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AcadianaCasts Presents:
AcadianaCasts Presents:
Unmasking Cajun Mardi Gras: A VICE Filmmaker’s Perspective
Step into the wild and vibrant world of Cajun Mardi Gras with filmmaker and VICE documentarian Jackson Garrett. Originally from Montgomery, Alabama, Jackson brings an outsider’s perspective to one of Louisiana’s most unique and under-appreciated traditions in his documentary Gatherings: Cajun Mardi Gras.
In this episode of AcadianaCasts Presents, we explore what makes Cajun Mardi Gras so different from the parades of New Orleans—where masked riders chase chickens, traditions are passed down through song and ritual, and community participation is key. Jackson shares what surprised him most while documenting these celebrations and how his work sheds light on the deeper cultural significance of these gatherings.
We also dive into the new wave of young Louisianians reclaiming their heritage, ensuring that Cajun traditions remain alive and thriving. From the influence of past storytellers to the growing desire for cultural reconnection, this episode captures the spirit of Cajun Mardi Gras through the eyes of both locals and outsiders.
Tune in for a fresh look at an age-old tradition, and find out why experiencing a Cajun Mardi Gras might just change the way you see Louisiana culture forever.
AcadianaCasts Presents: Jackson Garrett
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Thank you to our sponsor, NetScore! Visit netscorepro.com to get your FREE website and Facebook audit today.
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"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.
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If you want to watch this episode on YouTube, check out our channel!
America has this loneliness crisis. Everybody keeps talking about all these articles about how we're all lonely. You know, we're more divided than ever. We're all hyper individualistic. Everybody's trying to do their own thing and no one feels like they're part of a community or the village like we used to be. And then to go down here and see people doing these traditions, holding on to their Cajun heritage, trying to like, keep that French going, trying to keep these Mardi Gras traditions going, and everybody feeling like, no matter where you are, you can join in and in fact, you're supposed to join in. You're not supposed to stand off on the sideline, you're supposed to come in and do this kind of thing, and I think that's what could be possibly what makes mardi gras great.
Speaker 2:Glad to have you. I'm Carter Semino, host of Acadiana Cast Presents. You can follow Acadiana Cast Subscribe on YouTube. You can follow us on Instagram, tiktok. We'll have the website back up and running very, very soon. All of your South Louisiana-sourced content is what we specialize in here at Acadiana Casts, and normally we're talking on this show to folks around the Acadiana area who are doing, or South Louisiana in general, who are doing kind of cool stuff, cool topics, people doing interesting things. This time's a little different. We're actually doing a remote interview bringing someone in all the way from New York who has an exciting new documentary that's going to be coming out on February 18th. His name is Jackson Garrett. The documentary is called Gatherings Cajun Mardi Gras. It is a Vice documentary. Y'all remember Vice. They've always been doing really cool journalistic stories, documentaries, and it's cool to see that they have come down to southwest Louisiana to see the real Mardi Gras, the career de Mardi Gras. So, with that being said, let's bring Jackson in on camera. Jackson, thanks so much for joining us today, dude.
Speaker 1:Thank you and thanks for everybody welcoming me into this community so we can make this documentary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. So just a little bit of background on you. You're originally from Montgomery, alabama, from the south, and you wanted to kind of tell stories about. You know Southern traditions, culture, different communities, what, what? What got you to wanted to, I guess, first pitch pitching to vice and your bosses over there to come down to Louisiana and do something about Mardi Gras?
Speaker 1:You know my, my dad's from Obeo, where they claim, is the the original Mardi Gras the first.
Speaker 2:Mardi.
Speaker 1:Gras that people in Louisiana will fight us for that kind of thing. But I've always loved Mardi Gras and up here I was always surprised how few people knew about it at all, not even just you know New Orleans. Sure, it's got. You know, when you say Mardi Gras, people think New Orleans up here they didn't even think that you know% of the time. Maybe they would even know that is.
Speaker 1:I bring a King's cake into the office every year to celebrate. I'm like man, this is annoying a little bit that you guys don't know what this is and how cool this is. So I wanted to kind of pitch let's go show them that there's this amazing thing called Mardi Gras, and not only that. There's this cool, diverse combination of celebrations across the Gulf Coast. They can show the Mobile version, the New Orleans version, the Cajun version. It was a little ambitious to do all those in a week or so and we'd kind of be glancing off of each one of those, not learning a ton but experiencing a ton of fun stuff. But the more we looked into Cajun Mardi Gras, the more we're like you know what? We need to sit in this a little longer. We need to talk to some experts. We need to learn something and really go deep here, and I'm really glad we did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm talking to some of those experts. You know we've had a couple of them that I believe are featured in this documentary on this show, but who are some of the people that you came in contact with? How did you come in contact with them and how was that experience?
Speaker 1:You know some of the big names I'm sure you've talked to before, like Jordan Thibodeau, the Cajun musician, Cajun cowboy, Cajun ambassador as we called him in the documentary. He was a great interview. He took us out on his boat in Cypress Cove and told us a lot about Cajun culture and history and you know that was a unique experience to be following him on social media. He does a lot of cool French jokes, which I thought was really interesting. That's how I ran into him. You know that was one of the coolest things I learned while I was down there is how much the younger community in Cajun country is embracing their French roots and really trying to bring back that culture that was almost literally beat out of them, you know. So that was really cool to see sat down with, uh, Joel Savoie you know the Cajun family of Savoies. He was kind of our main guy. He had.
Speaker 1:He has a run down there in Louisiana that we participated in and his big thing was that we couldn't come and just spectate or kind of take away from these runs. We had to be part of it, which was music to our ears and he was one of the first people to kind of lay down the law to us. Yeah, For Vice. You know, Vice is gonzo journalism. We love to get dirty and end with it. So when we heard that Cajun, Mardi Gras and Courier is very participatory it was music tour years we were totally in. I'm personally in. I wanted to do it. I didn't want to stay on the sidelines, I wanted to get muddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the things that I love the most about Vice and the documentaries that have come out over the years is just the immersiveness that the journalists and documentarians do. They put themselves right in the thick of things and, boy, it looks like, just seeing some of the clips on your Instagram, that you really did it. So talking to some of these guys, how do you make that connection? Do you discover these people through social media? Do you become recommended? Just your own research, how do you find these people?
Speaker 1:I mean, you just kind of have to throw out a large net and see what you catch. A little bit Social media is super helpful. You know Jordan's all over over social media, so it's easy to kind of find someone like that that's already willing to be on camera, that's already willing to be an ambassador out there in the media sphere. So if you look at a lot of documentaries you'll see a lot of that where if you look up the person, they've probably got some sort of following because that's one of the few people that you can find, one and two that's willing to do this stuff. You can always find great historians and great people that want to talk about the community, but they're not always comfortable on camera. So you kind of have to find that combination of people.
Speaker 1:Once I like found somebody like jordan, I read as many articles as I could about cajun mardi gras. I have a book over here. I read the cajuns. That was very good and learning some of this stuff before I went down. I try to, you know, learn as much as possible before we get super into stuff, and some of of the articles I reached out to their writers and asked who's good to talk to in the community. That's how I found Joel. Another guy we interviewed was Mr Weatherall, which I'm sure people on this show know. Everybody knows Mr Weatherall maybe not everybody up here, but he's viral for videoing all the parades around Louisiana. I think of him as like a short-form documentarian of the culture down there. So I reached out to him, talked to him out there outside of Church Point, which is really interesting. We met a chicken named Mr Featherall while we were down there, which was fun, and then, ultimately, the last person we released oh, I guess another one is this guy named Drake. I can't remember his last name right now.
Speaker 4:I know he was on LeBlanc.
Speaker 1:I I can't remember his last name right now. I know he was on LeBlanc. I know I just got done listening to some of your podcasts with him. He was great too. We found him while we were out there. And then the last person we talked to was Lindsay Swarsky, who helped us create our costume here. She's a great costume designer.
Speaker 2:We didn't want to screw it up. And then also I told Vice, if you're going to, that is authentic. I'm glad you went through her because you know what did you discover about. You know what she does for these crews.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the coolest things I like about Cajun Mardi Gras on Courier is how grassroots it is, how in the community it is. You know, these costumes aren't bought off of Amazon for the most part, or at Walmart or like Party City or something like they're. They're handmade by the people in the community and we were lucky. You know a lot of people there, it seemed, made it with their friends. Their grandmother made it, somebody in their family made it, somebody in their community made it. We couldn't quite do that. We didn't want to screw it up. We thought about like shooting some shots in the office of us, like attempting to make a good outfit. Luckily we, you know, figured it was another good way to inject ourselves in the community. A little bit. As a talk to the costume designer, we needed to anyways, and she created this amazing like all blue suit with these fringes across. It kind of looked like a swamp monster thing.
Speaker 1:See, the mask is just beautiful. It's got a shuttlecock as the nose. It's got like this green bag type material you would use for fruit as the mouth. It's got a gold tooth. It's got like this green bag type material you would use for fruit as the mouth. It's got a gold tooth, it's got these little piece of plastic and eyeballs here, and you look through the top here. Oh man, I felt so cool wearing it and it was cool to be like semi-anonymous, even with the cameras, because our camera crew was dressed up too. So even though we did stick out with the cameras, if you weren't kind of, if you were looking from a distance, you wouldn't see us there. I think we captured a lot more like authentic moments and also talking to people afterwards than being like oh, vice was out there.
Speaker 2:I didn't see that I was like good, that's what we wanted. Yeah. So you know what? What? What was the reception from some of the locals that you're interacting with, that that you're you're doing the uh the, the cruise with uh that you're interviewing, you know, was it receptive? Were they happy to share, like this culture with you in a national audience?
Speaker 1:You know, on the kind of the before pre-production style, there was some hesitancy, but I like the hesitancy. Every community I've ever sat down with or done a documentary with there's some hesitancy. If there wasn't, I wouldn't want to be there because then it would just be, you know, a tourist environment where yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1:No one feels really connected to. It's just something you can come do, no matter what or whatever. So it was good to hear some of them be like all right, well, what do you want out of it? How do you? What do you like? I want to make sure you're doing it right. Can you? Are you going to fulfill all the steps that takes to kind of get the buy-in from the community? If I'm going to put my stamp on or be interviewed in it, I want to make sure your heart is in the right place. I think it's helpful that I'm from the South originally. I think there's a lot of people from outside the South that have made documentaries about the South, that kind of think of the South as like exotic, a little bit like or almost infantile, or like looking down on it almost. Oh, there's these, these charming quaint people down here in the south. Look at this little quaint piece of you know it's just kind of this like from a superior standpoint or something, and I wanted to tell this who you're calling quaint?
Speaker 1:I know it's like they think it's a compliment, but I'm like no, you're like talking down to us. I don't understand what you're talking about, you know. So I wanted to tell a southern story through a southerner's point of view, and a lot of the context of the documentary is me talking about how I'm a proud southerner. But what does it mean to be a proud southerner? It's just something we've kind of always said and especially if you move outside the south, you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder, especially in new york city, which is kind of the opposite of alabama'm from. You'll even hear like Hank Jr, you know really like talking down in New York city his songs and vice versa. You'll hear people in New York city and songs be like I'm not going down to Alabama or Louisiana or wherever, so there's a bit of a chip on my shoulder there. So I kind of want to unpack while I was down there. Why am I so proud of Mardi Gras?
Speaker 2:Why am I so proud of the South? What?
Speaker 1:does that mean? What are the good parts? What are the bad parts? What do we leave behind? What do we take with us? That's awesome, Uh, so y'all came. Uh, y'all came last year. Yeah, Last year, 2024, February, went to two different runs and church point Another one. Uh, outside of Eunice, right A ball Superbowl time, got to go hang out watch Superbowl some of these bars too.
Speaker 2:I wish we were down there for this one with this New Orleans Super Bowl. That would have been great too. Oh yeah, it was a good time. The entire Louisiana was really just joyous and excited to host again, I saw the combination of it's carnival season and you're catering everything to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1:But it's kind of cool to have the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know how the hotels did it in New Orleans with everything going, everything going on, but you know, still a little bit early in the carnival season so they were able to really pull it off. And it seems, you know, outside of the actual game, the entire Super Bowl experience in New Orleans was awesome and a great representation for our state. But kind of back to West Louisiana here in the Cajun Mardi Gras Back then, I can't remember, was it wet?
Speaker 1:It wasn't too wet on this one. Luckily I got rolled around a bunch in the grass and everything. Luckily it didn't get too muddy. But everybody kept talking about that you'll end up getting thrown in there. We do have one amazing shot at the Church Point run where, luckily, people were pretty down to like point out people, hey, go do something crazy for the cameras here. They were like one of the older guys, one of the captains on a horse, gathered up. Some of the guys were like hey, you guys go dive in that ditch, go make some mud go. They slid across in slow motion across the ditch and it looks beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, the last time the Cajun Mardi Gras was kind of showcased to kind of the national or even global audience was with the late great Anthony Bourdain. When he came down here and although I love Bourdain and everything, a lot of the stuff that he did you could tell that he was like through his face just seeing some of the stuff. He was just kind of like this is kind of weird, but it sounds like you guys took more of an attitude of like we're going to be one of you guys this weekend and you know he did some of that too, getting dressed up and whatnot. But you could still tell that he was kind of an outsider and I doubt that his camera crew was wearing all the get-ups and whatnot. So you guys really immersed yourselves. I think the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't see the Anthony Bourdain one until after we'd already done our shooting and everything, which is probably a good thing, so it didn't influence me too much, but he's a, you know, a hero of mine. Every documentarian's hero is anthony brudain and you know his death really hit me pretty hard. But yeah, I want you know this is fun for me. I mean, maybe he's a little older at the time and it's seen so many things that you know that's part of the interesting part of this mardi gras too is you'll go to some of these other mardi gras in new orleans, mobile or even some other places, and it's usually kind of older members of the societies that have bought in, have the money, that ride on the floats, that throw the stuff, that throw the balls, that have these exclusive clubs and Cajun Motocross, some of it, especially that church point.
Speaker 1:It was a young man's game. It was a little violent out there. People were tackling each other, trying to get the chickens. There's a lot of make these runs happen and my crew man, my crew, had a hard time. It was very physical for them to have to carry all the cameras around with them. We didn't know exactly where the runs were going. We didn't have maps of like where anything was happening, because we couldn't like think ahead. They just had to carry anything they thought they would need with them, which was pretty tough.
Speaker 2:I couldn't imagine, because we're actually me and some of my team will be down there this year shooting some video, some behind-the-scenes stuff of actually John Weatherall, mr Weatherall, doing his thing and whatnot.
Speaker 1:So I'm already trying to think, like with the equipment and what I'm going to have to do with all that hey take some tips from me, because the whole Church Point day and I don't even know if John knows this necessarily was my plan, for it was to follow John all day at Church Point getting all his shots. Like sure was to follow John all day at church point getting all his shots, Sure, we would get our shots too along with him, but we'd get shots of him getting the shots. We interview him In the morning. We hop on a float with him. They've kind of got these more rural-style tractor floats out there, along with the more traditional on-your-feet kind of runs. So we get on with him. At 5 am we get a couple great shots. We stop at a gas station, get a couple of him doing that and our first stop we sit down with them, get a deeper interview and he says all right, get on the beer cart one on the beer cart.
Speaker 1:No women allowed.
Speaker 1:Two of my, one of my camera people, a my director is a woman, so then they had to like figure out how to keep up with me and my boy, samir, who both guys were allowed on the beer cart to shoot, and they were up, they, oh, they were having, they were struggling carrying everything. We were like put some on the beer cart, come on. But then we were like all right, where's John at? Is he over here, is he over there? Well, I don't want to go to the beer cart yet. We didn't see John the rest of the day. We got some amazing shots. It didn't go as planned but everything worked out.
Speaker 2:So I guess you know yeah for sure, and and and people, people know what he looks like now and so like they're looking for him, they, they see, they see this camera and they're like, oh, Mr Weatherall. Then they start, you know, dancing and doing all the things.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the other thing that got me too, man, cause we got some amazing stuff there for sure, and I'm really glad the way it worked out. He had probably was from that day. There's a gas station out there, near church point, and we'd met there in the morning to like kind of get some drinks or do whatever, and then we get separated. He must've backtracked back and it was a bunch of these like sorority type girls with the Cajun uh things on their legs and they all do the Mr Weatherall dance out there and that thing went so viral. We should have been there to capture all these girls doing the like iconic dance, but no, we were too busy like chasing greased pigs around, you know, yeah right.
Speaker 2:No man. Yeah, all the girls with their Stanley Cups and whatnot, yeah the Stanley Cup.
Speaker 1:I forgot the Stanley Cup too. It was so on right then last year. That was like peak Stanley Cup season yeah.
Speaker 2:Man, I just love going through all the comments of you know folks who are not from Louisiana or aware of, like what this is or like what. What am I looking at right now? And every now and then you see a comment like oh, you clearly never been to South Louisiana or Southwest Louisiana specifically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it was wild man. We had a great time on that one. The whole experience was great, and one of the big things I took from all of this was how cool was to see these communities come out together. This wasn't some like manufactured by a bank parade or sponsored by this or whatever. It was just people coming out in costumes. They made talking with other people in the community.
Speaker 1:I just think like there's a bigger series we're working on now. We've shot some other episodes that are going to go in this series along with this one, so it'll be the first episode, kind of talking about how America has this loneliness crisis. Everybody keeps talking about all these articles about how we're all lonely. You know we're more divided than ever. We're all hyper individualistic. Everybody's trying to do their own thing and no one feels like they're part of a community or the village like we used to be.
Speaker 1:And then to go down here and see people doing these traditions, holding on to their cajun heritage, trying to like, keep that french going, trying to keep these mardi Gras traditions going, and everybody feeling like no matter where you are, you can join in and in fact, you're supposed to join in, you're not supposed to stand off on the sideline.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to come in and do this kind of thing, and I think that's what could be possibly what makes Mardi Gras great and I think that's the important part of the tradition to bring forward is this inclusivity and having everyone in the community play their part. If you're not in the run, like some of the younger guys that are tackling things, you can still be out there doing the dances. You can still. You can be helping make the costumes. You can be at one of these houses throwing the chicken out and everybody like there's a larger lesson to it, like providing food for the community. Like you have the chicken to provide, we'll come behind, dance and hang out, throw us the chicken. Like let's feed the community. And I think there's a lot America can learn from this community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautifully said. I believe that wholeheartedly as well, and it's cool that coming down here showed you guys like, oh, wow, maybe there's something to this. Not just you know what they're doing in southwest Louisiana, but in all of America, finding these little pockets where community is trying to hold on to each other, and that identity of, of, not individualism, but us as a community, as a group, um and and and, but yeah, there's. I'm biased, but to me there's no better place to see that than here in south louisiana. Um, something else also also uh, read um, and one of the highlights of this, this documentary um, was that you really got, you know, you saw something and were excited about the kind of the youth movement that is happening in Cajun, mardi Gras.
Speaker 2:As an outsider who's now been indoctrinated into this world, you know what. Can you speak on that, as far as you know, maybe, what the future holds?
Speaker 1:it was amazing. You know, we sat down with some of the communities mostly around the new york area so far and talked to others around america and there's a lot of older traditions in america that older people are trying to pass on and just aren't happening. People are busy, people are broke, people can't afford to be part of these interesting clubs that people used to find these third places in. But when we were down there in louisiana young people were reaching out to us. They want. They saw we were like hey, I want to talk about, I want to talk about Cajun culture. Like come talk to me. You know I want to speak in French. Is that okay, you know? Kind of thing. Like it was super cool to hear, uh shout out my good friend, scott Holly that grew up in Lafayette down there. He was part of some of these French schools. His mom taught French in one of these schools and he talked about that too before I ever went down there to ask more about the French culture and how it was. You know, I learned from the books I was reading from Jordan about how it was almost like beaten out of the community, at one point almost gone, and then in like the 90s, 2000s and even more. Now people are kind of realizing this diversity of thought, this diversity of language, this different culture is actually something to be extremely proud of and it's something that makes your community interesting. It makes america better as a whole. And so I think a lot of young people are saying you don't, we were almost taken, something was almost taken from us and now we've got to bring that back. This is important to us and identity identity is a huge thing right now, like what are we as americans, what are we as southerners? And I was trying to identify a bit in the documentary in cajunajun people down there, just the young people, they know they feel strong about it, which I almost feel jealous of. But they're like no, I know what I am, I know I'm Cajun and I know I'm going to help bring this back that they have kind of a mission to say you try to take it Like I want to battle community, like back against the wall.
Speaker 1:Kind of thing can inspire people. And I think kind of thing can inspire people and I think it helps that this, these traditions down there are fun yeah, mighty girls fun. You know there's a lot of southern traditions that are like their traditions but they're not necessarily fun and mighty girls, cool and a great way to like yearly organize this idea that this needs to keep going. You know, like it and that's another element I wanted to cover in mardi gras in general, general, not just Cajun Mardi Gras how these crew organizations that are not you know some sort of like where you work or religion. It's literally people getting together with their neighbors and starting an organization and how that can really impact politics, how that can impact your city. You know, like having this idea that it's you and your friends and your neighbors that get together to make something happen, not some ethereal other third party that you like. This is how we do it. We organize like this.
Speaker 2:We'll be right back to the episode in just a bit, but first I want to hear from our friends over at Netscore. We're here with the founder of Netscore, tim Benson, a friend of the show. Tim, yes sir, I'm a small business owner with Acadiana Cast. How can NetScore help me and others like?
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Speaker 2:Let's get right back to the conversation now. I love everything that that you're saying and it's cool that you really got to see this, uh, firsthand and as a as a documentarian, as an interviewer, coming down here. Did y'all have any trouble speaking with people? As far as the accent goes?
Speaker 1:A little bit. It helped. I've got a bit of a Southern accent myself. I. You know it's funny when I'm in New York I'm the Southern guy. You know the thick accent that people always say to me like oh, what is that accent?
Speaker 3:What, what is it? I don't have an accent.
Speaker 4:You have an accent. Mine's the normal one. Why is you? Why do you think you're the normal?
Speaker 1:one. Why is you? Why do you think you're the normal one? But this is what normal is. You know, when I go down south now, if I've been up here too long people think I've lost my accent and there's always like something in between there. But I think it turns on a little bit when I'm down there, I think people relate a little more automatically. The cajun accent, you know, is a different beast to the most part and it was only a couple of uh, older gentlemen that really threw me for a loop. Some bar conversations. We went to Mamu I think it's Lem DeGraw the night before, in fact Tuesday, and they throw this once a year party with some great Cajun musicians. I think the bars only open on Saturdays, maybe usually Fred's.
Speaker 3:Fred's Bar. I think it was yeah.
Speaker 1:Fred's and there was a couple older gentlemen there drinking and the music's a little loud and they throw some Cajun accent at you and you're like, no, is that are you speaking French or is this a different language?
Speaker 2:The thing that always bothered me about you know Louisiana accents portrayed in media is you know, all the time you'll see like more, like the water boy or like I'll say, I'll say, I'll tell you boy ha ha.
Speaker 2:You know we got to get your gator down, but like Foghorn leghorn style. Yeah right, no one really talks like that. But also depending on where you are in Louisiana, even like if you're in a city like New Orleans or like Lafayette, there's different little pockets within the city of itself of accents, and so it's always funny to me whenever I see people try to like impersonate it.
Speaker 1:And traveling will open your mind so much and I wish it wasn't so expensive to do and I wish people could do more. I got very lucky to be sitting down there with Vice and Jordan said this when I was on the bus. He said is there any like great Cajun media portrayals or negative ones or anything? He was like, well, yeah, you got Waterboy. It was like a negative one. I just never had thought in my mind like yeah, it is a, like it's looking down on cajun people a bit like he's like mentally not all there and there's all this like goofy stuff and I never thought of it that way, but I'm sure people there do too like think that way, like I think of forrest gump and things like that from alabama and I'm like I don't know how I feel about that one either.
Speaker 1:You know, especially if people call me forrest gump up here or something like that, but yeah, it takes traveling and meeting new people to kind of get that perspective of like when something's kind of messed up or not, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, Forrest Gump rules that I would love for that. I would love for him to be from Louisiana. What a boy. I'm not. I'm not. So no, so sure I love his traveling and his charm.
Speaker 1:I don't know if his IQ level is a could be compared to or not. Yeah, there's no context, I guess.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right. Well, so what is you on your own when you go back to your friends and whatnot or your family and they're asking you about like a job and you tell them like, oh, I was out in South Louisiana for a little bit. Like what do you tell people in kind of like close quarters about your experience?
Speaker 1:It was wild. I got all bruised up and muddy and crazy and I'm like it's not like New Orleans. Don't think New Orleans. Don't think New Orleans. Don't think I was just getting beads thrown at me or whatever. I was getting tackled. I was getting whipped. That was a big part. I got whipped a bunch of times Like I was exhausted, I was hungover, but I kept telling everyone that would listen that we got to go back next year.
Speaker 1:We've got to make these costumes. We got beautiful. It was something like I've never seen in america before. It was almost like being in a different country, which was really cool. But that's, that's america for you.
Speaker 1:We should we do have these like cool niche communities all over and I think it's one of the coolest things I've ever done and I've done a decent amount of interesting things in the last year.
Speaker 1:I went to king's day in the netherlands recently, which is this cool everybody's wearing orange and the canals and partying. It's very cool and unique for the netherlands. I went to a cup match in bermuda, which is this great cricket match where everybody there's a very similar group called the gombies. They're there that wear these fringed outfits as well and have this like mass tradition, but there's nothing like this in america. I don't think. Maybe the mummers in philadelphia do something kind of similar, but like mass traditions is just not a thing we do in America that often. So I just tell them if you're going to travel across the world to go see some cool foreign tradition that you think is exotic, go down to Louisiana first, because this is like from the same country you're from and you're missing out on this really unique tradition that you felt like you had to travel a thousand miles for when really you just need to go down to Louisiana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when did y'all uh, where'd y'all stay?
Speaker 1:Stayed in a pretty rundown hotel. Definitely wasn't anything to write home about. I don't even. Maybe it was. Uh, what's another town next to Eunice? I can't remember the exact name. Either way, I didn't have to do the logistics, so thank God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could have been in.
Speaker 3:Could have been in, could have been in vilplat, could have been mamu I don't know, speaking of mamu, this, this thing, I have this thing about.
Speaker 2:I have right behind me this yeah, this is a dammit doll and and I got this in mamu, but you know, if you're really upset and you just got to get out your frustrations, you damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it is this?
Speaker 2:is this voodoo adjacent, I guess, so it yeah, kind of has like a, like a voodoo kind of look to it, uh. But yeah, I got, this is the hotel kazan and downtown mamu. Uh, there we go. But yeah, just just little things, little things like that that just make louisiana so fun and interesting.
Speaker 1:And there's this other cool element that I learned so much about the music down there too. I had no idea about this cool they called it French music or Cajun music.
Speaker 1:Down there I learned about Dennis McGee, who's super cool. They played at Dennis McGee's grave on one of our runs. That was amazing. Listening to Jordan's music, he was a top five in my Spotify rap this year. Wow, if you've ever heard, most people probably haven't listened to it, but you should check it out. There's this band called kneecap out of Northern Ireland and they do their rapping and Irish or Gaelic or whatever you want to call it, and they've made it cool again in Ireland to speak Irish and they they're very similar to the Cajun community that the language was kind of beaten at them probably even worse in Ireland, honestly. And there's this big like youth movement of like no, you're taking, you took something from us, but it's tough because it's not practical. It's not necessarily like you don't use it at work. You know there's not a lot of great media. Sure, there's like some older people that try to create some fun children's tv shows in it, and I know there's some like that in louisiana too which are like extremely valuable.
Speaker 1:But you got to make it cool again and kneecap made it cool for them and everybody there. There is like taking Irish lessons and singing and rapping in Irish and to see Jordan, thibodeau, joel, all these other guys make cool music. To go to that bar, fred's and Mamu and see all these young people dancing to the music and really embracing it, like I don't know how else to do it, like make up, making movies, making music Like it's. It not only has to be practical, it's got to be cool, and it looks like Cajun French is kind of getting there that it might be cool again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've had a Cajun artist on our show named Dustin Gaspa, and what he's kind of doing is in his songs he's doing like hybrids, where part of it is in English, part of it is in Louisiana, french, and then kind of blends it together. And so he's trying to figure out that same equation of blends it together and so that you know he's trying to figure out that same equation of, you know, making it cool but also accessible and applicable. But I'm really glad you got a chance to experience the music, Got to come down to Festival Acadien, which is our big Cajun music festival here in Lafayette, and also in May April we do Festival International, which is, I think, like the world's largest or country's largest free international music festival. So just a couple other things. Keep on your radar because I'm sure you're itching to come back down to South Louisiana.
Speaker 1:I've been looking, trying to figure out if I can come down this year, and it's just not going to work out, but it's going to be on my calendar every year from now on to do it. Luckily, too, they have a thing called Swamp in the City in May, where Cajun musicians come up and play Red Hook. I'm looking forward to seeing a couple of these guys come up and listen to some music, dance around a bit. That's the good thing about New York. New York's the most expensive place on earth. It can be frustrating at times, but you get about everything.
Speaker 2:Even Cajun stuff you can get sometimes. Yeah, we got to ship, we got to ship it out to you, export it. Yeah, uh, well, man, I appreciate you uh a find, like you know, wanting to kind of go down this rabbit hole with via this documentary and and I'm glad that it's opened up uh potential to do other things similar to this and other communities around America. Um, if you know, if know, if there's kind of one thing that you know we didn't touch on that you'd like to kind of hit on before, before we kind of wrap up here, what is, is there anything that you want to? First off, well, let me ask you, where, where can people watch the documentary?
Speaker 1:It's going to be on vice's YouTube channel, youtubecom slash vice. It should be coming out on February 18th, tuesday, at 11 AM. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you know, maybe not the message you would give to people here in South Louisiana, or especially those who frequent the Cajun Mardi Gras, but maybe someone who might be watching this, who's not familiar. What would be your message to them in regards to this documentary and your experience be your message to them in regards to this documentary and your experience.
Speaker 1:The Cajun culture and Cajun people are beautiful in something very unique. You've seen a lot of rural communities all over America kind of disappearing. There's not much liveliness there there's. You know, mostly you hear negative stories about rural communities, but in Cajun country there's this like amazing lively culture full of young people, surprisingly, where a lot of these rural areas in the United States have all stories about how the young people left.
Speaker 1:I think there's a story about if you build community, if people feel like they're part of something special, they will stick around and build with you.
Speaker 1:And so much of rural America feels like there's nothing there for them.
Speaker 1:If there's not a job there for them to make good money, there's not a reason to stay, and there's a lot of brain drain from all these places because they don't feel like they're part of it.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean anything to them really, it's just oh, they were born there and they can leave whatever. But if you're Cajun, it sounds like if you're part of this, like what sounds like somewhat in battle community, they feel like there's, there's something, a reason to stay, a reason to build, even if it's a little tougher than it would be to leave for some larger town that has an easier job to find or something. So I think the story is if you're concerned about your hometown losing people, brain drain or anything like that, you've got to make people feel like they're part of a community, part of a village, and you've got to do stuff like this, where the community comes together and feeds the community. I think there's a lot more to life than what your next buck is and you know where your next job is. But you've got to build it and it's going to take time and I think the Cajuns have done a great job of that and everybody should check out this documentary to see what they've done.
Speaker 2:Well, it certainly seems like it's in good hands with you. Just the way that you're talking about it, seeing some of the clips and, you know, talking to some of the folks behind the scenes of who you interviewed and whatnot, I know a lot of people are excited about it, excited to see it, and I'm excited for people outside of South Louisiana to take a look at it. But even the people here because you know we've got so many people here who have never experienced that for themselves I mean, it's just right in their own backyard really. So I'm excited just to kind of get really high-end productions and good storytellers like you guys at vice uh kind of on this, uh on this story and putting it out there that's my word for anybody that's there.
Speaker 1:Like, don't just just cause you're used to it doesn't mean it's not special. You know, I I wish I was down there every year now. So don't, don't forget to embrace it. Life gets busy. Make room for this, because this is one of the coolest experiences I've ever had and I'm really glad we could make something that hopefully you guys are proud of when it comes out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't take it for granted. Uh, real quick. Uh, just a couple of little rapid fire kind of Louisiana questions. What was your favorite uh food dish that you had when you were down here?
Speaker 1:Oh boy, uh, the boudin sausages. Uh, on one of the runs we were, I was exhausted it starts at 5.m. I was drunk. There was a chicken on a pole, people were climbing up trying to get and there was like these coolers full of boudin sausages and I was just dirty, walking around with two sausages in my hand grease, no napkins or drink or anything. But they were like the most delicious things I could eat, both because they were just good and two because I was absolutely starving and tired. And they just hit the spot in a moment.
Speaker 2:What was the beverage of choice?
Speaker 1:A lot of Miller Lights. I guess I'm a rum guy, big Gosling's rum guy but at the time I had a bag of beers I was trying to carry with me on this run and, honestly, next year here's a tip If I come back again, I'm going to get one of these architecture tubes which I used in college at one point. I had some fun in college, if you can't tell. But uh, you get an architecture like where you put like plans in. You can like kind of put beers lined up and have it on your backs.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm going to do next year if I come back. Yeah, uh, yeah, you definitely, definitely have to. And look, you're already trying to upgrade, the upgrade, the run for you and the experience. Uh, did you learn how to two-step while you're down here?
Speaker 1:No, but I, they did. Jordan Thibodeau and Joel came up to New York, in Brooklyn, a couple months back and they would do dance lessons. So me and my wife were trying to figure out how to do that. But I've just, I'm an okay dancer, I'm a decent dancer, but I am awful at these like planned out dances. I never liked the soldier boy in school or these other ones where you like to like learn the moves. I just kind of like to feel it.
Speaker 2:So no, I gotta, I gotta learn something yeah, we gotta, we gotta get you on that. Um, did you guys, did you guys fly in to lafayette or did you find a northern drive down?
Speaker 1:new orleans and, uh, got some good food while we were there too. That was another. That was my second best food probably was the swamp plate at one of these new orleans establishments that all you know frogs and alligator and catfish, you know all these other things fried up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if you knew this, but there's kind of like a big rivalry between Lafayette and kind of Cajun country and the New Orleans area and the city when it comes to, when it comes to food. Oh, I bet, I bet.
Speaker 1:It's slightly different, right, even the accents are different. Yeah, even the accents are different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, it's slightly different. You know you got some similarities. I mean, you got people who grew up over here who then moved to New Orleans, and you know vice versa, and you know there's it's always kind of like a melty pot, new Orleans is more of a melting pot, but you know everyone's got their own styles of doing stuff.
Speaker 1:There's a huge diversity in the South and you know, if I wish, I could do a series that more concentrates on the entire south, even because outside of the south it's great, the south's amazing that we have a regional characteristic. People feel southern, people don't feel northeastern or western or maybe the midwest, but even then it's like it's not something people are like proud of, like the way people are proud to be southern, but people outside the south see it all as one region, even all the way up to virgin Virginia, over to Oklahoma, down to the bottom of Florida. But us Southerners know half those places don't even count. I don't count Texas and Oklahoma, I don't count Virginia, I don't count Southern Florida. You know, I think most Southerners probably agree I'm more of a Deep South guy. But even then, each one of those states, each one of those regions, even amongst Louisiana, like you're saying, lafayette, it's different, it's diverse.
Speaker 2:There's so many different communities that make up the South and I think I would love to have people realize that a little more. Yeah, just just kind of. You talking here maybe can make me kind of think, like some of these other communities across America. You know where we have we have these festivals, we've got Mardi Gras. You know we've we've got the culture of of going to your neighbor's house and having a crawfish boil and a couple drinks on the weekend or a shoot on a Tuesday who cares? But you know these type of cultural community things are kind of absent in other places. You've seen the growth of like sports really blow up, and so you know I'm thinking of just like Philadelphia fans. You know they rally around their teams because you know maybe I'm just spitballing here, but maybe it's because there is a lack of other options when it comes to coming together as a community and that's something charming about the Cajun Motley Ball thing too is because these are professional sports teams that have gotten such dedication.
Speaker 1:Same with college. You know from Alabama. Auburn Alabama is humongous. It's so much people's personality and how they get together as a tradition. And that's a cool Southern tradition too. All the tailgating, all the college football stuff.
Speaker 2:Which we do as well, better, almost better than anybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I know, man, the LSU fans are both brutal and the best at partying, like them. And Ole Miss, maybe, except for LSU's food, is just better, because Louisiana food is probably the best food in America, right, it's got this amazing, amazing combination of Southern food that's like better than anywhere else. And then you add in the French influences, like come on, like it's almost unbeatable.
Speaker 2:Well, we got to get you down to a raging Cajuns game like raging Cajuns game here here in Lafayette. Check out some of the food. I can hear the rivalry already. I was thinking LSU and you're saying raging Cajuns. You know I there's so many LSU and the UL fans hate hearing this. I went to UL, I graduated there, but they've got more of a stranglehold when it comes to especially football across the entire state of Louisiana. But there's a loud and proud group of raging Cajuns who love their school, love their team and are willing to go to war against LSU fans and the big power that comes from Baton Rouge. But, man, once again I appreciate you doing the documentary. What's that Huh?
Speaker 2:Look at my phone, Okay we might have one more question? Oh, we do, from our producer, Luke. So two questions. What is the main differences between Alabama and Louisiana? Mardi Gras.
Speaker 1:There's a big, so one Moon Pies. I don't know if you guys have Moon Pies, love Moon Pies. They even have a Moon Pie like midnight New Year's Eve clock that falls. That's a big one. There the kind of parades are different. There's a little more segregation there, honestly, which is sad. They have a black queen king, a white king king You'll have to look it up. There's queen king, a white king king, you have to look it up.
Speaker 1:There's a good documentary about called order of myths you have to check out. It's very much more balls and exclusive uh societies. You know, like the cajun mardi gras I mean new orleans has these two, these exclusive societies, these mass societies. But the one in mobile is, like, probably the most exclusive, like we're very much about the ball culture more than anything else. And then the biggest one that I love and I support the most about Mobile, mardi Gras, is the Joe Cain parade.
Speaker 1:There's a guy named Joe Cain that brought back Mardi Gras and Mobile back in the day. There was, hundreds of years ago, mardi Gras and then it stopped for the Civil War and then there was a couple years of reconstruction and Joe Cain's the guy that brought it back. Joe Cain is the people's parade there. You don't have to be part of some exclusive club that might or might not let you in. That needs thousands and thousands of dudes. You can just show up and parade there and Joe Cain leads the parade and his what do they call it widows Joe Cain's widows go to his grave. He's an actual person with a grave.
Speaker 1:They've got all these like ladies in all black. No one knows who they are, they've never given interviews and they wail at his grave and everybody shows up. But because they're one of the few exclusive people on that day, people are upset. They can't be part of that. So there's the mistresses and they dress in all red and covered in all red and these like funeral kind of clothes and they have this rivalry and they're both mad at each other. And then you've had a thousand other splinter organizations. They're a lot of fun. Now they have theocaine Misters, which are the mysterious gay lovers of Jocaine, and so you just really can go off on these thousands of different directions on that day. And if you and your friends want to create a different mystic society on Jocaine Day, you can. I think that's kind of more of the story I would want to tell.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah, I mean I've always heard just the back and forth and mobile being like, wow, we started it. And New Orleans is like, well, we do it better. And then Cajun Mardi Gras is like we don't care, Come over here if you want, but no, I've got some buddies who prefer mobile. I think people need to do a little more.
Speaker 1:Even down there people don't seem to go to the different Mardi Gras and I think up and down the Gulf Coast no-transcript to tampa, pretty much it's not quite celebrated slightly differently and some of it's you know they have a you kind of kick it off for that pirate day. They have their gasparilla day. It's kind of mardi Gras adjacent. You go down, you go to Miramar, florida, pensacola, they do some stuff too. Biloxi in Mississippi even have some celebrations. They're not quite as robust as some of the others. I think you can go as far as Galveston. I think they even have some Mardi Gras celebrations, so you can kind of go up and down that coast and see the different ways they do it. Yeah, dude, it would be cool to create like a map. You know, maybe Vice will have to take that one on and create the perfect Mardi Gras map At some point. We got to get that RV, vice, on the road. Come join in and like we'll hit them up every other day, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, man, yeah, let me know if there's anything else that you know that we can do to. You know, help push any type of stories you guys are trying to do. You know you're now an official friend of the show, friend of the program, so you know we're happy to support our friends and their endeavors and whatnot. But final question that comes from our producer, luke Did you try any drive-through daiquiris?
Speaker 1:Yes, and have you tried to explain?
Speaker 2:that concept to people outside of Louisiana.
Speaker 1:I've got three good friends actually Jacob, zach and Scott. They're all part of my good friends from Nashville, from the Lafayette area. So when I brought that up, like what do I need to do while I'm in Lafayette? And they threw out a bunch of their favorite drive-thru daiquiri places and I knew about them. I've been to New Orleans, I've been down in the area before, before I ever moved up to New York, but my director, associate producer and camera woman, they, uh, they were blown away.
Speaker 1:Blown away that you could drive through and get an alcoholic beverage, and like they had no idea either. Because around covid it became a little more socially acceptable. You know a lot of new york restaurants and things started doing these like to-go cups. You weren't supposed to drink them on the street but you could take them with you, you know, but that was a huge deal even you know that like you could even take walk away with a drink. So then to go down there, I'm like this is pre-COVID. You could drive through a thing, you could drive through a place and get a drink. That's the only place in America you could do something like that. I'm a big fan of Louisiana's, or at least southern Louisiana's a combination of there's so much religiosity in the south that doesn't allow us to do fun things like that. But southeast or southern Louisiana seems to have figured it out a little bit. You can be religious and have a little fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's because we're mostly all Catholic. We like to have a little good time, you know.
Speaker 1:I grew up in a very conservative Protestant area called Church of Christ. Oh yeah, you couldn't even get drinks on a Sunday. No bars open on Sunday. No liquor stores open on Sunday. Even the liquor stores that are open during the week are like odd hours, controlled by the state, you know. Meanwhile, Southern Louisiana is like oh, just drive on by, grab a daiquiri.
Speaker 2:As long as the straw is not in the daiquiri, then you're good to go. You're good to drive around with it.
Speaker 1:There you go. All right, that's a good lesson. Everybody can listen up and do that.
Speaker 2:Well, jackson, once again, thanks for coming on the show, thanks for telling our story. You can check out the documentary once again on the Vice YouTube channel, february 18th. It's called Gatherings Cajun Mardi Gras. It's a Vice documentary. Jackson Garrett will end the show the same way we do for everyone, for all of our guests. You can take a look right directly into your camera, as you have been doing the entire episode. It could be a word, it could be a phrase. It could be a word, it could be a phrase, it could be advice, anything that you want to impart on the internet world at large.
Speaker 1:To end this episode with the floor is yours. Go down to Cajun Mardi Gras. Have a good time. Embrace your family, embrace your culture.
Speaker 3:I had a great time. I want to be back anytime I can and share my documentary, so they'll let me make more of this stuff. You want to be a guest? If you just want to berate me, hey, all goes in the same place. Info at AcadianaCastcom, email info at AcadianaCastcom. And for more local resource podcasts, go to AcadianaCastcom. Bye.
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