easy as a harmonica. It was a push-pull system and so it was pretty easy. They were sturdy, unlike a fiddle, which if you lost a string you were out of luck.
Speaker 3:An accordion had 40 reeds, four reeds per bank of 10. You could lose half of them, still making enough noise to dance to In a precarious environment like Frontier Louisiana. It was a popular instrument because it was hardy, it was loud, it would reach to the back of the dance hall and it was fairly easy to play. On a fiddle you have to have accurate touch to not be out of tune. According to you, push that button and it's going to make that note.
Speaker 2:It's not a full instrument like a guitar or a fiddle where you can play all the 12 notes Right it's a diatonic scale, this one is a chromatic scale, but it put everything in this structure. We only got really like three or four chords we can play. I find that fascinating. You put something in a box, but that spurs more creativity because you kind of have your.
Speaker 3:It's poetic restraint you give a poet I want you to write upon only about hot water when you're going to come up with a great poem, because you're giving him a focus.
Speaker 3:And the same thing with the accordion. It was very limited, but people immediately started saying, okay, how much can I get out of this? What can I do with this thing? I mean, look at Steve Riley, look at Marc Savoy, steve Riley, amity Hardware the complexity they discovered. Irelia, jean Aldous Roje the complexity they discovered, the flexibility. Look what Belton Richard was doing with the thing he's playing swamp pop with the damn thing. This seemingly simple little box turned out to be a pretty prolific, articulate instrument.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's a pain in the ass to get at the sound to not overpower the rest of the sound if you're mixing it, and I've got the pleasure of doing it a couple of times and the first time I ever had a mix in accordion I was like whoa.
Speaker 3:Yeah, don't put the mic on that. No, no, no, you're good, Everybody else might.
Speaker 2:Okay. Another question from my mother. She asked me what is correct, Rugeru or lu-guru?
Speaker 3:If I had a dollar for every time. The actual word is lu-garu, it's lu-wolf. Garu means shape shifter, so lu, a shape shifter between man and wolf. There were also ibu-garu owl shifters, shien-garu, dog shifters, shagaru, cat shifters, but the word is lu. Now the reason why the R evolved into that word for some people is that Rs and Ls are liquids. Linguistically they're liquids, and so you hear people say for the word to plow, labure, the R and L just glide, they slide. So some people start calling it a Rugeru. But the beast's name, the name of the beast originally was lu-garu and that belief goes all the way back to our ancestors. In France as well, there was a prevalent belief in areas of Poitiers and toward the Atlantic coast, where our ancestors come from directly. That was a very strong prevalence of lu-garu stories. Do you believe? I believe they're stories.
Speaker 2:They're great stories. Easy answer, okay. So now this next question is there's documentaries about it, there's essays, books a question that's still being debated to this day, but it seems to be relevant in the ultimate Cajun discussion, and it's Cajun versus Creole. Obviously, we could talk about this for hours on end, yeah, but it shouldn't be versus at all. So, for the tiny attention spans society that we have today, where most people are watching this show through reels and TikToks and if you're watching the whole episode, merci beaucoup, appreciate you. How was that? Probably get a little better. Okay, thank you. But if you could break it down as simple as terms, what is Cajun and what is Creole? It's complicated, right, because Cajun is a subset of Creole correct.
Speaker 3:Correct, but let's go through it All right. The word Creole originally meant, and really still does mean, born or made in the colony, not the mother country. So there were French creoles in that. There were French people who came to colonize Louisiana in the 70s, the very end of the 17th century, early 18th century. So the French people who came to do that were French. If they got married, had kids, those kids who were born here were creole Simply virtue of the fact they were born here. Is it a first-generation thing? It's the first one's born here and then everybody born here, since by that same definition there were African creoles Distinguishing the Africans who were brought here in slave boats to work on the plantations. Their children, who were born here, were called creole.
Speaker 2:So slave children were also known as creole.
Speaker 3:They used the same word to refer to everybody and everything produced here. Gotcha, by extension there was. There were creole horses, creole mules, creole music. Music referred to the fusion of influences from Europe and influences from Africa and influences from here. But the particular combination only happened here. It was born here because of the mixture, same with the cuisine. There were influences from other places, but the mixture, the fusion, happened here. So we have creole cuisine, creole music, creole architecture, creole everything that was produced or generated here. So the Acadians were French settlers in what is now New Brunswick, nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the Acadian Maritimes.
Speaker 3:Main included in that yeah, a little bit who settled there and were there for about 120, 130 years. Many of them got exiled by the British who had obtained control of the colony from the French and wanted the land. So they basically put everybody in boats, everybody that could catch on boats, and shipped them out. Many of those people returned, stayed there, hid in the woods. But some of them came here, eventually came to Louisiana by various routes. So they came here, they called themselves, the word they used to identify themselves was Acadian or Cajun, and they got here.
Speaker 3:Well, that first generation was Cajun. The second generation, the ones that were born here, technically were Creoles. Many of them continued to use the word Cajun to identify themselves because the identity, the sense of identity was strong and that sense of identity ended up evolving, is to include people who married in. You know, like you say, for example, I don't know, a Trajon who was exiled from Nova Scotia, ended up in France. It makes its way, makes their way to Louisiana. If they had kids here, those kids are considered Creole, described as Creole, but they continue to call themselves Cajuns. Because now one of those grandchildren marries Louis Ancelais, who came directly from France in the 1820s. His name is not Acadien, but he married an Acadien descendant.
Speaker 3:So there's some blend of ethnicities in there and it all depended on whether the people identified with the larger term Creole, or whether they identified with the tighter term Acadien or Cajun or, as it came to be used in English, cajun. Unfortunately, for some people, the identity that was available among the Acadians came as opposed to Creoles, which included all possible colors and races and ethnicities and everything. Some people used the Cajun Appalachian to preserve some sort of whiteness. That wasn't always the case and it certainly wasn't the case in my own personal experience, but that was the case for some people. So the word Creole is the larger, more encompassing term. So the simple answer is all Cajuns are technically Creoles, but not all Creoles are Cajun.
Speaker 2:And what are some of the cultural aspects of Acadien Cajuns that differ from the Creole culture at large?
Speaker 3:Is there anything left that gets really hard to tease out? I mean it's like a gumbo, and a gumbo is a perfect metaphor for the blending that happened here. The blending process was so successful, so efficient, so effective that it produced architecture. You could find Creole elements and Native American elements and even, in some cases, acadian elements, anglo-american elements, spanish elements you could find all you could tease them out. But most people, when they look at a house, just recognize it as a house from here, the cuisine the same way. A gumbo, a gumbo, for example. I mean you know you could tease out the ingredients and flour, oil, onions, chicken, sausage, but it's way better just to eat the gumbo. It tastes better that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, taking okra, which means gumbo Right from Africa, right and other. You know spices and all these different elements and you know.
Speaker 3:By the way, one of the things that we often neglect to consider is the extent to which our culture was influenced by African people. You know, people of African descent. Right, the music is very bluesy, it's siga-pated and and percussive. The cuisine was influenced by rice that came here from Africa, okra peppers you start looking into the universe and man. A lot of this stuff came from, not from France, but from there.
Speaker 2:Does it bother you if you see like a national chain, like a Burger King, you know, rolling out?
Speaker 3:Cajun fries. Yeah, I just sort of smile. What does that even mean?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:At one point there was some pizza national pizza chain that had, you know, cajun. People were like what does that even mean? I can't even figure that out. A Cajun pizza.
Speaker 3:It's very flexible, you know it's, it's it's gotten applied. You know, here in South Louisiana we've had more recent influxes of Laos and and Vietnamese people and now we have crawfish egg rolls, I mean, and they're good. Here's the real and the real test is it good? Does it sound good? Does it look good? Does it fun to dance? Does it taste good? If it's good, it's good.
Speaker 2:So do you have issue with people born raised in South Louisiana been here for multiple generations with no actual genealogical ties to Acadia, calling themselves Cajun.
Speaker 3:Of course not. I mean, you know, and how would you, how would you demonstrate, no, no actual genealogical ties. If you go back a few generations, there's somebody's going to be involved. But look at all, look at the. Look at our great musicians, our legendary so-called Cajun musicians. Lawrence Walker, uh uh. Irelia Jeanne is an Acadian name but Joe Falcon was a was a Canary Islander name. I mean, you know, nathan Apshire, dewey Balfi, like you know, but there were, but there were Acadian and other kinds of Creole elements in their ancestry. But it's all so complicated. You go back, you know four generations and all of a sudden you're talking about a lot, a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I, I was doing genealogy.
Speaker 3:I always resisted doing genealogy because I know myself too well. I knew I was going to go down the rabbit hole if I started, if I started my dad. I eventually started because my wife and I were going on a trip to France to visit my daughter who was studying there. And while doing genealogy I found out that my wife and I were actually descended from the same set of ancestors eight generations ago.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's a lot of that. Some trials, yeah, of course and uh.
Speaker 3:So you know, if you go back, you go back enough generations and we're all related to Beyonce. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:so what is a part of the culture and you know calling the South Louisiana culture at large? Uh, how do you refer to? It's the culture, overbearing culture of South Louisiana, festivals being one with the lands, uh, celebrating life with family, uh, some of the elements that many people have, yeah, a lot of people all over the world do that.
Speaker 3:Sure Uh, I'm just unique. I'm always very leery about that term, because unique actually means unique. Nothing else like it anywhere. Well, in a way we are, but in the same way everybody is. Everybody all over the planet has some unique combination that produced whoever they are.
Speaker 2:Right. People are unique in Iowa.
Speaker 3:If everybody's unique in some way, what does unique mean? But um, is there what your question was? Uh?
Speaker 2:well, is there a term or phrase that you refer to people in South?
Speaker 3:Louisiana. No, I think it's fluid. You know, sometimes I refer to myself as Cajun because I have Cajun ancestry, but you know also a Creole, I'm also a Louisiana, I'm also an American. Yeah, sure, you know this is one of the things that Europeans have a hard time understanding. Is this business about multiple identities, multiple allegiances? I can feel every bit as Cajun, as Creole, as Louisiana, as you know, as American. You know, if we're, if we're in the Olympics, I'm rooting for the American, you know Right yeah, now rooting for France.
Speaker 3:If we're, if we're, if it's Louisiana, if it's, if it's LSU versus Alabama, I'm rooting for LSU, yeah, yeah yeah so we we have, we have the, the, the ability to have fluid, multiple allegiances, and I think that that's not an unhealthy thing.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of Rage and Cajun fans who would not root for LSU against.
Speaker 3:Alabama, but that's the other north there.
Speaker 2:So what is a part of this culture that you think has come out of the 21st century? Is there anything that we can look at since the 2000s, like I don't know roundabouts or stopping stopping on Johnson Street? At a desktop before turning to a parking lot.
Speaker 3:Funny thing about roundabouts. Uh, one of my friends, chad Hufal, when they put those two roundabouts at the Henderson exit he said this is never going to work.
Speaker 3:The people of Henderson are too polite because, oh, no, no, you no, no, you no, you right. So but uh, yeah, what's come out? Well, I I don't know if I could put it, you know, in terms of things, but uh, there, there's been a number of really interesting recent innovations. For example, the way we gather crawfish today, send these new boats that you know, have the wheels on them. That's actually a relatively new invention. Somebody started thinking I, you know, started thinking I don't want to get in the water in the wintertime, it's cold. I'm gonna figure out some kind of other way to do this. And, and you know, but the the, the right sponsor only, is deep and they're muddy on the bottom. How do, how can I make this thing propel itself without jamming up a propeller? You know, somebody came up with the solution and that's actually pretty recent, but it also comes from a long history of innovative boat building. We also, you know, made p-robes, we also made flat bottoms, we also made putt putts, we also made, you know, fit shrimp boats. So it it's not an accident that we came up with a solution for that.
Speaker 3:Another, another of the things that's really astonished me in the 21st century is the extent to which the younger generation of Louisiana French-speaking kids has been committed to preserving this, to making it, you know, having it continue, but also the enormous talent. I mean. I have seen just an explosion of creative energy and and talent in, in in that younger generation and for some reason they're deciding to do it in French on purpose. You know they could. They could just as easily do it in English, but for them, expressing it in French means something slightly different and it matters, and it matters to them. If somebody told me in 1974, when we did the first concert, that in 2024 I'd be seeing this, I would have said, yeah, in your wildest dreams.
Speaker 3:And yet here we are in my wildest dreams.
Speaker 2:I heard you say something about like I never would have imagined having to tell bands and acts no.
Speaker 3:I can't. Yeah, we don't have room, right, I mean I baffles, but I mean I'm delighted to see it. It's absolutely wonderful. And the quality of it, man, the quality of it is just the lyrics, the virtuosity that some of these musicians are developing on the fiddle and the chord in a guitar. You know the emergence of lead guitar styles, you know additional drumming, percussion, all of that, the incorporation of saxophones and pianos.
Speaker 2:Lost by Rambos using 808s and different type of recording techniques for experimenting with different sounds, right.
Speaker 3:You know, people are figuring out how to use home studios to produce things that the old studios would have never thought of doing. Yeah, so I've been just watching all of this with great delight, I'm sure. And you know this festival, by the way, by the way, 50 years old, yeah, when we started doing this in 74, the idea was to call attention to this music Cajun and Creole music, enzai to go, and in a way that would cause people to reevaluate it, to value what was theirs, what was ours, and that's always been the point, the always been the point not only to celebrate the past, but to try to encourage it to continue into the future. And so we were talking about how to celebrate, how we were going to celebrate 50 years and how are we going to set? Well, what do you do, you know? And we came up with a theme 50 years and tomorrow. It's never been about only the past. It's always been about, you know, providing this so that it inspires the next step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that creates such an interesting dilemma. That's always kind of fascinated me, like how do you hold on to these roots, these traditions that are so important, yet, with an eye on evolving.
Speaker 3:Well yeah, without getting stuck in or stale.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But you know there are a lot of people who confuse history and tradition. History is what happened in the past and it's important, it's important to know, it's important to venerate, it's important to use. But tradition is an ongoing process, it's a constant evolution, it's constantly producing new solutions, new things. And one of my favorite definitions of tradition was that same guy, henry Glassy, that we talked about the beginning of the podcast. He defined living tradition as using the past to create the future. And that is what has been happening in South Louisiana, when what we have going on is operating at full strength, hitting on all eight cylinders. That's what's happening. Where it's connected, the continuity is clear, but it's producing something new. But it's not just gratuitous new falling out of the sky. It's connected, new, it's something new evolving out of what we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, On that, though. As you said, you've been astounded by how many young children are now getting back into the language. What are the benefits of having a bilingual society?
Speaker 3:A wider perspective, people who are able to participate more widely in a world society, or in our own society, for that matter. Having two languages gives you two. It's like having two eyes instead of one. It gives you perspective. It gives you depth, depth perception. It gives you an ability to appreciate culture not only ours but others in a more complex way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the turn of the 20th century, when the federal government and the state government were forcing English and assimilation down everyone's throats, people started to lose a lot of those traditions. But I remember you saying something on a podcast or an interview where soldiers from here were French speakers, were going off to war and finding the language that had caused them so much embarrassment here was suddenly keeping them out of firing range, you know there.
Speaker 3:So it's like wait a minute, wait, there's actual practicality. Yeah, and interestingly, you know, the French resistance was in southwestern France, in the Poitou area, and that's where our ancestors came from. So all these Cajun soldiers were going over there and their accent was remarkably similar to the people who were natives there. So they were able to infiltrate towns and communities much more effectively than somebody who had studied French at some university or something.
Speaker 2:Well, dr Ansley, I could talk to you all day, but I'm not going to take any more of your time. I appreciate you joining us talking a little bit about Cajun comic relief coming up we're really excited about that but also sharing some other insights into the beautiful culture.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know this Cajun comic I highly recommend everybody goyou can laugh in a way that makes you smarter.
Speaker 2:And you can bring your whole family too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things that you can bring the whole family to.
Speaker 2:Well, with that, is there alet's talk about storytelling. Is there a story that you can share with us that kind of sticks out as it relates to yeah, I'll tell you the story about this little old.
Speaker 3:Clotille Richard told me this story. She lived in Carracro. She was Clotille, yeah, clotille Richard, clotille Richard she wasshe lived in Carracro and she was one of the ladies I recorded. I was recording her daughter actually she was 92, I think and she heard me recording her daughter telling all kinds of really great stories and at one point she popped up. She was sitting at a table. She told me the story about.
Speaker 3:She's totally French, of course, but it was a story about a young boy who had gone away to college and he came back on his first vacation and he declared to his parents that he couldn't speak French anymore because he had learned to be ashamed of it there. But he came back and said he no longer spoke French and so he was walking around the house to show that he couldn't speak French anymore. He was asking what everything was. And what's this? Mama said La Tabe. What's this La Chasse? What's this? I force you to ask, what's this? His daddy got real tired of that real fast, went outside to work in the garden. The son follows him out. What's this La Badière? What's this La Pelle? And as he was asking, what's this of a rake, a rato leaning against the fence. He stepped on the teeth and popped it on the head. He said I'm a Maudi-Sacreton, that rato. His daddy said I see it's coming back to you.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, what it takes, it's just going to smack you over the head a little bit.
Speaker 3:A rake handle on the head.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, as we end every single episode, you can take a look at your camera right over here to the right, and it could be a word, a phrase, advice. It could be in English, it could be in Louisiana, French, Anything to end the episode with that you'd like to impart on Internet World for George, as we have so often said over the last 50 years, l'ache-pas.
Speaker 1:At Acadienicastcom email info at Acadienicastcom and for more locally sourced podcasts, go to Acadienicastcom. Bye.
